BOY TIME BASEBALL
We had our own, individual brand of baseball as kids.
It cannot be referred to as “sandlot” play, because we lived in limestone country and our playing field was a grassy plot with some stone outcroppings. At home plate, and at the base locations, it soon became hard, packed clay with just a hint of a path leading from one to the other.
It was a wonderful past-time, and I dare say that is why, to this day, baseball remains my favorite sport over all others to be seen on TV. Saturday was our main school-time day depending the weather. Summer extended play until dusk.
We played under a host of ”Ground Rules” formulated to meet the limitations of the area. Anyone could play largely because it was hard to get enough the make up two teams. Girls were included on occasion when we were short of players.
We had some sort of ritual for choosing up sides, as I remember. The two oldest, and usually the loudest, boys tossed a bat high into the air and other other caught it well down on the heavy end as possible. He grasped it firmly and the other chooser put is hand above the original and the one who held the bat the longest, even by the very tips of his fingers won the first choice. He won the right to make his selection from the rooster of players around them. There was also a special step to this selection process at times, but I can't remember why. The winner of the toss had to hold the bat by whatever grip he ended up with - maybe even the tips of his fingers – and the opposition man got to kick the bat three times. If he dislodged it, he became the winner. If not, the fist winner got two “first” choices. We called this disaster addition “Double or Nothing” and it was a “I double dare you!” item.
There was an amazing amount of team spirit, too, once the sides had been chosen. The biggest and best players where chosen first and my brother and I were always down in the middle somewhere. At times we took big league team names and the umpire, if we had one at all, was a community kid who didn't play and be successful managers. The town's main street backed our Home Plate which made it all very interesting when the town's only trolley car went buzzing past. People on the street car turned to look at us and we turned to look at them. On our right a solid brick wall of a three storied building behind which rested the local Chevrolet car dealership. No windows. Out in right field, however, we had an automobile paint shop which did have windows... three of them with small panes. Mr. Whitt, who ran the shop, must have been a boy himself at one time, because he eventually bought a wooden case of window panes, the small size, packed in a sawdust. when we broke a pane - which happened now an then - whoever broke it had to go fix it. Center field was wide open to the next block and the apartment house in which we lived was on our left far enough away to be out of the fly ball zone as a rule.
Consider the amount of proper baseball equipment we did not have, it is amazing how well we go along. Most of us had gloves of some sort. What we then called “painter's caps “ subbed for heavier billed baseball caps, and he most honored among us actually possessed a baseball. The were finely crafted things in that day, made in Haiti, far better, of course, that those we get today from Costa Rica. At least we considered them to be wonderful creations. The twined, cord body was sturdy and, once the cover had been shattered and blown to bit by a mighty wallop, the remainder could be covered with black insulation tape kept for months until a new ball came as a Birthday or Christmas gift. There was built-in, automatic feature. When a fly ball developed a black tail and appeared as a comet streaming through the sky, we knew it was time to re-tape the ball.
None of us every made the big leagues, of course, even the minors, for that matter, but we did have lots of good, outdoor and inexpensive fun. I re-live some of it today when I watch the Atlanta “Braves” play on TV.I remember losing interest when we had recurrent “Subway Series”. This year we had a “Shakey Side Series” but our “Sandlot Series” play has meant a lot to us over the years and shadows of it reappear frequently.
A.L.M. November 23, 2002 805wds]
