Just remember, Don’t Tug on Superman’s Cape and Don’t Spit Into The Wind!
By Dave Hamby
Even though I’m male, I just don’t get spitting. Why do ball players need to spit so much?
I was at a ballgame the other night and the fellow playing third base for the other team must have had a bad taste in his mouth because he sure did a lot of spitting. The fact of the matter is, he spit so much I ended up paying more attention to him that I did to our guys at bat.
Now the guys on our team spit, I mean everyone out there spits, but this guy sprayed so much I became concerned he might get dehydrated. What really bothered me though was when one of our guys hit a triple and slid into third base. I wanted to jump up and shout, “Don’t do it! There’s spittle all over the place!”
I suppose I’d understand why it’s so important for a ball player to spit if I hadn’t spent most of my childhood living in Europe. Soccer players don’t spit. I also suppose I’d understand spitting if I had sons instead of daughters. Girls don’t spit. But I did and I do and I just don’t get spitting.
Grasshoppers spit. They do that so you’ll put them down real quick and be reluctant to pick them up again. I think it’s gross when they do, but I suspect they think my sticking a fish hook through their back is a lot grosser. I’m guessing they can’t spit under water because the fish don’t get grossed out.
I understand why guys who chew tobacco spit. I don’t understand why these fellows put the tobacco in their mouth in the first place, but I do understand why they spit it back out. While I think tobacco spit is even more disgusting than regular spit, I can grasp the necessity of doing it.
I have a friend who chews tobacco. For the sake if this column I’ll call him Billy Bob. He’s a big fellow and epitomizes the Texas good ol’ boy. Rare is the occasion when you’ll find him with less than a pack and a half of Red Man tamped in his cheek.
Billy Bob is a welder by trade, so naturally when I needed a trailer for my race car he was my first choice. With him being a Texan and all this trailer required a great deal of planning with the subsequent consumption of cold beer and many, many packs of Red Man. In the course of measuring my car and assessing my needs he managed to spit up my garage pretty badly. We decided it would be best if that trailer were built in a metal shack he had in South Austin.
Time passed and I grew concerned that my trailer wouldn’t be ready in time for my first race. This all happened a while back before cell phones and his shack didn’t have a telephone. I had to go out there one night to pay him a visit.
When I got there he was hunched over, welding on what later turned out the be the nicest trailer I’ve ever seen. He sensed my presence after a while and quit welding, took his helmet off and laid it on the ground next to him, and slowly began to unfold his big frame up to his impressive height.
When he saw it was me his eyes crinkled up in a smile and he spit out what I guess was about a pint and a half of tobacco juice.
“Hey Dave,” he said in his soft Texas drawl. “I reckon you’re out here wondering when your trailer’ll be done.”
I nodded an affirmation.
“Well,” he went on, “I was planning on finishing it up tonight, but being as how I just spit in my welding helmet, I reckon it’ll be tomorrow or the next day.”
Sure enough, there was his helmet on the ground looking like a bowl full of thick Chinese soup.
It must have turned out to be quite a job to get that helmet clean because it was another two weeks before I got my trailer.
I’m not going to spend too much more time pondering on why guys spit. My oldest daughter has given me two grandsons and I suspect they’ll educate me on this matter in due time. If “spitting up” counts, the youngest is well on his way. I just hope they do their spitting at home. Personally, I think it’s disgusting