Last Little League Spring

             In the old black & white photo of my Little League team of my second-to-last Little League season, I am kneeling and holding a Rawlings baseball mitt.  I recall it well still and wish I still had it.  A “Reggie Jackson” autograph model written near the pocket and Fastback and Holdster printed on the back.  That season, my first in the Minors I played right field on occasion.  We had real baseball uniforms with deep-blue caps and dark-blue socks with white stripes.  I am kneeling beside school friends and some of those kids I still remember.  Our team, Colonial Bank finished in the middle of the pack.  I didn’t play every game and I never started a game.  What I recall of that season most clearly occurred one game when the coach, Mr. Blight, put me in right field around the third inning because Jimmy Wise, whom we called “Jimmy Wisecracker” behind his back, had thrown up just outside the dugout.  I recall the deep, dark green, lush grass of right field.  It seemed you could get lost out there, back near the woods and trees which overhung the back fence, and grew above the gully at the bottom of which slowly moved, almost imperceptibly the olive-green Cooper Creek, a foul tributary that snaked along on the edge of town. 

              I recall that one game, I long fly ball began to fly toward me after the crack of the bat which had sounded in the distance back by home plate, and in the sun above me in blue sky I soon realized that this hit sailing toward and far above me would sail right over my head.  I ran back and saw it land in the deep soft grass and roll back toward the fence and stop right at the foot of the fence five long strides ahead of me.  When I reached the ball I saw over the fence and down in the gully a wet white creature a rat or large opossum with white hair slicked back swimming slowly across the creek.  I nearly gasped within as it startled me.  Then I reached down for the baseball, turned, and threw it as close as I could get it toward second base.  Before I threw it I heard my team mates yelling, “Throw it in Yaller!”  That is about all I recall of my third Little League season, my penultimate endeavor toward baseball prowess.

              In the team black & white photo for my last Little League season, my little brother kneels beside me, and my classmate kneels beside me on the other side, both of us with our backs straight and our smiles broad, and my red cap tilted back from my forehead and above my eyebrows and eyeglasses.  In that photo I am not holding my expensive Rawlings mitt, partially out of embarrassment; a mediocre player such as I was did not deserve such a fine glove, a gift of my mother’s aged boyfriend of the year before. 

             For that last Little League spring season I don’t have that nice mitt on my left hand, but I am smiling proudly and kneeling beside a friend I had known for a few years in elementary school.  That spring of our 6th grade year when we both played for Wood & Chase Real Estate; real estate remains a big business, perhaps the only business in our old hometown.

             Even at that young age of 12 I liked to tell stories, and when I visited Walt at his new brick house, the Rectory for the Anglican Church, I would sometimes talk a lot to entertain, and I would become so enthused that I would say, “. . . member? . . . member? when I was asking “remember?”  And his mom and he would start to laugh and smile, and then I would realize my error and I couldn’t help smiling and laughing too. 

             But all this was a long time ago, and all these events took place a long time ago.  In that same team picture, I am wearing under my jersey a red-sleeved baseball shirt which I had purchased at a local sporting goods store, Grady’s.  The body of the shirt was off white and the sleeves from the shoulders down were red, just as red as the Phillies or Cardinals wore.  I am wearing the same shirt in one of my color class pictures in school.  So, I guess I was proud to be a Little Leaguer, even though I never made the Majors.

             I’ve stood around with other guys of roughly my era who are full-grown men now and dads too, with sons approaching Little League age, and heard them the say or lament even, “I never made the Majors.”

             During one practice that of that last Little League spring season we met as a team, as we usually did, at Fithian Field behind Fithian School.  During previous seasons of Little League of previous years, we usually practiced at Molly Pitcher Field, but this last season it was Fithian.  I do not really recall our Coach’s name that year even though I have that photo of him standing beside us.  I think it may have been Mr. Winesap.  I do remember one practice though that I will probably never forget, and I remember more of that season than of almost any other season.

             Early in the season I remained aware that I had never hit the ball well or consistently as a baseball player.  It seemed part of the problem lay in the fact that all the team bats seemed too big for me: too long and too heavy, so I convinced my mom to loan me the money to buy my own bat.  Zeke, a good friend from fifth grade on, whose dad coached him in the Majors, and who as a lefty played third base, recommended we visit Grady’s Sporting Goods in the next town where his father took him, and I think they even had an account there.  He said, “We can ride bikes to Grady’s after school.  Regular practices begin later this week.”

             I looked at the various bats in the baseball section of the store and picked one up and then another and felt them and checked the length and heft holding them out.  When no one stood near a swung a few bats a few times.  It seemed a needed a bat about 29 or 30 inches long; 28 seemed too short and 31 seemed too long; 29 seemed just about perfect.  I selected a Little League bat, a Mickey Mantle autograph model Louisville Slugger.  I swung the bat around a few times in the carpeted aisle at Grady’s Sporting Goods store; at 29 inches it seemed just right.  A tan cream-colored shellac covered it, and MICKEY MANTLE was stamped in all capital letters along the barrel; his name was not stamped in cursive script in imitation of his autograph that remains still so coveted today.  In fact, I knew almost nothing of Mickey Mantle as a professional baseball player; he was before my time.  I knew only that he was one of the old time players and that he must’ve been good to have his name on a bat.

             A few weeks later, after we had lost our first game and won our second, we practiced again at Fithian Field. That one afternoon Coach held practice in a different way; he decided to have a sort of practice game with various players playing the field while he acted as pitcher from the mound and our regularly catcher, Tanker Brougham caught the coach’s pitches behind the plate.  After about three of my team mates had batted and each one had gone out into the outfield or the infield to field, and then the coach called me in from second base and said, “Yaller, you’re up.”

             I pulled off my glove and held it in my right hand and trotted toward the backstop and the bench just behind it to pick up my Little League bat.  I pushed on a batting helmet which was a bit big for me even with my red wool baseball cap underneath it.  Then I dug my sneakers in the pale tan gravel that was both soft and dusty at my feet and dry and dusty like the gravel behind my school but quite different from the dark, smooth packed gravelly earth at Molly Pitcher Field.

             Then Coach started his easy wind up and threw a pitch.  I small canvas sack of baseballs rested to the side of the mound, but he usually expected the team, the players or fielders to toss any hit balls eventually back to him, of course after the players had made the appropriate throw to first or second or to the short stop acting as cut-off man for a long throw in from the outfield.  At the plate I felt relaxed with my new bat and I felt as relaxed as I did when I played wiffle ball in Zeke’s backyard.

             The Coach’s first pitch came in and I could see right away it would be a strike and the speed seemed not impossible to hit so I swung smooth and fast just as a Major Leaguer would and heard that sweet crack of wood bat against ball and saw my hit sailing high up far and straight well beyond second base and well beyond where our centerfielder, Chet Berrytree stood before turning around to his right with a perplexed look on his face as the ball sailed well over his head and landed in the thick grass about ten feet from where the woods around Whittier Pond began.

             “Good contact!” Coach Winesap said.  “Nice hit ‘Yaller’; let’s see you do that again!”

Chet scampered out to the ball and dug it out of the grass and tossed it back toward our shortstop who was standing in shallow centerfield.  Chet had the best arm on our team, but even he could not reach the infield with a throw from that far away.

             I felt surprised myself and pleased.  I could feel the slight bit of confidence growing within, and perhaps a slight grin on my face, from recognition.

             “OK, ‘Yaller’; nice hit!” Chet called in from center field.

             The Coach went into his same slow windup after the ball made it back to his glove and threw another perfect strike right toward home plate beside which I stood as a right- handed batter on the left side of the plate. 

             As the ball came right down the middle of the plate about waist high I swung again and heard the same sweet crack of the bat against the white cowhide ball with the red stitches and I soon saw the ball flying out over dead center field beyond Chet’s outstretched glove.  Chet seemed disgusted because he had just walked in to center field from the edge of the woods.

             “Way to go ‘Yaller’!”” Coach said.  “You’re really hitting today.”

             Chet retrieved the ball and threw it in toward the infield and it bounced right before second base.  Our shortstop, Rodney Mize tossed it back to Coach.

             “OK, one more, then you play the field.”

             Coach wound up as before and I swung even harder and hit a sharp line drive right over the second baseman’s mitt; the ball skipped over the short grass into the thicker sod and our right fielder fielded it on its third hop, turned, and hummed it back to Rodney.

             “OK, Yaller, you play second base.  Let someone else up.  Nice swings today.”

             Another teammate trotted in and after him, a few more players took swings at the plate including the right fielder who, after the coach yelled, “Run this one out!” hit the ball hard over our third baseman and ended up with a stand up double.  I had made my way into playing second base, a position I could handle with fewer towering fly balls and shorter throws.  I could handle most grounders but those hard ones which skipped over the stony gravel sometimes got past me.

             “OK boys,” Coach yelled.  “We’ll keep practice short today since we have a game on Saturday; everybody hustle in!” he called out.

             We all scampered in and huddled around Coach.  It seemed this was the best practice ever; not too long, not too much instruction, but a lot of batting practice with good pitching and a lot of fielding practice with Coach calling out and encouraging our throws to first or second base.  Coach was a good pitcher with his easy motion and perfect strikes.

             “I’ll have the starting lineup at the Minor League Field.  Be there 10 AM sharp!  OK boys?”

             We all nodded and smiled, and some walked over toward their bikes parked by the railroad ties surrounding the outside of the field and around the small trees with dry dusty mulch.  The coach’s son was picking up stray baseballs and stuffing them in coach’s bag as Coach was bending down stuffing bats in the long green canvas sack he picked up from the dusty earth beside the fence to the right of the backstop.  I saw that he reached down and picked up my new wood Mickey Mantle bat, and with a little hesitation in my voice and some dryness in my throat I spoke up:

             “Coach, that’s my bat.”

             “Oh, I didn’t realize; it looks just like the team bats.”

             He seemed incredulous, perhaps embarrassed to be corrected by a kid.  He turned toward me and after looking over straight toward the splintered dry bench near the backstop where he left his oblong roster notebook, and while patting his chest pocket of his shirt and digging in his side jacket pouch, he pulled out a fat Sharpie pen from his pocket, pulled off the cap, and scrawled in big plain printed letters on the barrel of my new bat: “Yaller.”

             I felt dismay and disappointment, but I couldn’t say anything, and it certainly wasn’t the end of the world.

             “Here you go; this way it won’t get mixed up with the team bats,” he said as he handed it to me.

             “Thanks.”

             Later I thought, “At least I got my bat back, and we had a game coming up the next morning.

             I sort of wished he’d not scrawled my name on my new bat.

II

 

             The next game that Saturday morning I rode my bike to the Little League Fields.  I parked my bike in the bike rack and walked down toward the Minor League Field.  As we stood gathered in front of the dugout in a crescent-moon shaped group, the Coach called out the starting lineup.  I listened to the names of my team mates; Marcus smacked his fist into his mitt and said “alright” when the Coach said, “Batting fourth and playing third base, Marcus.”

            I figured as usual I would not be a starter.

            The light was already bright in the sky and climbing higher, but we didn’t need to squint since it shone behind our right shoulders.

            Coach continued, “Batting fifth and playing second base Yaller Bill.”

            I felt a quiet surge of pride inside; I was starting at second base and batting fifth; that had never happened this season. It must have meant Coach had confidence in me to get a hit.

            My first at bat did not arrive until the second inning and I felt butterflies in my stomach.  I had very little experience batting in a real game, especially on this field.  It seemed all eyes were on me as a blurry flock of adults and siblings stood or sat near the small bleachers at the top of the steep slope above the Visitor’s dugout behind the third-base line.  But our dugout stood open toward the field and I could see people sitting high up in the stands.  But this side seemed better because they sat further away.

            After picking up my bat and swinging it in the on-deck circle I walked to the batter’s box; the gravel ground was a dull pale tan yellow and now the sun was bright almost behind and above and to the right of the pitcher’s cap.  We were playing Moore Plumbing, one of the powerhouses of the Minors, with their bookish coach, Mr. Hamblin Hough Moore III, who was known as “Old Ham hock.”  None of us knew what a ham hock was exactly, but everyone seemed to like the sound of it.  Marcus said he heard people in the South, after a child had died of typhoid fever put the kid’s ankle bone in a stew for good luck, and that’s what a ham hock was.  Marcus seemed to be an authority on everything, including Jim Bunning, Chris Short, Johnny Callison, Richie Allen and even the immortal Willie Mays, who Marcus said was “from Alabama which is in the South,” so we believed him.

            The real problem with the Minor League Field batter’s box was that it was concave from decades of early spring rain and being dug out from players digging in after the earth finally dried.  It seemed I was standing in a gravelly shallow ditch and my white and red Lou Brock sneakers with “lateral traction” didn’t seem to help as I slipped a bit.  In addition, the pitcher was standing atop a tall distant mound and with the sun nearly behind him he seemed a tall-for-a-12-year-old blur of lanky arms and legs as he wound up and hurled in the first pitch.

            I didn’t know who their pitcher was, but he seemed to have experience.  He may have been the Coach’s son, Hough the IV.  The one consolation seemed he wasn’t terribly tall, perhaps just about three or four inches taller than I was then, and he was skinny.

            I could hear Marcus yell from the dugout, “Get a hit Yaller!”

            Chet Berrytree chimed in, “Smash it Yaller!”

            The first pitch came in fast and close to the red cursive letters across the chest of my jersey and I heard the umpire bark out, “Stee – rike one!”

            Ugh, I was a bit crestfallen and anxious now; I tried to straighten up and exhale a bit, but I didn’t step out of the batter’s box; not even with one foot; I felt too nerve wracked, but I focused.  I thought to myself, I’ve got to swing; I’ve got to try and get a hit.  I can do it.

            But the anxiousness seemed positive.  I thought to myself, (I had gotten so few at bats as a Little Leaguer and now was my chance to get a hit; I thought about practice when I had made contact; I could do it again).  The next pitch came in wild and high and outside and I laid off it and exhaled.  The Ump, with his deep grey-blue chest protector before him barked from behind the black bars of his mask, “ball one.” 

            I could sense his breathing not that far from me and I looked over to my right and I saw the catcher loosening his arm to throw the ball back to the pitcher.

            “Come on Hough, over the plate; bring it down,” he called.

            I readied for the next pitch, relaxing my arms and swinging the bat and then getting in my batting stance.

            I looked back at the pitcher and saw his green-blue cap and saw him remove it and wipe his forearm and green sleeve across his forehead.  He did not seem as nervous as I usually felt in the batter’s box up at the plate in a game.  He kept wiping his right palm over his jersey with the cursive team name stitched across in green letters.  He wound up, with his right foot on the rubber, and a blur of grey-white sleeves and legs and the white ball was headed in, a straight fastball that wasn’t too fast and I swung hard just as I did at practice and made solid contact; the ball lined straight about waist high to the side of their second baseman and was dipping toward the edge of the gravel infield and the right-field grass where it hit and skipped into right field; I heard my team mates yell, “Run!” from off to the side, and I ran as fast as I could after dropping my bat by the plate.  I hit the bag running and slowed after it as I saw the right fielder moving in to field the ball; he made a weak loopy throw to the second baseman who stood on that bag.

            I was on first in the Minors in this game, in this Little League spring.  The sun shone bright above me overhead.  Mom was back home.  Dad was no place I knew.  But I had gotten a hit.  I was on base standing on that thick, dusty canvas bag; it was square and strapped down and the same hue as the gravel which surrounded it.  The grass was a dull green in the bright sun over center field.

            I heard my team mates yelling, “Way to go Yaller!”

            Our next batter, Davey swung at the first pitch and hit a towering pop up into short right field and their fielder ambled slowly in to catch it, but he missed it.  The ball landed close to the foul line and I ran full speed, bellied out slightly before reaching second and ran full on and reached third base standing up.

            “Al right Yaller; that’s heads up base running!” Coach called out.

            Now we were nearing the bottom of the order and our next batter grounded out to first; I couldn’t score.  Then our next batter struck out on a foul tip and two strikes.  Coach looked glum standing by the dugout and kicking gravel; he muttered his usual remark, “My aching knees; geez Louise; Goodnight Irene; here we go again.”  

            Nick Beerman strode into the batter’s box next; as a leadoff batter he stood nearly a head taller than Marcus’s little brother Davey.

            Nick took a few practice swings; the last one a ferocious cut that spoke serious business.

            Their pitcher, Hough seemed nervous; his first pitch came in at an even pace, no dip or curve on it and Nick swatted it over the shortstop’s outstretched glove; I scurried to home and stamped my sneaker on the grey-white rubber plate.

            “Safe at home! One nothing!” the Ump called out.

            We were winning; I had gotten on base and now scored.

            The game was young still and the sun shone above as their pitcher kicked the gravel dust atop the mound.

            That season we won as many games as we lost, but Moore Plumbing had a late season surge and finished at the top of our league.  I was in sixth grade and I knew when the season ended that summer my Little League springs had ended.  Our next batter hit a long fly ball that their outfielder caught near the left field foul line.  But we continued on and I got up two more times, and got on base on walks once, and grounded out to second my last at bat.  But I had gotten a hit earlier and had hit the ball hard, got on base and scored.  We won the game two to zero, and Coach said, at the end of the game:

            “Gather around boys, good game!  Free sno – cones for the team!  See you at practice, Tuesday evening at the practice field after school.  Now let’s cheer, ‘Good game Moore!’”

             We all yelled, “Good game!” before heading up the hill to get our Sno – cones.

             Later, back home that afternoon, with my older brother not home, I wandered into his room, and found his rectangular cigar box he kept his baseball cards in and shuffled through the piles, and found and looked at my favorite card:  “Fencebusters” it said at the top over a photo of a tall Willie McCovey standing beside and over Wille Mays.  Like them I knew what it was to have a big brother, and to hit the ball;  I had hit two home runs in a practice game, and started the next real game, and got a hit, and got on base, and scored.  School was nearly over, and summer was just about upon us.

             Later that summer, I did occasionally think about baseball, especially as I leafed through my older brother’s loose collection of baseball cards which he kept in an old cigar box in his bedroom.  “FENCEBUSTERS” with Willie McCovey and Willie Mays side by side like a big brother and little brother, was by far the best card.  I don’t know why my older brother was so lucky to own it.  But I figured luck seemed part of life and some people seemed luckier than others, or lucky in different ways.  Those two star power hitters of the San Francisco Giants were among the most admired, especially Mays, whom we sometimes speculated, especially if there was a baseball game on tv, that he would someday break Babe Ruth’s immortal home run record of 713 home runs.  But we had the whole summer before us with all its possibilities.

             My dad took us all to a real baseball game: the Phillies versus the San Francisco Giants, and to our surprise, Mays hit a home run, and McCovey, a screaming line drive, that the Phillies bespectacled infielder Cookie Rojas, and of my favorite players caught.  But the Phillies lost that game, and they were years past their near glory year that I had never known.

             A few years later, one early cold damp spring I rode my bike back to the old Little League fields and wandered down to the Minor League Field and even the T – Shirt Field.  A neighborhood guy, probably in his early 30’s was there with his dog.  He had this strange plastic holder, like a jai lai scooper, for picking up the tennis ball his dog had slobbered over; he then tossed or hurled the ball across the same right field where I had made that catch in T – Shirts.  I could see his tennis ball had a grey fuzz of saliva over its green cover.  The fields were littered with goose droppings, small green-brown cylinders of goose turd that I later walked around out to the far right-center field fence of the Minor League Field near where I had watched a grey- white opossum or rat swim across the Cooper Creek below.  But this cold grey slightly misty morning as I walked along the fence out toward center field I saw a flock of geese quietly honking and swimming up the river in a small, orderly flotilla of about nine geese with a distinct leader and behind him in loose clusters the other geese slowly swam, paddling their hidden webbed feet below the surface of the green-brown murky river causing me to remember the past in this old place.