Crossroad
When I was a kid growing up on the farm, getting up a baseball game wasn’t easy, because for one, I was the only one at home who wanted to play, not to mention there was no other kid for about a mile or two around.
That didn’t stop me. I’d play an entire game by myself. Imagining being Juan Marichal pitching to Mickey Mantle, and then hitting the ball, chasing it down and tossing it into the air for yet another miraculous catch against an imaginary wall of a famous ballpark I had never seen. I was the batter, the pitcher, the infielder, the outfielder, the announcer, even the scorekeeper. I had a scorecard from an old White Sox game some pal of my Dad’s had gotten for me. I would fill out that card, erase it all, being very gentle for it had to last all summer if not the next one, too. And then I’d fire up and start again the next day.
I got to where I could copy the batting styles of certain hitters. Ernie Banks would wiggle his fingers as he held the bat whle awating the pitch. Wes Covington would droop the bat lazily to where the barrel would nearly reach the ground. Rocky Colavito, my favorite baseball name, would bring the bat back behind his shoulder blades to stretch his torso before stepping into the batter’s box and Orlando Cepeda would do a three-step shuffle before he’d taking his cut. They called him Cha Cha.
How could I know about these players and their mannerisms? There was only one game on TV a week. I listened to all the games I could on our massive Philco radio. It must have stood 40 inches tall and maybe 24 wide. Turn the gadget off and I’d still be able to listen for a few minutes before the tubes cooled. I once listened to a doubleheader between the Mets and the Giants. The second game ran 23 innings. I sat leaning against that radio and probably never moved. Between the months of April and October, I was a pretty easy kid.
Baseball helped make me a wiz at math. I was figuring out batting averages and earned-run averages and had memorized pitching records and batting averages. I knew all the lineups from all the teams. I had it bad.
I had written Dizzy Dean and his sidekick Pee Wee Reese. They were the announcers of the CBS Game of the Week. I’d surely written the note in crayon. I got a letter back with an 8x11 glossy with Ol Diz in his 10-gallon hat and Pee Wee, both posing in front of an enormous Falstaff beer logo.
I named my dog Falstaff. Seven years old and with a dog named Falstaff. I really did have it bad.
When we moved to town, our backyard abutted the left-field fence of the grade school baseball diamond. Every morning a few homers would land in our yard. There was only one ball, so the game came to a halt until the guys could get it back. I’d be there to throw it back to one of the upperclassmen, who would smile and say thanks. Just having a godlike 8th grader even notice a kid like me when I was new and didn’t know anybody. They could have been Joe DiMaggio. Priceless.
Better than that, one time they were a player short and asked me to join them. Not the others in my class, they wanted me! Just me. And then the next day and then the one after that. It felt like the big time.
On summer days a half dozen of us my age would get up a game, that’s if anyone had a ball. And the bat? Usually the handle was a mess of tape and tacks. When it got too hot or we got tired, we’d poke around the alleys for empty pop bottles. A bottle would fetch 2 cents and if you could find three then we’d be in business. The six of us would sit at a counter of a restuarant that didn’t mind having us and order one bottle of Mountain Dew. We’d each take a swig. Six kids at the counter. Six glasses of water and a 5-cent soda. Those were the days.
Fishing was my other passion. It was my Mom’s favorite thing to do, too, at least with me. The few times she’d find free to go fishing, I’d join her. We’d find a place where the fish were biting, lay out some newspaper to rest our poles on to help keep our hands and the reels clean. She’d bring out the transistor radio in case the Cubs game was on. We’d wait for a keeper to come by, being careful if we did catch one to not lose it putting it on a stringer. And if none of that happened, we’d just sit and be quiet. That was fine, too.
One late afternoon a few of the boys tracked me down at my fishing hole where I was with my mom. There was a game and they wanted me to come. I leaped at the chance and then just as suddenly I had a second thought.
“No, that’s OK. I want to stay here.”
My mom looked over and with a half-smile said, “You go on, they want you and you don’t want to disappoint them.”
Ugh! You mean I have to make a choice? Eleven-year-olds don’t get choices. Going with them meant I’d be disappointing her. Such a crossroad for a kid still struggling with being new in town. I went off. We had fun and I probably never thought any more about it that day. What I didn’t know is that I’d have a thousand more times like that with my friends, and that it would be one of the last times I’d have like that with my mom.
So, I look back on it now and wish I could have it back. Not having family until late in life, I was 55, and marrying into it at that, I’m kind of going through that with my grandkids now. Afterschool activities and friends fill their idle hours when it used to be me — and my wife, Marsha, of course.
And it’s not enough.
