Baseball, Part 1

 

Lots of FB friends are posting pix of their children playing baseball now, and I can't help but think about how much I used to love it—playing it, watching it, reading about it, talking about it, dreaming about it.

My dad loved the sport, too (though he really loved football--and watched it on his deathbed). And he was great at it. Threw right, batted left. He was very fast—had been a sprint champion in high school back in Oregon.

Later, when he was playing for a church-league fast-pitch softball team in Oklahoma, I remember seeing him pitch (I don't remember that anyone got a hit). His first time at bat he bunted and was on first so fast they didn't even try to make a play on him. Next time up: a towering home run.

He used to tell us baseball stories about his dad—about how they would get in apple fights in the orchard on their farm, about how he and his brothers knew they'd better conceal themselves well behind a tree because he was so fast and accurate that even if a tiniest portion of them would show behind the trunk ... POW! His dad’s fastapple would bruise them.

We couldn’t watch much baseball on TV in my youth: NBC had its Game of the Week on Saturday afternoons—and that was about it. So we saw a lot of the Dodgers and Yankees (the most popular teams)—and thus I became a Yankees fan. Back on his farm near Youngstown, though, my grandfather Lanterman (Mom’s grandfather) listened to every Indians game he could.

The first team I played on was the Amarillo Ticks, a slow-pitch softball team. During the year and a half or so that Dad was stationed (Korean War) at Amarillo Air Force Base we had a pretty quiet social life—mostly out at the base. But I joined the Ticks, our neighborhood team, and got my first uniform: a bright green T-shirt with a huge white tick covering my wee 8-year-old chest.

They put me in center field where I mostly watched the games. A grounder now and then. I got one fly ball hit my way the entire season. I stood there with my mitt in the air; the ball landed right in it; I dropped it.

At the plate I worked for a walk every time up. I was afraid to swing. It’s kind of weird, striking out in a slow-pitch softball game. I don’t remember if I got a single hit at all. I doubt it.

This was in the days before T-ball.

When we moved back to Enid, Oklahoma, I got on a baseball team sponsored by the local Kiwanis Club. (I’m next to the coach.)

I played shortstop and had a problem with grounders. So they moved me to catcher.

But I started hitting. Once I hit a triple between two outfielders, and as I rounded third, the coach was yelling, “Stop! Stop!” 

But I smelled a homer.

That smell turned quickly fetid when I saw, about halfway home, that the catcher was already holding the ball. Oops. I was easily out, and I broke out crying.

My grandfather Osborn would come to the games and pay me 5 cents for every base I got. That was great. Popsicles were 6 cents; Cokes were 5 in the machines. Snickers bars were 5 cents. Sometimes I went home rich, 25 cents in my pocket!

TO BE CONTINUED ...