CALL it Fastballs at Eatonville High. Instead of a young-looking Rolling Stone writer posing as a high school student, a young-looking baseball coach posed as a high school pitcher and got lit up, then fired. Prep coach didn’t
linger long as a ringerAs Spicoli would say, "Gnarleee, dude!"
Mildly amusing, but also quite stupid. For obvious reasons, the only baseball players that 19-year-olds should manage are the ones in their video games. Too bad athletic director Donna Hosley didn't realize this when she gave young Cory Harmon the reins of a prep team in Washington state.
It set up a teen-age ringer story almost as silly as the early '80s movie that foisted Sean Penn upon an unsuspecting American public.
Harmon didn't do anything as humorous as having a pizza delivered to his dugout, or hitting himself in the head with a shoe. He did, however, make himself look bad not only for his blatant lack of good judgment, but also because, well, he sucked. A guy with his obviously limited world view probably finds getting bombed for 15 runs in four innings the most embarrassing part of the whole scenario.
But there's a happy ending. Last we heard, the Marlins were working him out. Nah, even they're not that desperate.
IT'S sort of like that Alonzo Mourning-Larry Johnson "fight" last week. If you're going to be an idiot with no self control, at least be good at it. Throw some real punches.
The thing is, if you're going to be somewhere you're not supposed to be, doing something you're not supposed to be doing, do it with style. That way, you're less likely to get caught and less likely to look foolish.
I've got a buddy who, at age 21, decided to "try out" for the Pearl City High baseball team.
He showed up one day in time for batting practice and went straight for the pipes. After the guy in the box took his 10 cuts, my friend went in and took 20.
"Get out of there!" John Matias, the Charger coach at the time, yelled.
"I hung around until they started running laps," shrugged my pal. "Then I left. I just wanted some BP. I guess I hit the ball pretty good. I heard that the coach was asking where I was the next day."
IN the old days, you didn't have to be an adult masquerading as a high school kid to be a ringer. In the early 1900s, the NCAA wasn't around to prevent pros from giving it the old college try once in awhile.
Rube Waddell was one of the first great major league pitchers. That is, when he showed up at the park. He was also one of the first great major league head cases, and had the attention span of Bart Simpson deprived of Ritalin. Waddell was known to leave games to follow fire engines.
He also pulled one of the greatest ringer stunts ever. It seems a certain small college was getting dusted every year by a rival school that used illegal players. So the first school signed up Waddell for courses and had him come out for the team. (Nobody could catch his pitches, so they registered his catcher from the Philadelphia A's, too. It is said the catcher actually attended some classes.)
When the rival team got one look at Waddell's heater, they wanted no part of him and blew town without even playing the game.
While we're on the subject of recruiting, a long time ago I was among those folks who thought the private high schools had a huge advantage because they could select their players . . . excuse, me, student/athletes . . . from anywhere in the state.
Then, when I covered the Oahu Interscholastic Association baseball tournament for the first time, I found that some of the public schools were doing this, too.
For some reason, the rosters all had a column indicating if a player was a district exception. Plenty of them were. Funny coincidence that the teams that won the most games had the most DEs.
Don't recall any coaches pitching, though.
Dave Reardon is a magazine editor and freelance
writer who has covered Hawaii sports since 1977.
He can be reached via the Star-Bulletin or
by email at dreardon@hmsa.com.
