Chapter Four

 

BASEBALL

 

The New Glove, Country Fields, Small Successes

 

          Our high school athletic program included only two sports: basketball, which I discuss in Chapter Six, and baseball which was ever my favorite sport since old enough to be chastened for "throwing like a girl."

 

          There were a few tennis players around, and golfers were beyond the pale, wearing ridiculous pants and playing a game our elders referred to as "pasture pool."

 

          But, Baseball.  If a patch of snow melted and there came a day approaching reasonable temperatures we would don our gloves and start throwing a ball to one another.  We would persevere in using a ball until the seams were severed and the cowhide cover would fall off and then use it even further as the cord of its inner windings began to unravel and stream out behind it in the air.

 

          The acquisition of my first new glove was the most anticipated and enthralling event of my early years.  I had selected it from pictures in the Montgomery Ward catalog only after careful scrutiny of its characteristics and qualities and price compared to all the other gloves.  Mom and Dad mailed the order and the check for its delivery.  I waited by the mailbox daily and upon its arrival fondled it, displayed it to one and all with great pride while continually putting it to my nose for the intoxicating smell of the treated leather, and finally took it to bed where it lay within easy reach of my hand.  In my view it was in no way ready to be taken out into the field: a new glove would require patient and persistent rubbing with oil and in every idle moment and during every chore, repeatedly pounded with the other fist into the palm to create a pocket "just right."

 

          We were baseball crazy with compulsive throwing habits.  When I went to the pasture after the cows I would pick a tree at my estimate of pitching distance and, with leg thrust high as I imagined the big leaguers did it, heave a round stone at the center of the tree, hopefully waist high.  This was repeated, going and coming.  Errant cows stealing far into left field were similarly

summoned.

 

          We threw baseballs until the sun went down but continued at dusk because by throwing high there was still enough light in the sky to perceive the ball descending.  We had three-man baseball contests in the field behind our house with two defensive players dashing to fill defensive positions while the batter sped to the one base and back.  If we could round up seven or eight players we could conduct a real competition with more bases.

 

          We were just as ardent respecting the offensive skills of the game and, when not actually playing would carry a bat-sized stick around the farm, toss stones in the air and bat them away.

 

          My boyhood fantasies which previously dealt with heroics against hostile indians and blackguards, modulated to hitting baseballs into the bleachers during imagined games or making spectacular catches in left field.

 

          By the time I reached high school we were able to listen to the World Series on radio and view movies and magazine displays of the great players.  My interests turned to pitching when my older brother Ed showed me how to throw a curve breaking away from the batter.  By my junior year, I had mastered the screw ball, thrown off the first two fingers of the right hand and breaking in toward the batter, and this got me a regular pitching spot on the high school baseball team.

 

          The fields on which we played had few common features except that the bases were situated at the prescribed number of feet apart and the pitcher's rubber was at the correct distance.  (There was no "mound"; measurement was made from home plate and a plank was pinned to the ground at that point.)  The remaining qualities and features of the field depended upon which piece of pastureland a generous farmer might make available for our games.

 

          Our local field, down Cemetery Road, a half mile from school and diagonally across from the village cemetery, was a corner pasture, reasonably level except that far right field sloped down into a little valley bisected by a stream, such that when a long fly ball to right got past the fielder, both he and the ball were lost to sight as he pursued it down the hill.  Rarely was it lofted back in time to nab the runner, though anything hit anywhere near the first base line under those circumstances was sometimes an opportunity for heated questioning of a called-fair ball.

 

          Another unusual feature of the field was its surface: its other use was as a pasture for dairy cows and they left deposits of manure and deep depressions from their hoofprints.  We were permitted to visit the field before games with shovels and rakes and "dress" the field by removing manure and leveling the infield.  Frequently, outfield areas were overlooked and in a game ball-hawkers scanning the skies for a flyball would step into yesterday's leavings and make a sliding catch.

 

          To correct the often-muddy infield a generous road repair contractor brought in several dumptruck loads of sand and I recall that during the first home game of the season I -- a competent and veteran runner -- was tagged out at home plate on a ball safely hit to right field because the sand was so deep and soft that my feet never found traction in it.

 

          (I think, why of all games played in 1935, am I stuck with that memory?  Because, I suppose, in some of us failures and embarrassments are so much more memorable than successes.  There were other games in high school, I know, in which I did extremely well and have long forgotten.)

 

          One other high school baseball field merits mentioning.  It was in a small town above Hinesburg, which by now I'm sure has a consolidated school system with all modern facilities and equipment.  But in those days their field was an adapted cow pasture in a cleared area above town placed on a slope such that a batter ran uphill to first base, then on a moderately level surface to second, downhill to third, and with a favorable slope to home.  It took a solid blow by our best hitters to reach first on the uphill leg, so we tried to place our hits to center or left field where, if they eluded the fielder, the ball could run away from him down and away, perhaps even across the dirt road and into the adjoining field.

 

          In those days and places, the term "home field advantage" had real meaning.  Baseball fields and even basketball courts were laid out within the limitations of the local facilities.  We would get even in basketball.

 

          In retrospect, I've come to appreciate that fate was kind to me in placing me in a small community and school where I, though limited in size and talent, could compete as a varsity player in the sports I loved and be able to experience all the emotions of winning and losing in a circle of close companions.

 

          If I seem excessively gratified in such small successes, one should not wonder why I am so contented in the other aspects of my life.