Home Run Derbies

            Growing up a White Sox fan in the 1960s, I learned to love miniscule team ERA’s and tolerate miniscule team batting averages.  Home runs were rare—e.g., 89 in 1967—to the point of nonexistent.  Which is to say I don’t get Home Run Derby at the All Star Game.

            Growing up watching Frank Thomas and Paul Konerko, Clare is the direct opposite.  She watches every year, with me at her side.  Last night, Robinson Cano and Bryce Harper had their fathers pitch to them.  “You’d hit me,” my daughter joked, sort of, because I did hit her from time to time throwing batting practice.  “No, I’d yell at you not to lunge across the plate,” I responded, because I did that a heck of a lot more. 

            Clare did three home run derbies in travel ball, always a part of nationals, which is a kind of regional World Series that teams qualify for based on their records.  The first two contests were in suburban Kansas City, the other in Chattanooga.  All of them were ungodly hot.

            As a high school freshman on varsity, Clare only hit one homer, the same total she managed between thunderstorms in Overland Park, Kansas.  But something about launching a ball into a parking lot appealed to her (and still does).  Sophomore year she totaled another solitary homer.  Lee’s Summit, Missouri, however, was a revelation. 

            It helps to have a good travel coach, which we did that year in the person of Mike Schwab.  Other coaches rant, Mike kept his calm, and that rubbed off on his players.  There was one game I remember where Clare rushed a throw from second base, for an error.  This is when the typical coach starts yelling.  “You’re my second baseman, Clare.  You’ve got all the time in the world,” is what Mike Schwab said without raising his voice.

Mike did the soft-tossing for Clare in Lee’s Summit, the next year.  She responded by hitting nine pitches out of ten over the fence, good enough for a share of the title.  Two years later, she’d win one outright in the humidity of Tennessee.

            As a junior, Clare hit five homers, followed by ten her next year.  As a college freshman, she managed six, good for the school single-season record, which she broke the following year.  I give some of the credit to Mike Schwab, who was pleased to hear of her exploits when they bumped into one another this spring for the first time in five years.