Growing Up with Baseball
From sandlot to league play
When I was growing up in the 1950’s, baseball was a part of almost every boy’s life. My friends and I would self-organize and play sandlot games that ended only when it was too dark to continue playing. Most of the time we didn’t even keep score. The goal was just to play.
Sandlot basics
Choosing sides for a sandlot game is a ritual in which a boy learns his place in a male hierarchy. The alpha males — everyone knows who they are — are automatically the leaders of the teams, and they alternate picking their team members in order of perceived ability. You may resent being among the last picked, but still you were on a team and that’s what mattered.
Nobody taught us the rules of the game. It was all practical learning-by-doing. We absorbed the rules by playing with kids who already knew them. And nobody taught us basic principles of play, such as throwing the ball in from the outfield to your cutoff man and not throwing the ball to a player behind a base runner (these basic principles were hilariously depicted in the movie A League of their Own.)
My first major league game
Many of us had never been to a major league game. I was in perhaps the fifth or sixth grade before I went to my first one, a New York Giants game at the old Polo Grounds. I forget who the other team was and who won. What I do remember is that I was almost knocked unconscious.
I was facing away from home plate (bad idea!) while one of the teams was taking pre-game batting practice. A guy selling beer in the stands suddenly rushed over and pushed my head down, bumping it sharply against the concrete wall behind me. That hurt, but probably less than being hit in the head by the line drive that had been speeding toward me.
TV sports then and now
TV coverage of sports in general was almost non-existent. Instead, we would listen to play-by-play radio commentaries by legendary sportscasters like Mel Allen, Red Barber, and Vin Scully. The few games available on TV were broadcast in black-and-white. There was no instant replay or any of the other features we now expect, such as depiction of the batter’s strike zone and the trajectories of pitches, all of course in full-color HD.
TV coverage of baseball didn’t really take off until the 1960s, when I was already in college. The instant replay, by then standard, was used constantly during games. During the famous 1961 Mantle-Maris competition to surpass Babe Ruth’s home run record, broadcasters would show replays of the latest Mantle or Maris home run whenever they felt the current game was boring (i.e., when nobody was hitting home runs).
Little League
In the 1950’s a boy’s first exposure to organized sports was typically little league baseball (or “small fry” as it was known then). Teams were sponsored by local businesses, in my case a local dairy. For our “uniform” we got a cap and a T-shirt imprinted with the dairy’s name. Today’s kids get real uniforms and all the necessary equipment (paid for by their parents).
We didn’t play on the “Field of Dreams”
My league played on a field covered with lush grass that always seemed to be in need of mowing. There were well-worn paths from base to base, but a ground ball in the infield could disappear into the grass. Infielders had to guess where and when the ball would reappear. Right field was short, bordered by marshy land filled with cat tails and other sedges.
A strong left-handed hitter could easily get a home run by hitting the ball into the swamp. By contrast, left field was very long and not bounded by a fence or other obstacle. A strong right-handed hitter could easily get a home run by hitting a ball over the head of the left fielder; once the ball hit the ground it would just keep rolling away from the left fielder until he ran it down.
Batting 001
I somehow ended up as a pitcher in little league. I was a terrible hitter, so bad in fact that if little league had had the designated hitter rule, I would never have made a plate appearance. I remember getting exactly one hit in the entire season. Fortunately the batters after me moved me around the bases to score.
A brief moment of glory
My crowning achievement in little league was the 4–0 shutout I pitched. Inning after inning the opposing team’s batters just kept striking out or grounding out. In the ninth inning with two outs I was facing what I hoped would be my last batter. He hit a high popup that was coming down on my third baseman, the youngest and weakest player on the team. My heart was in my mouth as I watched the ball descend. Miraculously the kid made a perfect catch. I still remember that moment even though it was 70 years ago.
My catcher and I teamed up a while later for a pickup game between our summer camp and another one in the next town over. I threw a 9–0 shutout in that game, but the thrill wasn’t the same.
He, him, his
I’ve used masculine pronouns exclusively so far because baseball then was a boy’s game. But this was about to change. My final memory of little league is of events that happened off the field. A younger girl I knew, a gifted athlete, wanted to play little league baseball. Her father approved and let her join a team.
Her mother was outraged and promptly divorced her father. The girl was later a winning contestant on a TV show that featured gymnastic competition, and she went on to become a successful professional golfer, winning the LPGA Championship in 1976. Since that time softball has become a popular sport for women. At the college level, young women play a very disciplined game and exhibit impressive individual skills.
My public school team
I was encouraged by my two pitching successes to try out for my junior high school’s baseball team. Unfortunately, I made the team.
My town had yet to enjoy the post-WWII affluence that was still a few years away. As a result many town facilities were in marginal condition. The infields of the baseball fields where we played our games were just expanses of sandy soil studded with small stones. If a ground ball was hit toward you, you had to worry that it was going to hit a stone and jump up and smack you in the face. Lightning reflexes and excellent hand-eye coordination were the only things that could save you.
Reality sets in
My school team played teams from all around the county. These games were my first exposure to strong opposing players. For the first time I faced pitchers with fastballs and breaking balls. Because my batting skills hadn’t improved since little league, all I could do was watch the pitches go by and hope not to get hit by a fastball. I was a pushover for any pitcher who had a breaking ball. I’d see the ball coming straight at me and would step back to avoid being hit. I would then watch helplessly as the ball curved back over the plate for a strike. I never learned how to throw a curveball myself.
The one season I played was miserable. I got on base once, on a walk, and was promptly picked off when I was momentarily distracted while taking a small lead toward second base. I hated my pitching assignments and spent most of my time on the bench. So why did I want to be on the team in the first place? I think it was because of my naïve, unthinking acceptance of the male stereotype of that time: boys are supposed to play sports and chase girls, so I played sports and chased girls.
High school
By the time I reached high school I recognized that I didn’t take sports as seriously as the guys I had played with on the junior high school team. I was becoming more interested in music and intellectual pursuits. My circle of friends changed as a result. Guys I had known from as far back as kindergarten now just hung out with other athletes while I acquired a new set of friends who shared my current interests. I never played a sport in high school.
The next generation
My little story could have ended here. It doesn’t because my wife and I produced a new baseball fan, our daughter.
I rarely watched a baseball game on TV unless the Red Sox were in contention for a playoff berth. But my daughter, who was 9 or 10 at that time, somehow learned about baseball on her own and would discuss games, players, scores, great (or bad) plays, and league standings. We attended several games at Fenway Park right after Roger Clemens left the team. I think the Sox lost all of them, but I do remember the hardest hit ball I’d ever seen. Frank “The Big Hurt” Thomas hit a thundering line drive that impacted the “Green Monster” (the left field wall at Fenway) with what sounded like a dynamite explosion.
After my daughter had finished college and graduate school she met and married a Mets fan. A Yankees fan would of course have been out of the question as a life partner.
Postscript
For some men, sports — especially in high school — was a highlight of their lives (in some sad cases, the highlight). For me, baseball and the other sports I played were simply a passing phase as my grownup self gradually emerged. But I still take a certain satisfaction in seeing that little league baseball is a major summer activity in both the town where I grew up in New Jersey and in the Massachusetts town where I live now. Both towns provide several well-manicured baseball diamonds to accommodate all the teams. The dads (and, in some cases, moms) who coach the teams take their roles very seriously, and the kids obviously enjoy themselves. I can’t help but think that this an important, positive thing for our country.
