THE TEMPTATION IS TO say that it’s a sound like nothing else in the world. But that wouldn’t be true. There are variations on the sound that I make when I hit a ball with my bat just right, and all those variations have relatives out there in the non-baseball world.
There is the crack. It sounds so much like the sound a tree trunk makes when an old maple goes down that you have to take cover just in case. Jim Rice is already getting famous for the crack. They say that even coaches who have been in the game for forty years flinch when Rice cracks the ball like he does. When I hit a ball and it goes crack, that is as good as I can hit it. It might not be a home run because maybe I didn’t get under it enough and it’s a line drive, or maybe I got under it too much and it’s a sky-high fly ball, but whether the thing gets out or not I am one happy and satisfied ballplayer because here is a secret I can share: I don’t care a ton about scoring runs or winning games. What I care about is hitting a baseball.
Baseball is not about teamwork, no matter what anybody says. It is about pitching and catching and hitting a ball. Especially about hitting a ball. And all of those things get done by one guy alone. Baseball is a selfish game. I don’t mind that. That’s why it works.
There is the snap. If I am going with the pitch, like when Quin or Butchie is particularly cute with the curves and screwballs and I have to go with whatever I get, then bat-meets-ball is more like a snapping sound, a slapping sound, and I knock the thing into right field with less authority than I might like, but all the same it is very satisfying. Because that stuff can be devilishly hard to hit, and you have to be both smart and quick with your hands to change your stroke on the fly and get the ball out there in play. Fred Lynn does this, and I have seen it in the news. Balls you are sure he can’t hit until, smack, there he goes, reaching out after it, putting the ball out there in play, and looking like he’s just going to go with the flow and follow the thing right out there into the outfield, just to watch it land where he tells it to. The ball in play. I love the ball in play. I hate the ball in the catcher’s hands.
Pop. Pop is a bad sound, the way I hear it. Because I hear it pop-pop. Double pop, like a mock. Because that to me is the sound of striking out, and striking out is the worst thing that can happen to a person. Anybody can miss a ball—pop—one time, because, sure, there are some good guys out there who can throw, and they can get lucky now and then. And if conditions are right for them and wrong for you, you can even get caught a second time—pop—and find yourself in jeopardy.
But a third strike. I have never been able to see the reasoning behind a third strike. Not in one at-bat, uh-uh, no way, no excuse. Nobody should be able to fool you or overwhelm you three times in one at-bat. No one. So the ultimate insult, the unbearable nightmare of a noise is the pop-pop of that third strike. The first pop being the ball landing in the catcher’s mitt. The second being me banging the bat off my helmet.
Because striking out is not okay. Striking out means somebody else has the control. When the ball is over the plate, you should be able to hit it.
Nothing else makes sense.
The crack of the bat is churchbells to me. The sound of all is well.