Bob

Batz

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December 24, 2007

My Flashy Glove Notwithstanding, I Deny Having Taken Steroids

In the wake of the recent admissions by dozens of past and present Major League Baseball players that they took steroids and other drugs to become better athletes, I’d like to say I’ve never taken performance-enhancing drugs to improve my sports skills.

Although, now that I look back on the whole thing I had every right to take something to do it because nobody’s athletic skills needed more enhancing than mine when I was a kid growing up in Flint, Michigan and dreaming of someday becoming a sports legend.

I tried all of the sports when I was young. Unfortunately, I excelled at exactly none of them.

Basketball was my first dream, but I was much too small to play the game well.

I also had a bad habit of dribbling the ball off my right foot every time I headed up the court on what began as a breakaway and always ended up as two points for the other team.

I also was a huge hockey buff back then and a rabid fan of the Detroit Red Wings, but, doggone it, every time I strapped on a pair of ice skates my ankles bent double and I fell flat on my well-padded you-know-what.

But I was so determined to succeed at some sport that I tried out for the Flint Central Indians football team my freshman year in high school.

In retrospect, that probably was a dumb move, too, because I weighed all of 120 pounds.

I’ll never forget my first football practice.

There was Bob, all but lost among 50 or so other giant hopefuls, all seven feet tall (or so it seemed to me, anyway) and weighing 600, maybe 700 pounds.

The coach, after giving a brief pep talk to his troops, started assigning positions.

Bob, as lousy luck would have it, became a defensive tackle.

Ten minutes later the coach called on me to show my stuff. “Blatz!” he screamed. “Get over here!”

I ran to him, then he yelled “Gratz, where are you?”

I tugged on his leg and said “I’m down here, coach.”

I was involved in eight plays that sun-splashed August afternoon. I was injured on six of them.

The next morning when I showed up for school, I learned I’d been cut from the team. At that precise moment, I decided baseball would be the sport for me.

As a youngster I had a reputation in the neighborhood for being an excellent “glove man.”

All I had to do to bring “oohs” and “aahs” from every kid on the block was strap on my Marty-Marion-autographed fielder’s glove. No grounder was too hot too handle for me.

No line drive was hit too sharply for the Batz kid.

But, alas, I quickly discovered that the game of baseball had a long-standing tradition that said when a team was in the field and the other team made three outs the team in the field had to bat.

My successes at shortstop, second and third quickly turned into nightmares when I strolled to home plate with my Al-Kaline-autographed bat on my shoulder.

Well, I guess that’s just about it. I’m telling you all of this because I wanted to go on record to say I never used performance-enhancing drugs. In fact, I’ve never tried to alter anything about myself with any kind of medications.

With one exception.

Back in the mid-1950s when I was a junior high school student, there was a rumor around school that if you took four aspirin and washed them down quickly with a few gulps of a popular soda pop of that period, you would get a buzz. So, of course, a bunch of us who didn’t even know what a buzz was, tried it.

I didn’t get any kind of buzz. What I did notice is I didn’t have a headache for six months.

© 2007 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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