Baseball, Part 5

Our son began his baseball career in our wee front yard in Kent, Ohio—114 Forest Dr.—where we were living in the mid-1970s while Joyce and I were finishing our graduate studies at Kent State. He was not yet of school age.

As soon as I thought he was able, I began tossing a little ball to him; he quickly learned to catch and toss it back. A little later, I got him a small glove, and he would stand in front of me near the front porch, and, sitting there, I would toss an actual baseball to him. Again, he learned quickly.

He called the game BAH-bah.

But what really surprised me was how well he could see a ball I’d tossed above his head—and catch it. And how easily he would pick up the little grounders I’d roll and bounce to him.

Later, we would play little Wiffle ball games in the front yard. Joyce would pitch—or I would—and Steve would just nail the ball and run around in an imaginary diamond of bases. We would run and retrieve the  ball and try to catch him before he got home, giggling all the way.

Joyce would always let him score; I, sometimes clueless as a father (as I still am), would occasionally tag him out. And he would cry. That always made me feel good ... not.

After these games I was always amazed how well he could hit. (He hit the ball so hard that sometimes I couldn’t get out of the way—and it hurt!)

“This kid is going to make some coach very happy,” I said to Joyce.

And he did—and, one year, I was one of those coaches.

He began his team career in Lake Forest, Illinois, where Joyce and I were teaching in 1978-79. (We had both finished our Ph.D.s—and I thought I wanted to be a college professor; I didn't and returned to secondary school teaching as quickly as I could.)

Lake Forest had T-ball teams for beginners. I'd never played that version of the game, but Joyce and I signed him up, got a T for home practice, and off he went.

From the beginning he was an excellent fielder, always one of the best on his team, no matter what level. But he had my "speed," not my father's. So second base became his position. He sometimes played in the outfield but saw so little action out there that he discovered that he loved watching the airplanes flying in and out of O'Hare—not all that far away.

We had always let him use whichever hand or foot seemed sensible, so he was (and is) a mixture: threw right, kicked left, batted left.

He had a little period of "adjustment" swinging at a ball on a T. Once he struck out—and cried (reminding me of little Danny back in Oklahoma). As a wee one he never did like making an out—or an error. (Who does?) 

He played very well, all the way through the little league games in Hudson (where we moved after Lake Forest), and Joyce and I saw pretty much all of them. Great fielding, solid hitting (from the left side he loved liners to left-center).

One year—when I was on sabbatical and not directing plays in the spring—I became an assistant coach on his team: the first-base coach. I had lots of fun, and Steve did very well.

When he got to high school (Western Reserve Academy), he continued his fine play, but I didn’t get to see many of his games. I was still directing plays in Aurora, and we always did a spring show—as Steve well knew. He had come to Harmon Middle School with me, grades 6-8, and was in seven plays I directed those years. (I got to teach him in 8th grade, but that’s a post for another day.)

His career essentially ended in high school. He did not play in college—I don’t know if he even tried out. But he and I would play catch—or hit flies to each other. Always great fun.

But a great thrill for both Joyce and me was this: After graduating from university, he came back to Ohio to get a master’s in journalism at Kent State. And no sooner did he finish it (early 90s) than he got a gig at the Akron Beacon-Journal, the paper Joyce had grown up with in Akron.

One day, Joyce and I were driving over to Hiram on some back roads, and we saw that a local farmer in nearby Mantua had set up a kind of Field of Dreams in one of his cornfields: The outfield ended in a cornfield.

Steve convinced his editor to let him write a story about it, and he actually got himself into a game out there. And ran around that Field of Dreams with the same boundless glee he’d shown as a toddler who’d just nailed a Wiffle ball.

TO BE CONTINUED ...