Batter Up! First Inning
The Cottage, Broken Noses and Heroes
Anyone who knows me knows that I have a deep and abiding love of the game of baseball. Some of my fondest memories revolve around this fascinating game. My earliest memory, of course, involves getting my nose broken by a baseball bat when I was but 2 ½ years old. I have vivid memories surrounding that unfortunate incident — but they are mostly good memories.
I remember being with my Mom and Aunt Laulie at the little store in Jamestown, Pennsylvania, where we bought worms for fishing, and groceries and whatever else we needed back at the cottage. I can still smell that place, the wet earthiness of the little lean-to beside the store where they kept the worms, the alluring smell of the food inside, cheeses and fresh fruit and vegetables, corn on the cob and tomatoes, cantelopes and watermelons. I also remember the yearning I felt for that set of three, colorful Styrofoam balls in a mesh bag up on one of the shelves in one of the crowded aisles of that store.
I don’t recall being an especially needy kid, in terms of “things”, but those balls were an exception — I needed them! I don’t know if it was the fact that Aunt Laulie was there, or if I just caught mom in a weak moment, but she broke down and bought me those balls. I guess I did a good job conveying my need. My family was so poor such frivolity was a rare occurrence.
Upon return to the cottage — the place we vacationed most summers on Pymatuning Lake in Western Pennsylvania, just this side of the Ohio border — I excitedly took one of my new, colorful balls out of the mesh bag and ran out to where my older cousins and siblings were playing a game of baseball, right in front of the cottage. There was a gentle, sloping hill that ran down from the cottage to the railroad tracks, about 150 feet down the hill. Beyond the tracks were the woods; beyond the woods was the big, man-made lake you could see through breaks in the trees.
It’s a place my memory still wanders to, often, when I’m thinking about a happy place, or just feeling peaceful and calm, and loved. There was something very special about that place, which would be the scene of many wonderful summer vacations. My large family couldn’t afford going on vacation anywhere else, but Aunt Laulie and Uncle Roman always kindly invited us up to the cottage for a couple of weeks every summer. So, let me continue painting this first scene in my memory’s vault, which played out right in front of that beautiful cottage.
My brother Chris was getting ready to bat up in the game that was being played out there — he was my favorite older brother (I had 4 of them). Chris was my first hero. I ran up to him with my new, colorful ball and begged him to hit it all the way down by the railroad tracks. I knew Chris could do it. Chris could do anything, I thought. He was big and strong, smart and funny. He was my hero!
Chris was reluctantly happy to oblige his “fan” baby brother — I embarrassed him often in moments like this, which he patiently endured — and interrupted the game to accommodate my urgent request. I wanted to see the whole thing, up close and personal, so I stood right there behind him to watch.
I was standing a little too close to the action. Poor Chris didn’t realize just how close I was behind him as he tossed that ball high up into the air, wound that wooden baseball bat back to get a good, sweeping swing at it, then whipped that bat around with precision and a loud crack as the bat met the…(wait, a Styrofoam ball doesn’t make that kind of a cracking sound like a hard baseball does– but a nose does)! Yup, that bat found my nose as it swung towards that ball, meeting it full force, as the ball fell to the ground, but not before I did, crumpled into a heap of blood, shock and confusion.
This scene has played out so many times in my memory. I know it’s not one of those stories that I heard so many times as a kid that I think I remember it, when what I really remember is all of the stories I’d heard about it. I do have plenty of those, for in a family full of stories and storytellers, according to the master storyteller himself (my dad) there are apparently more stories about me than any of my six siblings. No, I know these are my memories because what happened to me next was never part of the stories my siblings, parents or cousins told, for years to come, about this incident.
What I remember next, after the loud crack, could only be my own memory. For there I was, floating high above the whole scene, feeling an incredible sense of peace and quiet, feeling free, just floating there above the trees and the cottage and the kids, as time stood still. All I felt was that peace and an all-enveloping love. Later in my young life, at age 24, I would experience a similar floating outside of my body sensation, after an overdose of cocaine. But that’s another story.
That sense of peace I felt was quickly shattered as I found myself back down on the ground, still quiet as the shock of what just happened kept me from feeling anything but confusion and a sense of waking out of a dream. I would later learn that this was what coming out of a concussion feels like. That was likely my first of about 6 or 7 concussions I’d experience growing up and as an adult. It’s a wonder my brain even still functions at this advanced stage of life (I’m now 66). I sometimes wonder if I don’t still have some after-effects to look forward to, as I age and face the prospects of dementia or alzheimers disease in the not-too distant future. I think this is part of what compels me to write these things down, while they are still accessible in my memory’s vault.
Next, everything happened fast and furious. There was blood everywhere, and as soon as I realized it was my blood, I freaked out and started screaming bloody murder. I was certain that I was dying, and I completely lost my mind. I was carried into the cottage, where my next vivid memory of the scene is of being laid out on one of the cedar/seater benches inside the cottage, with a towel full of ice being applied to my nose, and my older cousin Janey, a lovely blonde girl about 4 years older than me, holding my head in her lap and cooing, “Don’t cry, Pete. You’re a big boy. Big boys don’t cry.”
I remember choking back my tears then, and wanting to be a big boy for cousin Janey. This was a learned experience that I would apply many times throughout my childhood, choking back my tears so people would think I was a big boy. I have no memory of crying again until I was 18 years old, and learned that my other childhood hero, Roberto Clemente of the Pittsburgh Pirates, had perished as his plane fell to the sea off the coast of Puerto Rico. That one is somewhere around the 5th or 6th inning of this baseball series of stories to be told in 9 innings. This was the top of the first, and the score is Baseball Bat — 1, Pete’s Nose — 0.
