I don’t golf. I never golfed as a kid and, when I tried to take up the game in my early 20s -- as a budding lawyer I thought I’d need to know how to play to, I dunno, “close deals” or whatever it was I thought lawyers and/or golfers did -- I was not very good at all. I pretty quickly dropped it.
I do enjoy going to a driving range once in a while, though. There is something satisfying about striking a ball perfectly, and at a driving range you may accidentally luck into doing that once or twice bucket even if you don’t know what you’re doing. Golfers probably have good words to accurately describe that feeling, but in my experience it’s . . . a lightness? An effortlessness? Like all the weight and effort of your body just disappears into the ball somehow. It’s a very satisfying feeling and I understand, when that happens, the high that serious golfers, who don’t have to do that by accident, seem to be chasing.
I sometimes imagine that that’s also what great hitters feel when they connect with a baseball perfectly. Swing hard and miss and you feel failure. Swing and connect off the handle or the end of the bat and it probably hurts your hands and makes your body feel all off-kilter. But hit it right on the sweet spot and -- crack! -- it probably feels great.
Mike Trout, who hits baseballs better than any living human being, is one of the handful of guys who knows how both feel, it seems. We knew about the hitting, but last night he and the boys went to a Top Golf and he hit a golf ball approximately 180 m.p.h. and it landed on the moon:
Mike Trout hitting rockets isn’t exclusive to the baseball field. pic.twitter.com/tuEyIzxqQ5
— Los Angeles Angels (@Angels) March 2, 2020
The golfers among you can critique that better than I can -- I’m guessing that’s not the most repeatable swing over 18 holes -- but it sure is something to see. Even if it wasn’t in an Angels uniform.
