The Barrel

Way back in 1991, Buffalo Bills placekicker Scott Norwood sailed a late field goal attempt wide right in the Super Bowl and the New York Giants defeated his Bills 20-19. In that year’s World Series, the Minnesota Twins outlasted the Atlanta Braves in what has been called the greatest series ever: Five of the seven games were decided by a single run, four were decided in the final at-bat, and three went into extra innings. In the NBA, Michael Jordan and the Bulls powered their way to the title in five games. Across the pond that summer, Steffi Graf won her third of seven Wimbledon singles titles.

Meanwhile, back home in matters of social surprise, Pee Wee Herman got arrested in a Florida movie theater for indecent exposure while Fox Broadcasting was becoming the first TV network to permit condom advertising. On Capitol Hill professor Anita Hill accused Judge Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment but the Senate confirmed him to the Supreme Court anyway. After a contentious hearing, Thomas survived by a tight 52-48 vote, much to the relief of nominating President George H. W. Bush.

The economy was good, unemployment steady at 6.8%. A first class postage stamp cost a quarter. The Silence of the Lambs starred at the box office, along with Beauty and the Beast, JFK, and Thelma & Louise. But It’s A Wonderful Life’s director, Frank Capra, missed them. He was riding heaven’s escalator with Miles Davis, Dr. Seuss, Leo Durocher, and Graham Greene.

A loud noise was reverberating from the Pacific Northwest, as Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” exploded from the LP Nevermind. The song springboarded the band to stardom and catapulted the grunge movement into the fabric of society, its music characterized by distorted guitars, dispirited vocals, and unkempt faces and flannel.

Fifty million fewer Americans were around back then to hear it, none on Facebook or Twitter. The world was appreciably less populated, too: 5.4 billion versus today’s 6.8. Then as now, social unrest percolated around the globe: South Africa appealed its apartheid laws, Boris Yeltsin became the first freely elected president of Russia, and Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia split from the crumbling USSR to establish proud independence. At home the U. S. was charging two Libyans with the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Lost in the year’s important news stories were 48 mostly strangers from across the country who gathered in October at Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Florida for a long weekend of baseball and bonding. This was an organized retreat, its goal to provide each man a positive escape from the pressures of a grinding life. The weekend was for men only; there were no wives, no kids, no drugs, no arguing.

From this society of like-minded strangers was born the No Bats Baseball Club.
I founded No Bats expecting the weekend to be a one-time thing. But it was popular with the guys and we annualized it from one October into five. Then we kept going. We’ve rendezvoused 18 times now, with number 19 scheduled for Memphis in October. Our 20th is planned as a return to Dodgertown in 2011.

Along the way we have raised and donated over $1.032 million for charity. We’ve done it the hard way, by asking family and friends for small checks in support of a series of diverse causes. We haven’t gotten or sought much corporate money. The reason we’ve kept doing all this is The Barrel.

As life unfolds, we all take turns in The Barrel. The Barrel is inevitable, so it’s comforting to know that when our turn comes, hands will be there to help pull us out. That’s another part of our club motto: The number of hands reaching in will equal the number of times we’ve reached in to help others. What we do now to help charities is sort of like banking helping hands for sometime down the road.

My guys have been through a lot together; two decades of barrel rolling forces that upon any extended group. Three of my guys have buried children, others have buried their wives; one was in her early thirties and passed suddenly, just weeks after giving birth to their third baby.  We’ve lost jobs and houses, been divorced, been wiped out financially, and twice cut from cars by the steel can opener called the Jaws of Life. One of our guys, George Simmons, was killed on 9/11. His plane was skyjacked into the Pentagon, his life reduced to three fingers of fine ash in a government sandwich baggie we scattered on a windy day into the Potomac.

“Mortality is very inconvenient,” I often remind the fellows. “It ruins a lot of weekends.”

Every day people around us are taking turns in The Barrel. This is not a bad thing; it’s an inevitable thing. The Barrel’s job is emotionless and cold-blooded: It is the tax police of life. Since the barrel is omnipresent, it’s important that each of us reach in at every opportunity without asking. Stockpile those helping hands. When your turn comes, it will be reassuring to know that many hands are waiting to help pull you out when time comes to begin again.

The Barrel is a resting place, not a prison cell. Take your turn, hang tough, and help others when their turn comes, too. You’ll be glad you did.