Baseball shenanigans, part 3
I am going to diverge from my previous chalk-liner shenanigans, but here’s part 1 and part 2 in that saga. (Whoever thought a chalk liner would be involved in a saga? Based on some of the comments I received from my former classmates, uncertainty as to who carried out those acts remained unanswered until my big reveal.)
This installment of baseball shenanigans will focus on one individual who, whether you were in his math class or played on the LuHu JV squad for him, you likely carry stories of him with you to this day. We’ll call him Cliff Clavin (AKA CC hereafter), after the well-known “Cheers" character, since that is the nickname he acquired. My friends and I were very big on nicknames, and just about everyone in our orbit had at least a few nicknames; which one was used at any given time usually reflected the tone of our conversation: serious, funny, secretive, etc.
Though I never played for CC on the LuHi JV team, I was very familiar with him well before baseball season started during my first year at the school. CC was very passionate and vocal about his love of sports, especially hockey. A dyed-in-the-wool New York Rangers fan, he would come to school visibly upset after a Rangers’ loss, even it if was a meaningless game. And somehow, despite our school having a fairly strict dress policy for students, CC would find a way to wear his collection of Rangers jerseys to school, looking more like someone who should be sitting in the nosebleed seats at Madison Square Garden, screaming, “Tastes great, less filling!” at the top of his lungs with throngs of similar hockey hooligans than a guy who was teaching 11th-grade math.
CC had earned a reputation for sudden screaming outbursts; micro-rages if you will. He could be easily heard from the practice field adjacent to the baseball field, a distance of about 450 feet. I would stand at shortstop during varsity practice, hearing various one-line outbursts from him, typically directed at one of his players, but sometimes he would include the whole team when his short tantrum would turn into a drawn-out melodrama. CC would only grow more enraged when most of his players would snicker and chortle under their breath because his episodes were more comedic than truly threatening.
Even though I had developed a friendly relationship with CC, I didn’t know him that well. So I was a bit reluctant about having him for a math teacher my senior year. Alex and I both detested math and had chosen to take an easier 11th-grade course rather than suffer through the more advanced, mind-numbing math most of our classmates would learn. Thus, we ended up being the only two seniors in CC’s class, which turned out to be a breeze for Al and me in more ways than one.
We found the curriculum extremely easy, with both of us acing the work from the start. And CC was a pretty funny guy in the classroom, so we felt like we were on cruise control. As the days turned to spring, our classroom talk turned to baseball. At that point, Alex and I were getting easy A’s in the class, and CC realized we really didn’t need to be in attendance to make the grade, so he would let us leave the classroom on most game days and some practice days in order to “get the field ready,” which was very convenient for us since our lunch period was right after math class. Some days we would hop in Al’s car and grab lunch at a local deli, others we would bring our bag lunches from home down to the field, eat, and nap on the dugout benches. Not once did we ever pick up a rake or a shovel and get that field ready.
Despite his generosity in terms of skipping his class, CC still drew reactions from Al and me when we’d hear him bellow across the diamond. At some point, we started quietly repeating anything he screamed until 15 varsity players would join in unison, and the collective murmurs became audible to the JV squad, and probably CC too. But he always pretended not to hear us, as we chorused famous lines of CC’s like, “Balls! Balls! Balls!,” and, “That’s crap!” Or doozies like “You guys are garbage, complete garbage,” and, “Kist! Here! Now!” That last one originated my sophomore year when my friend Bryan Kist got on CC’s bad side for some minor infraction, quite likely imagined by CC, and it was the original exhortation of nearly everyone on the JV and varsity squads for the next few seasons. Rather than be insulted by our antics, I believe that CC felt an odd sense of honor and pride in our playful mocking as if he were somehow another kid on the ball team having a good old time.
There always was a poetic syncopation to his outbursts that made them oh so fun to sing on repeat. So much so that I’ll still find myself flashing back to those memories and suddenly crying out, “Balls! Balls! Balls!” or, “Kist! Here! Now!” in my best affectation of CC, as my family shakes their heads at me wondering why I am such a strange character. But for the baseball players who knew CC, his over-the-top approach, his outbursts, and his inimitability live on, even if so only via memories of his three-word fits and tantrums.
I think I see my math teacher playing hooky from school somewhere in there.
