He’s Just a Throwback to Game’s Crazier Time

If you remember “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” an offering by Ernest Hemingway, you will recall that a leopard is found near the peak of this mountain, rising 19,565 feet.

You know instantly the leopard has no business there, considering it is found dead. What deranged whim did the creature obey, climbing the highest summit in Africa?

Why did the Ancient Mariner snuff out the albatross, bringing upon himself a devastating curse? The author explained the mariner did it in a “fit of perversity.”

Today, students of human behavior are trying to figure out why Rob Dibble, relief pitcher for Cincinnati, hurled a baseball into the stands after a recent game.

Dibble had struck out the last batter. The Reds won. He was embraced by his catcher. All of a sudden, he cranks up and throws a hummer into the seats.

The ball hits a schoolteacher on the arm. She is not hurt badly, but enough to have pain and to miss two days’ work.

Why did Dibble do it? He wasn’t aiming to injure anyone. What cerebral elements formed, inspiring such an act?

At the Freud Institute in Vienna, researchers are now packing, preparing to visit Cincinnati to dissect the mental state of Dibble, leading to what he did.

You ask the head of the research team, Dr. Alfred Labbermacher, “Is the Dibble caper any more abnormal than that of Hemingway’s leopard, deciding to climb Kilimanjaro?”

Labbermacher responds: “Cats are curious. But Dibble?”

Labbermacher shrugs.

It never was explained why Ted Williams woke up one morning, took his rifle down to Fenway Park and, occupying a place in the seats, picked off pigeons romping on the field.

What in his past was Ted avenging?

Why did Juan Marichal, exchanging words with John Roseboro, suddenly hit him on the head with a bat?

Juan’s fellow Dominican, Joaquin Andujar, saw a lavatory as the silent enemy. Pitching for St. Louis in the seventh game of the World Series at Kansas City, Joaquin is removed.

When the stadium cleanup crew arrives the next morning, it discovers that the dugout washroom on the visitors’ side has a broken door, broken sink, broken light fixture and, alas, broken toilet.

The crew chief tells us: “It appears as if someone took a blunt instrument and worked over the washroom. The weapon shows evidence of being a bat.”

And the suspicion existed that the one wielding the bat was Andujar, normally an .082 hitter, who got good wood on the sink and especially on the toilet.

Now why would one destroy the dugout toilet used by one’s own team? Doing so meant that the Cardinals requiring a facility during the game had to walk 100 feet to the washroom inside the clubhouse.

The Royals informed the Cardinals that no charges would be filed if $2,000 in damages was forthcoming. The sum was paid, but the question never was answered whether Andujar went after the toilet with a 32-ounce bat, allowing maximum wrist action, or something heavier.

So you picture the owner of the Reds, Marge Schott, sitting down with Dibble for a heart-to-heart talk. Looming here is a cultural exchange bringing together America’s ablest minds.

Marge explains: “Rob--Robert Keith Dibble I’m talking to you--do you understand the insurance problems in a public facility when we have people throwing 97-m.p.h. fastballs into the stands? When a guy throws even a hanging curve into the stands, we are practically uninsurable.”

“What about Lloyd’s?” Dibble asks.

“Lloyd’s will insure a ship against hitting an iceberg, a horse against breaking a leg and Pavarotti against laryngitis. But throwing smoke into the seats? We’re dead.”

Dibble is contrite.

“Tell me, son,” Marge asks, “why did you throw into the stands?”

Dibble answers quietly: “I guess because it was there.”