Hashish and Baseball: A Match Made in Hash (& Baseball) Heaven

While it may come as a small surprise to some, my obsession with hashish began long after baseball. Born in Reading, PA, raised to bleed green (love the Eagles to death) and live and die with the Phillies, it's my lifelong curse...

[I Cried when this happened. What a memory. 😂 HR off the Phillies closer Mitch "The Wild Thing" Williams in 1993-94]

Before the heartbreaking moment (above) in 1993-94, watching Mitch "the Wild Thing" Williams (yes the real Wild Thing), get taken yard by Toronto's Joe Carter to lose game six and subsequently game 7, my searing loyalty to the Phillies was set in stone. This passion and pain, matched only in memory by the Eagles and their mis-hold and missed chip-shot against the Cowboys on Monday night, etched trauma's in my young sports psyche that would last right up until Super Bowl 52.

[I Cried when this happened too. 😂]

Traumas that make the 2023 Phillies all the more inspiring with their season long celebration, an unspoken (and unofficial) nod back to the film that galvanized our very own “Wild Thing”. Poetic justice? I'd say so.

[Marbles or Huevos celebration is a 2023 Phillies mainstay in celebratory affairs]

While professional sports and hashish may seem like polar opposites, the two have been making miracles and enhancing each other throughout my adult life. And while smoking before watching games increases the pleasure and heightens the intensity, hash and baseball are truly a match made in heaven. Let me explain...

[Enjoy Kyle Schwarber's "Huevos" or "Marbles" Celebration. The Phil's season long standard celebration is hilarious.]

In his 1990 book, “Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball,” George F. Will, the conservative columnist and long-suffering fan of the Chicago Cubs, sums up the sport’s cerebral nature:

Baseball is as much a mental contest as a physical one. The pace of action is relentless: There is barely enough time between pitches for all the thinking that is required, and that the best players do, in processing the changing information about the crucial variables.

And the game is far more relentless than ever before with the 15 second pitch clock now hurrying pitchers and batters. Baseball is the purists sport. It is the thinking man's style of sporting action, the cerebral nature of a perfectly designed game, allows for endless lines of inquiry and a never ending list of strategies. The decisions, the options, the choices, and variables of each and every play, keep the thinking fan thoroughly engaged, while providing space needed to take another dab. Just as cannabis provides enhanced perspective, it helps to see between the lines if you will, into the battles that play out before and during every pitch thrown.

JT with Big Balls.

In his landmark 1912 book "Pinching in a Pinch", Stacy Mathewson asserted, “To be a successful pitcher in the Big Leagues, a man must have the head and the arm.” Situational pitching is as important as pure skill. Take a Phillie favorite from the 2008 World Series team who happened to throw out the first pitch of the 2023 Wild Card clinching game: Jaime Moyer. In his forties and throwing nothing over 80 mph, he dominated and helped the Phillies secure the first major sports championship in my lifetime in 2008. “It is in a pinch that the pitcher shows whether or not he is a Big Leaguer,” Mathewson writes. “He must have something besides curves then. He needs a head, and he has to use it.” This is exactly how and why Moyer found success and why hash and baseball pair so perfectly. The sport is wrinkled with great intellectual stories.

[Jaime Moyer throwing 75mph heat-seaking missiles in 2008]

The never-ending list of variables, choices, and decisions that must be made throughout a ball game, enhanced by the cerebral effects of the cannabis plant, are what make for a match made in heaven. The more you understand the game the more that is happening before and during every play. A seemingly dull and mundane game can have a nearly endless list of "games inside the game" playing out in real-time. The more perceptive one is to the finer aspects of the game, the more intense and relentless the intellectual competition becomes. Hash is well-suited in elevating one's perception to the finer lines of strategy within a game and no other major sport can even begin to compare.

The Phil's "Wild Thing" Mitch Williams

They are analytical thinkers who must be able to execute and amend strategies on the fly in order to outsmart their opponents. This game of chess played out by the two managers is just the tip of the iceberg. It's these forays into the intellectual zone of the game that are so enhanced by the plant. And it's the plant that makes these moments of decision all the more weighty and lofted as the game goes on.

Major League's Wild Thing

Besides, what's there not to love about a mid-season game, a smoke followed by a nap, waking up at the perfect time to finish watching the game? From the mellow regular season, where winning two of each three game series helps to break the season down into context, the playoffs are a pressure cooker, hanging on the preparation and result of each and every pitch thrown. In either context the consumption of hash has a well formulated place, a necessity in my sports watching career. In stadium dabbing set-ups are the next big thing to come...

One only needs to look at Money Ball and saber-metrics to understand the never-ending lines of inquiry, strategy, and decision. M.L.B. shifted a decade or two back, bringing in some of the brightest mathematical minds to find winning strategies and solutions by analyzing data. No other sport compares to the immense fields of data baseball produces, allowing for mathematical influence and strategy in every play. Stick to the data or go with your gut?

Big-Ass baseBalls & Clean Hashish

I look forward to the day that I can either hit the dab bar in the stadium, or better yet, byoH. The day we can sit in the stadium and enjoy America's pastime while freely dabbing is the day I can't wait to witness. A far safer and much more appropriate offering than drinking poison. What a perfect match and two areas well suited in enhancing the other.

With another huge nod to the movie Major League, the Phillies "huevos" or "marbles" celebration was on full display in our rout of the Marlins. Yes, it stands for marbles, huevos, or just big balls. Let's go Phillies! Beat the Braves!

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