“You can be a kid for as long as you want to when you play baseball.”
– Cal Ripken, Jr.
It’s spring, and someone somewhere – at this very moment – is saying “Play Ball” because throughout the country it is the beginning of baseball season. Right now, the San Francisco Giants are trying to find a relief pitcher and leadoff batter, and the season, although it is early, seems to be a re-run, During the second half of last season, the team fell apart as starting pitchers handed the ball over to one of several inadequate relief pitchers only to watch a lead vanish and frustrating walk-offs, hits…followed by the same old story written in plain English in the San Francisco Chronicle’s Sporting Green for all to see.
Despite this hopefully short-lived period of frustration, one of my favorite places to be is high in the stands at AT&T Park, directly behind home plate, with the sun shining and the entire baseball season spread out before me. Throw in a huge overpriced sausage and an oversized beer and I’m in Heaven.
In my early days in the rural South, I seldom lived in places near anything vaguely resembling a town or organized baseball. Although I knew of the Savannah Athletics, who played way out in the edge of nowhere, I never got to see them. I shared every boy’s dreams about the beautiful game, but none of my six high schools had a baseball team.
Most of my early life was spent on small farms in rural settings. In some open meadows, a few of us of similar ages would sometimes gather and get involved in attempts at hitting (with home made bats) and tossing around heavily taped and
battered baseballs.
Once, a high school teacher gathered a few of us to form an American Legion team and we played a few games against boys with real uniforms who KNEW how to steal and slide and complete double plays. My one grand memory of that team and that year was my high fly ball that hit the brand new aluminum fence in left field of the
new, Class D (Georgia State League) ballpark in Jesup, Georgia. That field and that team are long gone, but my sister lives just a few blocks from the spot.
Over the years, in pick up games and on my own, I became a pretty fair hitter, and in the 1950s, even managed to sneak myself onto Fort Hood, Texas’ best baseball team for a season. (More about that in a later column; it is a complex tale of deceit and revenge worthy of a novel at least.)
When Lee and I had our two sons and they were the appropriate ages, I turned into the typical baseball dad. Finding they liked baseball, I made sure they had decent gloves and bats, and I spent endless hours hitting grounders and fly balls and providing guidance from my limited store.
When my sons were Little League age, we were living in Tulsa and juggling the life of back to school, part time jobs, loving assistance from an angel of a Mother in Law, and the real struggles lots of young families were going through.
Although I still find it hard to believe, somehow we found funds for uniforms and I found time in my schedule of school, cat-naps and work for our weekly family hotdogs and hit-and-field practice out at the town park (Tulsa’s Mohawk Park). After Lee’s special hotdogs (stuffed with cheese and bacon-wrapped!), the boys were eager for their practice, and they wanted to keep going into the hot and humid evenings. They frequently wore me out!
Both sons made their teams, played well, and both remember those days with fondness. I have color photos of them proudly wearing their “Bombers” uniforms. In one, my older son is pushing his left shoulder toward the camera to show his “All Star” patch.
After I was recalled to active military duty and was assigned as an Instructor in Baltimore, my sons and I attended as many Oriole games as we could, sitting in the hot and humid mid-summer bleachers at old Memorial Stadium to watch Brooks Robinson and other Hall of Famers play the game as it should be played. The seats were cheap, the hot dogs and burgers were reasonably priced and the game of baseball itself was perfect!
And now we come to this latest chapter in our story. It reminds us that, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over” – Yogi Berra:
I had to send regrets a couple of weeks ago, after my Granddaughter invited me to Great grandson Connor John’s first game of the season in his Newman (CA) T-Ball League. I had recently been under the weather and was not quite ready for the excitement.
You can bet I will be in attendance soon when Connor and his gang take the field.
However, when my granddaughter forwarded Facebook photos of Connor in full (Glorious?) uniform – authentic league cap to league-approved shoes and glove, I was transported back to my own boyhood dreams, and to my sons’ and our deep love affair with Baseball!
Connor John looked splendid, although a bit sheepish in all the brand new stuff. He’s only four and a half years old after all!
Someone in the family video-taped Connor’s first at-bat, and sure enough he whacked the daylights out of the ball (delivered at zero miles per hour on a plastic pedestal) and even ran to first, after somebody yelled to remind him that he should!
All of this is, of course, a reminder that dads relive their dreams through those lovingly shared acts toss and catch – of working with our sons and daughters to practice those ancient arts of hitting, throwing and catching.
I did it, and I’ll bet a lot of you did also. Connor John’s team photos show the young father coaches who give their time and love to be sure the kids enjoyed every minute. They have been doing it for many years and there will always be new ones to step forward.
Back when I was teaching English and writing and attempting to separate prose from poetry in student minds and experiences (“Prose is Words in best order. Poetry is BEST words in BEST order”), I would try to get students to reflect deeper and longer by suggesting examples to show differences. Such as:
A Greyhound bus is Prose; A Pullman car is Poetry
Drums are Prose; Violins are Poetry
Videotape is Prose; Black and White movies are Poetry
Football is Prose; Baseball is Poetry
Nellie Fox And The Little Guys
Why does it have to be over the fence
or dunked, as they say in the game,
when all the little guys just this tall
have to bunt and steal or stretch a single –
and actually Shoot the ball into the net?
A double play I saw start at third
and travel around the horn
was little guy to little guy to big goof,
who stood like a stiff stalk of corn.
It’s over the fence or strike ‘em out,
but the game should be more of a buzz.
It goes on and on and on, for me,
because it – well just because.
– Charles Brady
