Top of the Third — the Church of Baseball
Let Us Pray (Play)
Baseball is almost like a religion for me. Truly, baseball has saved me more than once in my life. When many other things seemed to go missing in my life, baseball was always there.
My favorite older brother went off to college when I was 10. I missed him terribly, especially that first year or two that he was gone. He had really been more like a father to me than my own father, who I pretty much couldn’t stand at the time. One of the first things I would do whenever Chris came home for a holiday or school break was get him to play catch with me out in the back alley. Dad never had time for such things — or maybe I just never asked him. I don’t remember. Chris always seemed to find the time for me, and I really wanted to play catch with him. It meant more to me than he’ll probably ever know.
There’s something elemental about playing catch that I always loved. I used to play catch with my little sister Mary when we moved to Connecticut — I don’t know if she enjoyed it as much as I did, but somehow, it was one of those little things that kept me connected to something that I loved. It felt good to share that with her, as we were all kind of strangers in a strange land there, our first foray away from the Pittsburgh we had known all our lives.
As a young adult, I lost my best friend when we were both 24. That was a really tough loss for me. Reed had Hodgkins Disease, and caught pneumonia, which killed him suddenly. I’d connected with Reed on a level that I had never connected with anyone else at that point in my life.
I’d met Reed at the end of my senior year in high school — not at school, but through a youth group called the Pilgrim Fellowship (PF). I had just moved with my family to Connecticut from Pittsburgh in March of my senior year of high school. A girl who had taken an immediate interest in me in our new town (and the feeling was mutual) had turned me on to the PF.
They had weekend-long retreats during Spring, Fall and Winter. At the first one I went on, I remember having a long conversation with Reed about my love for Roberto Clemente and baseball, while we played a game of catch, somewhere in a forest in Massachusetts. Reed quickly picked up on how much it meant to me, and subsequently opened up to me about things that meant a lot to him. In many ways, he became my first real friend. I was not accustomed to friendships that involved “opening up” to each other like that. It simply wasn’t something that guys did, at least not where I came from. I felt like Reed knew me as well, or better, than anyone else I knew.
Reed became my anchor during 4 turbulent years of service in the U.S. Navy, my tie to sanity. I could talk to him about just about anything, and I felt like he did the same with me. Losing him so suddenly at 24 devastated me. At the time, I had been sober for a couple of years, having stopped drinking alcohol 2 months after I got out of the Navy at age 22. What I didn’t fully realize then, but would soon learn, was that my problem went much deeper than alcohol. I would learn a little later that I actually suffered from addiction, which meant that I could not afford to take anything that was mind or mood altering into my system, as it would feed my addiction. I didn’t have to simply not pick up — that was a start, but I had to change everything about how I lived, how I thought. Not easy to do at age 24, I can assure you — at any age, for that matter!
I’d gone into a deep depression when I first stopped drinking and doing all drugs when I got out of the Navy. I’d eventually wound up in the V.A. Hospital in Philadelphia, where they treated my depression with lithium. That had helped, but I came out of a 2 month stay there, not just with a prescription for lithium, but also with a newly formed habit of smoking marijuana. A roommate in there had some kick-ass weed, and we’d discovered that the combination of lithium with the weed hit a sweet spot. My pot use was limited to one weekend a month at first. I only smoked it when I went up to visit my friends in Connecticut.
It was also around this time that my love affair with baseball resumed. It was 1978 and the local baseball team, the Phillies, were really good, one of the best teams in baseball. I’d kind of lost interest in the game after my hero, Roberto Clemente, had died tragically on New Years’ Day, 1973, when his plane crashed into the sea off the coast of Puerto Rico while flying relief supplies to earthquake ravaged Nicaragua. The game had simply lost its spark for me. Those Phillies teams helped revive it. Having a local team do well will do that.
I moved into an apartment with a guy from work who also happened to be a real pot-head — my drug usage naturally escalated. I still didn’t think I had a problem with it because I was doing well at work. I got promoted quickly, but had also blossomed into a workaholic. The pot didn’t seem to dampen my enthusiasm for doing a good job. It did cause some wacky thoughts and behavior that would later come back to haunt me, and eventually get me fired. But I didn’t see any of that at the time. I eventually moved into my own apartment, but my increased use of pot continued, while I began to supplement it with opium. That quickly became a daily habit.
I talked in the Top of the Second about the board game Strat-o-Matic baseball that my friends Pete & Jake Kribel turned me onto when I was 9. I had really loved playing that game with those guys, but I’d never gotten the game for myself. Our friendship had soured when Jake had had to fire me from working in their mother’s bakery.
I had gotten the job when I used to go there to help Pete and Jake finish their work so they could come home and play Strat-O-Matic baseball with me. Jake had talked their Mom into hiring me, since I was always there working, anyway. It went well for a while — I would work there a few hours on a weekday night for something like 50 c an hour, 3 or 4 nights a week, which supplemented my primary income delivering the morning newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. More money for going to games at Forbes Field!
At Easter time, one of our jobs was to take the chocolate bunnies out of their molds and line them up on the display pans. When a bunny broke, we could either throw it away, or eat it. Being a stone-cold chocoholic as a kid, I ate most of the breakage of my bunnies. It would be a shame to see perfectly good chocolate go to waste, after all! One night I wound up getting violently sick from all the chocolate I’d consumed, and threw up all over the back of the bakery. It was bad. Jake decided I wasn’t mature enough for the job and immediately fired me. I was 11 — holding down two jobs — but I wasn’t mature enough!
I took my firing pretty hard. I stopped hanging around Pete and Jake altogether. I was really more ashamed and embarrassed about getting sick than anything. But that was it, for me and Strat-O-Matic Baseball — until that long, lonely winter after my friend Reed had died. I was working long hours at this printing firm where I had risen from driving a forklift to managing the warehouse. I think I had found the game at a toy store while picking up a present for my friend Janet’s little girl.
The game brought back so many fond memories of playing it with the Kribels as a kid. I became obsessed with it, making up my own teams from the many different players, and playing it solitaire for hours on end after working long hours at the warehouse. It really helped me to get through that long, lonely winter, grieving the loss of my one true friend in the world.
One night, while playing Strat-O-Matic after a long day at the warehouse, having already smoked a couple of joints, all alone in my apartment, the depths of my loneliness really got to me. I cried out, “Oh, God I’m alone!” Just then, I spotted a 12 Step recovery book sitting there on my kitchen counter — I had gone to meetings when I stopped drinking, though I hadn’t been to many meetings since Reed died, about 6 months at that point. I’d been given that book at a meeting, but had never even tried reading it. I wasn’t much of a reader in those days.
I started reading that big book, and the whole idea of a spiritual recovery from this condition that I was afflicted with, alcoholism, opened up to me while reading, despite that I was high as a kite. I went back to a meeting, where I heard about another fellowship that dealt with addiction, not just alcoholism. I went to that other program, and heard the word that I might be an addict, which immediately made sense to me. They said that an addict could not take any mind- or mood-altering substances, including alcohol and pot. I embarked on my 42-year journey of recovery. After one relapse on pot 3 weeks later, I’ve been “clean” ever since.
I like to think that Strat-O-Matic helped me to get to the point where I was ready to hear that message of recovery. It gave me something to do until I was ready for that. I’ve returned to it many times since then. At various points along my recovery journey, I’ve gone back to the games, and have always found solace there.
When the rest of my world was a little chaotic, the reassurance of the simple game of baseball, with its vast world of statistics and the beauty of the language of numbers that it spoke to me, has pulled me through some difficult times.
I hadn’t played “Strat” at all from around 1994 until the year before last, a few weeks into our two year-long quarantine due to the pandemic. Then, I rediscovered this game I have always loved. I picked up some favorite seasons, when teams I loved either won the World Series, and or just had a great season. I’ve replayed some of those seasons, in their entirety, for those old-time favorite teams. Roberto Clemente has come back to life in my little study while playing that game. His greatness as a ballplayer always shines through in those games.
It has helped a lot to get me through this prolonged period of being isolated in the house. I probably played close to two thousand games over these past two years. For me, it never gets old. It always feels like running into an old friend.
Speaking of old friends — I’d learned a few years ago, from an old neighborhood friend, Mark Burgunder, how my old friend Pete had taken his own life at the age of 50. While I have never been one to judge another who commits suicide — twice during my earlier life struggles surrounding addiction, I’d come close to it, myself — I remember thinking, “he must have forgotten the healing powers of Strat-O-Matic Baseball.” It truly is a game one can lose themselves in, and forget about whatever insanity is swirling around out there, be it a pandemic or an insurrection to overthrow the government. It’s gotten me through so much.
Sometimes I feel like Pete’s spirit is there with me, as I play. He and Jake were, after all, the ones who first turned me onto it. Maybe my game-playing helps to heal his spirit, too? I have no idea — I just know that his spirit is welcome in my games, any time.
I’m sure there will be more on “Strat” in subsequent innings. But that’s it for the top of the third!
