BASEBALL
MEMORIES
Growing up in Staples, I became a nut for baseball at an
early age. I loved all kinds of sports, but baseball fit my mentality and my
talents better than all of the rest. I say that because I was a small kid, so
sports with physical contact left me lying on the ground most of the time. But
baseball wasn’t a contact sport, and when the ball was pitched, it was just me and
my glove against the hitter, or me and my bat against the fielder. It was a
challenge that got my blood boiling, and I played my heart out.
In the summer, we would gather at the field in Pine Grove
Park and pick sides. If we didn’t have enough players, we would play workup—where
you batted until you made an out, and then you went into the field and rotated
through the positions. Everybody pitched, everybody caught and everybody
fielded. But many days we had more than enough kids, and we would choose sides,
and the game was on. No umpires and no spectators, we played for the love of
the game. We drank water from an old steel pump in the park—always filling the
can when we were done in case the next user had to prime it—and when we were
done with the water we drank, and didn’t sweat out, we left it in the bushes
behind third base. The game filled our imaginations, too, and sometimes, if you
closed your eyes for a moment, you could hear the murmur of the nonexistent
crowd in the old wooden bleachers.
On many days, we would play the day away and then jump on
our bikes for the long ride home, the old mitt hanging from the handlebars with
the ball safely tucked inside and the bat tied to the frame of our bike. You
went home hungry, sunburnt, and knowing you were going to get it from mom, for
the hole you tore in your pants sliding into second base, but it was worth it.
The game meant that much to you.
I’m an old man now, and those days are distant memories, but
I still remember the names of most of the kids. We never fought or tried to
hurt each other; we were brothers of the game. In nineteen fifty-six I broke my
leg playing out there, and for the rest of that summer I was on crutches. I
felt like a wounded veteran, standing on the sidelines, cheering on my friends.
My buddy would give me a ride on his bike, because I couldn’t ride mine, but I
had to be there, it meant that much to me. On Sundays, we went out to watch the
Railroaders, and I still remember Rev. Ray Ewing walking back and forth in
front of the bleachers, selling ice cold pop out of an old galvanized bucket,
for a dime. If you turned in a foul ball, you would get a freebie.
Baseball, as we knew it then, taught me a lot about life. It
taught me about winning and losing, and getting hurt, and bouncing back. And it
taught me the meaning of the word “teamwork.” The most amazing thing about all
of this was—we did it ourselves. No coaches, no spectators and no uniforms. No
incentive but the love of the game, and the respect of our friends. None of us
ever went on to bigger and better baseball. Oh, some of us played baseball in high
school, and some of us played for the Railroaders, but our best memories were
made out on that old chopped-up field, out at Pine Grove Park.
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