The first one was a major outlier, driving through reservation lands to get to a concert, see a guy baggy white t-shirt, looks gang related carrying no joke a “Lucille” baseball bat like from The Walking Dead (his bat was wrapped in barbed wire), and no, I don’t think he was on the way to a costume party. I was in my vehicle driving by with zero reason to stop or slow down.
The second one, more recently, was also an outlier. I’m at Point Defiance Park in Tacoma with my dog, walking along Owen Beach. There’s just sand, small rocks, and washed up trees, not much else in the direction I was going (i.e. no baseball fields or places where you could reasonably practice hitting a ball or even practice a swing on level ground). I’m sitting on a fallen tree away from the beach and people are walking by, mostly couples, some individuals, some with dogs. Coming back from the more secluded direction I see a fairly big guy, no shirt on, maybe late 40s, and he’s using an implement as a cane, that happens to be a wooden baseball bat.
He’s 30 feet in front of me, navigating over fallen trees when I see the bat. At this point he’s at the distance where he is either going to approach me or continue his line of movement. Click here for irregular lines of movement post.
When I see the bat I think, great (though my internal language is different). There’s no baseball field, it’s an adult size bat, and he doesn’t have a kid with him in a carrying a glove. Just shirtless man with a baseball bat, that doesn’t appear to need a walking stick, walking it like a cane, handle-side down.
Instant analysis is that if this guy comes towards me, I have to get in, nowhere to go but towards the threat the way I’m oriented, and I have some not-ideal circumstances (my small dog is with me on a flexible leash and my footwear is not fight-friendly).
He makes eye contact and says, “Hi.”
Me: I want to be polite, yet I do not want to draw him into a conversation and invite him to close distance. If he’s mentally unstable I do not want to converse with him or provoke him, so I project loudly and in a friendly tone and wave, “How ya doin?”
Him, “Doin’ good, but there’s always room for improvement.” He says it in an upbeat tone.
Me: “I hear ya.”
Conversation ends.
For an out of context outlier, how he responds and what he does next are extremely important, if he starts showing weird body language, agitated behavior, comes closer, starts pacing, even ranting about something else I need to be very concerned and making my plan of fight or escape if my verbal agility does not dissuade his approach.
He was friendly and polite and the conversation discontinued, he continued to walk another 60 feet and stops at a tree, sits back on it and starts doing essentially bench-dips on the tree.
Context update: OK good, he mentions improvement and starts doing dips. He appears to be out here to exercise and probably using the bat as an exercise tool. Now, that doesn’t mean that everything is OK.
The point I want to make is that when stuff doesn’t add up, don’t let one bit of information allow you to believe that everything is OK and let your guard down, thereby inviting opportunity for an attack, or for you be caught off-guard.
Though this guy did not say anything threatening, he was carrying a baseball bat in a place where people don’t carry baseball bats, which seemed off to me.
An awareness game you can play when people watching is, “what’s in his or her hands and why?” See if you can identify what someone is carrying and why, and pay particular attention when the why doesn’t make sense and the object could be used to do harm.
Train smart & stay safe,
Evan D.
Owner/Lead Coach
NOVA Self Defense
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