Published: April 25, 2007 11:17 pm         

B-Sides: It’s almost like the sandlot, but not quite

TERRE HAUTE — I learned to bat left-handed in a barn lot.

It was a strategic move. I was born right-handed and had always dug into the righty batters’ box. Until, that is, our sandlot baseball games shifted to a farm pasture.

Left field (where righty hitters most often hit the ball) was approximately 2,000 feet deep with a creek as its warning track. I was a decent hitter, but steroids were for horses then and Mickey Mantle didn’t live in Prairieton. So homering to left was impossible. But right field (the typical domain of lefty hitters) was bordered by a real fence just 250 feet away. My 12-year-old brain quickly deduced that I could actually go yard to right if I batted left-handed.

Swinging my Jackie Robinson 33 (splintered, but nailed back together and sealed with black electrical tape), I felt like Mantle the first time I popped a baseball over that fence.

Sandlot ball beat organized games hands down. No coaches. No parents. No umpires. No need to improve. If you wanted to throw a knuckleball, you did. If you thought you could throw the ball in from center field to home plate, just like Cesar Geronimo, you forgot about hitting the cutoff and heaved it. Pure, unadulterated fun.

In today’s era of hyper-organized sports and travel teams that keep kids on the road perpetually, I thought sandlot ball games were dead.

But they’re not, thanks to a spirited group of Indiana State University students. Every fair-weathered evening around 6 o’clock, nearly two dozen guys walk — walk — to Fairbanks Park, choose up sides and play.

It’s almost like watching the classic 1993 movie “The Sandlot” coming to life.

There are a couple of twists to the plot, though. Unlike the movie about a group of neighborhood pals growing up in California in the 1960s, there is no Bennie “The Jet” Rodriguez, Ham, Squints, Smalls or Repeat. Instead, their names are Siddhartha, Gokul, Vishal, Raj, Srikanth and Rajeev. And they’re not playing baseball. They’re playing cricket — a national pastime in their homeland, India.

Never mind that Fairbanks Park doesn’t have an official cricket field. They’ve adapted, just like true sandlotters.

They play on the lawn in front of the park’s now-empty fountain arches. The concrete walkway is used for the “pitch” — the narrow, flat area where the “bowler” (kind of like a pitcher in baseball) runs up to a line and throws the ball, on one bounce, toward a “batsman” waiting 22 yards away. The batsman’s bat looks like my old junior high school print shop teacher’s paddle, with a long handle curving up to a round surface on one side and a flat sweet spot on the other.

If the batsman hits the ball, he and a teammate waiting near the bowler can basically trade places by running past each other and, thus, scoring. But if the bowler blows one past the batsman and dislodges two sticks resting on a “wicket,” the batsman is “dismissed.” The fielders (there are 11 players on each team) can throw the ball at the wicket to dismiss a runner, or catch a ball on the fly.

(I’m trying to imagine Harry Carey describing a baseball game with cricket terminology … “Wicket, you know that’s tekciw backwards.”)

An innings (it sounds plural, but it’s not) ends when 10 batsmen are dismissed, and the fielding team takes its turn. Once both sides bat, that constitutes an “over.” A match lasts 10 overs. The team with the most runs wins.

ISU students from India started playing these impromptu cricket games three years ago. Many of those players have since graduated and left town. But their ritual continues.

“We’re continuing their legacy,” said Siddhartha Adla.

Like nearly all of the others, Adla is a graduate student. Some are studying electronics, some computer technology. All are twenty-somethings. But when their cricket games start, they’re kids again.

“We have been playing since our childhood,” Adla said, grinning.

For a couple of hours, it’s as if they’re home again.

“We like this game very much, because we play this in India,” said Srikanth Vangala.

Adla and Gokul Narne, both 22, grew up in the Indian city of Hyderabad. There, news of world-class cricket games fills newspaper sports pages. Fields are everywhere. Matches happen daily.

When asked to compare its popularity to an American sport, Adla picked the NFL.

Raj Samala, also 22, agreed, but added, “Your football — bigger than football.”

Their years of experience, even to a cricket-challenged American observer, seems obvious. At a recent Fairbanks Park match, they made diving, barehanded catches, batted the ball (called “shots”) deep into the field, and threw some pretty nasty balls (that’s what pitches are called). Their equipment is part official, part makeshift. The bats came from Chicago. The balls are actually tennis balls, rather than the regulation leather cricket balls. The wickets are metal, propped up on the concrete sidewalk, rather than wooden “stumps” driven into the ground.

But these guys aren’t complaining.

“We don’t have any grass on this,” Samala said, pointing to the concrete, “and the ball can be pitched nicely.”

Their field comes pretty close to those in India, “Except for the arch,” said Vangala, “because the ball gets into it.”

Each guy has his strengths, just as Rodriguez was the star hitter in “The Sandlot.” When asked who’s the best batsman among the Fairbanks Park bunch, Adla and Narne pointed simultaneously to Vishal Pasula.

“We have many bowlers who bowl really well,” Adla said. “When it comes to batsmen, I think he’s the best one.”

They compliment each other. They’re polite. Their game uses words like “dismissed” instead of “you’re outta here.” Still, amidst the civility, this is still a game, just like any sandlot contest.

“It gets real competitive,” said Rajeev Kothuru. Sometimes, the computer majors take on the technology guys. Other times, they’ll match up by school class.

They keep it peaceful, though. They take turns serving as the umpire.

“Everyone has to accept what the umpire says,” said Kothuru. “That’s one of our rules.”

Vangala heard that and gave Kothuru a knowing grin. Then Kothuru amended his statement, saying with a smile, “Some people accept. Some don’t.”

One thing they never question is whether they’ll play.

“We almost play daily — two, two and a half hours,” Adla said.

“If the weather’s good, we play,” Samala said. “That’s it.”

That’s a spirit worth admiring here in America.

Mark Bennett can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.