Baseball Games & Temper Tantrums

The most (bleakly) amusing manifestation of Bob's narcissism took place at our baseball games. We played every weekend, hardball no less.

Bob fancied himself as the best at everything no matter the realm -- the best theorist in the field of psychology, the best boat captain, the best at business, and the most enlightened person on the planet. He also fancied himself as the best baseball player among our group. Bob was in his late 40s at the time, the oldest of the regular players. Considering his age and poor physical shape, he was actually pretty good but nowhere near the best. 

Bob was a pitcher. His one asset was good control. However his pitches were slow and he barely had a curve ball. Even the marginal players would hammer his pitching. 

When Bob was pitching and fielding errors occurred, he fumed. He was so bent out of shape that he changed the way the teams were formed. At first the teams were formed randomly. But then it was changed to Allstars (consisting of the best players) and Underdogs (consisting of the lesser players). Bob designated himself as the starting pitcher for the Allstars despite that Scott was vastly superior. This arrangement placed the best fielders on Bob's team. Of course there were still lots of fielding errors, because we played more or less at little league level.

Donny was one of the best players. He played shortstop for the Allstars. Bob had high expectations for Donny's level of play. When Donny committed an error, Bob would rage out of control. It even bubbled up to group. Bob accused Donny of sabotaging him. That's because in the world according to Bob, nobody was capable of handling his love and recognition without retreating, without "acting out" against him. (Was it Sigmund Freud who said sometimes an error is just an error?)

When an Underdog made a good play in the field, Bob would fume at that too. "They never played that well when I was pitching!"

Bob's wife Tam maintained an official scorecard. Readers who are unfamiliar with baseball minutia may not be aware that a baseball scorecard is complicated. It tracks every play, not just the runs. Bob wanted the scorecard to reflect his pitching skill (as if anyone else cared). He looked over Tam's work when the Allstars were at bat, and instructed her to change borderline hits into errors. (Preserving his ERA, the most important pitching stat.) Oddly, he also instructed her to record certain errors as outs, which made a mess of things when three outs were recorded yet the inning was still in progress. That too angered Bob, as if it was Tam's fault. 

(I was going to include the scorecard anecdote in the Bob/Trump contrast and compare post, because it reminds me of Trump altering the hurricane track with his sharpie. Except it's too convoluted.)

In group, where every nuance of everyone's behavior was scrutinized, Bob's infantile behavior on the baseball field was never mentioned.