Playing Baseball

Baseball was usually my sport of choice and from the time that I was three I spent my summers swinging a bat. Andy and I would often have debates on who could hit the ball the farthest; Dad or Mickey Mantle. We usually decided that Dad would probably out slug the famous Yankee Hall of Famer. Dad would take us down to Stoker school to hit us baseballs. The field was only a little larger than a regulation soccer field, so he did not have enough space to hit the balls far, but he did hit them high. In fact, my dad would hit the ball so high that I would always lose sight of it for a few seconds at its peak. One time he got too much ball and the ball soared over buildings and into Main Street, I heard some noises but he told me that it was a bad ball anyway and not to go and look for it. We got pretty good at spotting the balls coming out of the clouds and then catching them. I also learned how to pad my mitt to avoid broken fingers. Before I got good I would also wear a football helmet, shoulder pads and shin guards. All suited up I had no fear, except for when the oversized football helmet spun around and would leave me in the dark for a few scary moments. Once we caught the ball we would throw it toward Dad where Dallin or Alex would act like gophers, shag the balls and hand them back to Dad. I knew that I was well on my way to becoming a professional baseball player, I even had my own baseball card and championship trophy made in preparation for future events.
My dad of course could not always come with us. Most of the time, in fact all summer long, Andy and I and later our other two brothers would head down to Stoker on our own and spend the day playing our own made up versions of a baseball games that could be played with only a couple of people. We would load up the baskets on our bikes with bats, balls, bases, and all sorts of mitts and head down to our home field. One of my favorite games was when I would pretend to be a major league pitcher. My skills were up for the challenge but unfortunately I was too young to actually pitch for a major league club so I settled to pitch 9 full innings to imaginary batters with my older brother catching. Usually I would end up pitching a perfect game striking out all pretend batters who came to the plate. Yes, a few of the batters saved my records of no walks by conveniently calling time outs just before I threw many of the my wild pitches, but in the end I always threw a perfect game without making a single mistake. I was good, and I knew it.
After a year or so of playing all day everyday during the warm summer months Dad decided that the public park needed an upgrade. We spent the next few weeks pulling ivy off the left field fence that acted as a barrier for the people who lived in the apartments next door and relocating loads of sand from the nice city park to make a nice infield for our field. Our project was starting to look much more like a baseball field than a weed patch. I worked hard during those weeks to make that field usable and through our efforts we claimed the public field as our own. I was not very happy those times when some intruder had the audacity to trespass on our field.
One day Andy and I were pretending to have a playoff game. He was always the hitter and he would go through the team’s line up drop hitting me fly balls. I purposely would drop a lot of the balls that were hit by my favorite players, and with my skills I also made some pretty miraculous catches to save the day for our team. In all reality I was my own hero and in some ways I made more miraculous plays than the real player ever did.
“Who’s up?” I yelled to Andy.
“Wade Boggs,” he yelled back.
Wade Boggs was a good player, but he played for the Red Sox and we were not Red Sox fans. Wade hit a fly ball right for me, “Easy out, easy out,” I could hear the crowd cheering in my mind. I knew that all eyes and hopes of the crowd were on me, the self-appointed defensive hero of every game played in Yankee Stadium. I put up my glove and just missed it. The ball ricocheted off my glove and hit me right in the chin. I was hurt, but I was also brave.
I heard Andy yelling, “you can still throw him out!”
I gathered all of my strength, picked up the ball and threw it with all my might toward 1st base (the ball actually went the opposite direction into the road).
“OUT!” Andy screamed.
I was the only right fielder in history to have an arm strong enough to throw out a would be single. With my job done, I collapsed to the ground in obvious pain.
“It was the sun,” I kept whining over and over, “the sun made me drop it.”
“But it’s cloudy out here Bryan there is no sun,” Andy had run out to the outfield to see if I was okay.
“Yea, but it came out just long enough to make me miss that ball.” I said as I stood up ready to go again even though I had to play the rest of the game with the baseball’s thread marks imbedded on my chin.
“Next up, Don Mattingly,” Andy excitedly yelled out.
The bases were loaded and the Yankees were down by three runs. A grand slam here could mean a win for the Yankees. There was a full count, somehow Andy had managed to miss the ball twice and had thrown himself three balls. He hit the next toss and I was about to catch it, but decided to drop it on purpose just outside of the foul line.
“Foul ball!” I yelled.
After three more foul balls and a line drive that did not count because of a rowdy, imaginary fan, Don, finally hit a deep ball (it helped that Andy had scooted up to third base to hit the ball) that went flying over the fence. I ran around the fence to get the ball when I heard the distinct sound of glass breaking. I ran back around the fence even faster. In church teachers frequently give the example of some kid breaking a window with a ball. The honest child always goes, knocks on the door and offers to pay for the broken window. Obviously those teachers have never broken a window before. During the lessons I always gave the right answer, but the sound of broken glass triggered a signal in my brain that said, “RUN!”
I have never moved so fast in my life, Andy and I jumped on our bikes and took off down the street, we jumped off at a nearby church and hid behind a big tree.
“That was an awesome hit,” Andy complimented himself.
“Who cares, we are dead. How are we ever going to pay for a window, not to mention get our ball back?” I hopelessly asked.
We debated for a few minutes and then decided that after a whole 10 minutes, the coast was sure to be clear. That was a nice ball that we had lost, and we had to get it back. Behind the park where we played there was a big apartment complex. We looked through the bushes next to the window where the ball had gone and all we could see was a hole in the window.
“Andy look,” I said pointing at the window.
“Wow, a hole,” Andy replied with his mouth gaping open. “Do you think a rock broke it?
“What’s wrong with you Andy? You broke it!”
Just then I heard a voice behind us say, “Looking for this boys?”
I turned to see a huge man just taller than me in a tight white tank top, glasses, unibrow and a patchy beard that was obviously his pride and joy. He held a burned grilled cheese sandwich and a can of Fresca in one hand and in the other was our ball. He held his prize new ball, taunting us and obviously not planning on giving it back. The kind man, showing off his huge vocabulary of four letter words, then explained to us in a long compound sentence, how we would pay for his window.
We were doomed and we knew it. There was no way that we could tell my dad, he would not be happy. We went straight to Mom and told her what had happened. My mom made us return to the man’s house to apologize and pay him off. When he answered the door the man was not as loud as he had been before, it probably had to do with the fact that my mom’s five foot two figure dwarfed his own five foot frame. My mom made arrangements to pay the man once the window came in and then Andy and I agreed to do the dishes for the rest of our mortal lives.
We ended up breaking another couple of windows over the course our careers, but nothing could ever stop us from playing baseball together. My legacy still lives on at that field, out of respect for my brothers and I the city tore out the baseball diamond a few years back and the field has been retired in our honor.