The Story Behind My Blog Title

I was telling a friend yesterday about my new blog. When I mentioned the title, he said he thought the phrase was "Take two and hit to right."  A bit embarrassed,  I told him that "Take two and hit to left" was one of my late father-in-law Bud's favorite phrases, along with "There's no such thing as a free lunch" and "It's okay to okay till payday."

It seems that my friend was right (no pun intended; as a lifelong progressive, his politics are, like mine, anything but right). Entering the phrase "take two and hit to right" into Google immediately sent me to a post on a blog called "Hardball Mysteries" by a baseball fan in Nashville named Jonathan Gantt delving into the origin of the phrase. 

Gantt's blog suggests a number of explanations: that the phrase calls for a batter to take two pitches and then try to hit the ball to the right side of the diamond; that it suggests that the batter take two big swings for the fences and then choke up on the bat and guard the plate; or that it was intended as an insult to an inept batter rather as helpful advice (I don't buy that one). He thinks he will find the answer in a book called "Take Two and Hit to Right: The Golden Days on the Semi-Pro Diamond" by Hobe Hays, but even Hays doesn't have a clue as to the origin of the phrase.  All he knows is that it a baseball phrase he had been hearing all his life. 

Coming up empty and admitting that the lack of an answer to the phrase's origin was "messing with [his] mind," Gantt ends up offering two free tickets to a Nashville Sounds' minor league baseball game to anyone who could give him documented proof of the origin of the phrase. Since there is no update to the blog, which appeared in June 2008, I assume no one came forward to clear up the mystery.

I don't have an answer either, although not knowing isn't messing with my head.

All I know is that Bud was, like I, a lifelong baseball fan.  In the early 1940's he was apparently quite the player, good enough to pitch a no-hitter for the Riverdale School and, as he told it, to pitch for a short time in the Chicago Cubs minor league system before he hung up his cleats to join the Navy, where he saw action in1945 in the Pacific in the final assault on Japan aboard the aircraft carrier, Bon Homme Richard (like most WWII veterans, he didn't talk much about the experience).

My best guess is that, like Gantt, Bud intended the phrase to convey "as much a life lesson as ... a baseball strategy."  His frequent use of the phrase, "There's no such thing as a free lunch" (a very good piece of advice, it seems to me - one that even my Republican friends would agree with) seems to support that view.

I don't understand exactly why he turned the phrase around, although I think it had something to do with the fact that one of his favorite players, Ted Williams, was a left-handed batter. 

All I know, in the end, is that calling my blog "Take Two and Hit to Left" just feels right on any number of levels. It reflects my deep and abiding love of the game of baseball (more in future posts), my political philosophy, my eccentricity (as you will discover if you follow this space, my mind works in very mysterious ways and some of my comments will seem to come out of left field; I once was told my mind was filled with junk), even the fact that I am left-handed (although, unlike Teddy Ballgame, I batted righty - go figure).  It also keeps the memory of Bud alive (even though he has been gone since 1991, the good times we spent together - on the golf course, on the slopes, in restaurants, on the Vineyard, watching  - it is as if he died yesterday). 

So, to those of you out there in the Internet ether who have stumbled on this blog, and for my late father-in-law, this Buds for you.