Picking Flowers in the Outfield

1971

It was a great year in baseball.  Satchel Paige was elected into the Hall of Fame.  Hank Aaron hit his 600^th home run.  Vida Blue and Ferguson Jenkins won the Cy Young Award.  Ernie Banks plays his final season.  Roberto Clemente homered as the Pittsburgh Pirates won Game Seven of the World Series over the Baltimore Orioles.  And of course, Uncle Rusty began his inadequate baseball career.

Hope sprang eternal as I rode my Schwinn Stingray over to the baseball field on Rowe Avenue.  It wasn’t really a field.  It was a backstop put up at the edge of a vacant lot.  My teammates arrived, ready to start spring training.  They included Scott Burns, Eric Cummins, Lee Patterson and Roger Perkins.  These guys would go on to great athletic careers; some becoming local legends.  I was a little outmatched. 

My Dad was a great ball player in his day.  He even got a tryout with the Cleveland Indians when he was a senior in high school.  Too bad his athletic genes didn’t pass to his male progeny.  There I was, a fat kid, uncoordinated and unmotivated.  Things were going to get ugly.

We played for the Panthers.  Our sponsor was San Juan Springs.  Their moto: “We’ll keep your wagon from saggin’”.  Eric and Darrell’s Dads were our coaches.  They were great guys, a couple of the best coaches I ever had. 

After a few practices and assessing our skills I was made the back up right fielder.  Right field, is statistically the position that receives the least action.  It is where they put kids that have the greatest chance of hurting themselves.  Back up right fielder meant that I could hurt myself coming out of the dugout.

Back in the 70s, there weren’t ball tees or pitching machines.  We faced some great eight year old fire ballers.  Since I had no skills, the best I could hope for was to draw a walk.  I was also willing to take one for the team and lean into an inside pitch.  My Louisville Slugger was as pristine at the end of the season as it was at the beginning.

I was terrified to take a swing.  I had a perfect .000 batting average for two seasons.  Finally,  in the beginning of my third season, a pitcher threw the ball at my head, I ducked and the ball accidentally hit my bat and rolled into the field of play.  I’d hit the ball!  It was a freak of nature, but I’d made contact.

That changed things.  I was never great, but did become a mediocre batter.

As bad as my batting skills were, my fielding was worse.  Right field was a fun place to spend the afternoon.  There were dandelions to pick and ant hills to kick.  I had a good view of the games in the adjacent fields.   It was my own little wonderland.

I had my Rawling’s fielders mitt.  It was incredibly stiff from lack of use.  An important feature on any little league mitt was major leaguer’s signature branded on the palm.  Roger had a Johnny Bench catcher’s mitt.  The other players had names like Brooks Robinson,  Billy Williams or Joe Torre emblazoned on their leather.  I had Carlton Molesworth from the Washington Senators.

Once or twice a game, the ball would actually be hit toward me.  It was show time.

There would be the familiar crack of the bat and the ball would come soaring, lazily toward my post.  Hopefully, I wasn’t distracted while staging a grasshopper race.  I would estimate the ball’s trajectory , calculate crosswinds and begin sprinting (waddling) toward the ball.  I’d reach my mitt towards the heavens, flinch, turn my head and close my eyes and prepare to make the catch.  Then I would hear the familiar thump of the ball landing ten feet behind me.  I’d run to the ball, pick it up and because I couldn’t throw very far, run towards the infield.  I would finally throw the ball and sometimes it would land within twenty feet my intended target.

My bad fielding skills also account for my fear of reptiles.  At one practice, the ball was hit over my head.  It rolled out of the field and disappeared over a small mound.  I ran to retrieve it.  I ran over the mound and saw the ball nestled next to a twenty foot long reticulated python. 

Okay.  It was a three foot bull snake.  But it looked like a jungle snake to me.

 

I stopped dead in my tracks, spun a 180 and didn’t stop running until I was safely behind the backstop.  What happened to the ball?  I didn’t care and still don’t care.  All I know is I narrowly escaped certain death.

Two things ended my baseball career.  The first was when pitchers started throwing curves.  My mediocre batting declined to miserable. 

The second event that ended my career was when my sister made All Star shortstop in softball.  I wasn’t embarrassed.  I was relieved.  Dad finally had an athlete in the family.  I was able to quietly retire from the sport that I loved, but didn’t love me.