Go Trojans! If you check the schedule, you'll see that today's practice is in the main gym. I remember practice in the gym. It was too cold and wet to play ball outside. Smedley, using the famous blue-handled fungo, hit rubber-coated baseballs to us that took wicked hops off the polished hardwood gym floor. A cup was a must. You never could tell what type of spin would generate off the third hop. No such thing as the Lou Boudreau Sunday Hop while practicing in the gym.
One practice Smedley hit me five nasty, spinning hoppers. The first was hit to my left. The second was to my right. He kept it up. Each ball was a hit a half-step farther in the opposite direction that the last. By the fifth I was gassed. I pulled the ball from my first-baseman's glove, wheeled and fired a wild, hard dart that travelled half-way across the gym, passed well over cather Frank Thoreau's head, and crashed into the basketball stands, which were folded and stacked directly behind Smedley and Thoreau. Smedley glared at me in his patented dark, menancing, all-business, all-Smedley manner. He smirked. Shook his head. And hit me five more all of which were hit harder and made me move quicker and farther than the first five.
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