Yay! Major league baseball is back!
Opening day conjures up a lot of mixed feelings in me, relief mostly because it signals that spring is here and the NBA season is about a quarter of the way over. Other feelings opening day evokes in me are happiness, because my team the Boston Red Sox are in first place on opening day and they haven't blown a lead or a series to the hated Yankess yet, and sadness, because the one thing I first wanted to be when I was a kid was to be a professional baseball player, but that dream died young.
From the time I first was able to understand and follow the game I loved baseball. And growing up for the first ten years of my life in Detroit before the expansion of cable TV spoiled me because I got to see so many Detroit Tiger games broadcast on free TV. During baseball season I'd get to see at least three or four games a week and I got to hear the great George Kell and Ernie Harwell call all of them. I'd beg my mom to let me stay up late in the summer when my siblings got packed off to Aunt Rageholic and Uncle Adultery's farm so I could watch the games. And she usually gave in to my whining as long as I promised never to tell my brothers and sisters that I got to stay up past 9 0'clock.
I not only loved watching those games, I loved playing the game as well. We lived in the projects, Smith Homes Housing Project to be exact, and there were always kids, both black and white, who were ready to get a game going on a moment's notice. Sometimes we'd play in Stoppel Park, which was a few blocks from us, and sometimes we'd play across the street in the parking lot of St. Monica's Catholic Church, the priests didn't mind us playing baseball in the parking lot but they abhorred us playing football in lawn beside their rectory. Those were some great times just playing baseball as long as we had light.
After my mother died and we all got packed off to Aunt Rageholic and Uncle Adultery's farm for good my baseball watching and playing days were curtailed sharply. Watching baseball, or any sport for that matter, on TV was deemed a waste of time so I had to sneak around and get my fix in. Since we lived so far out of town there were no other kids who I could get into a game with because my cousins did not like to play baseball and neither did my siblings. I got to play some during gym class and I lived for those times. I was of the age to play little league during this time but it was unthinkable that I'd be allowed to do such a thing because the house had to be cleaned every day and my aunt always found other chores for us, and by us I mean mostly me and my siblings because she saw to it that the kids she gave birth to got to do pretty much whatever they wanted while my brothers and sister and I had to clean up after everybody.
When we moved south in 1974 I had pretty much given up on playing and watching baseball but thankfully I made some friends who loved baseball as much as I did, the Martin brothers, Darrell and Ernie. We became fast friends for awhile due to our love of baseball. We'd play for hours when I could get away from the housecleaning and other chores. We'd collect baseball cards and trade them, cut out pictures of baseball players and argue about who was best, and sometimes we'd just sit and watch games at their little house up in Martin Holler.
In 1977 my high school decided to let a college student who was doing her student teaching field work at Jonesville High form a jay vee baseball team and because Cousin Psycho wanted to try out, I got to do so as well. I convinced Darrell and Ernie to try out as well but both of them quit after the first day, they had been the butt of so many jokes because their family was one of the poorest in the county they developed an inferiority complex. I stuck it out however and by some miracle I made the team. I was on cloud nine when I saw I had made the team. I'll never forget the feeling of pride I had when they gave me my jersey and I saw my last name on the back of it. I felt like I was a hall of famer.
But it turns out I never got to play an inning. The county we lived in was so small there were no other jay vee teams so we had to look outside the county to find teams to play. We found one in near Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee and so we all jumped in a couple of vans and drove off to play our first game. As luck would have it a freak storm blew through Lee County as we drove to LMU and we were forced to turn back and go home. They managed to get a make up date for that game but it was in early June after school had let out and I was not allowed to go into town because the house needed cleaning or something.
I tried out for the varsity team the next two years in a row but it was painfully obvious that my love for the game well out paced my ability to play it. In other words, I stunk. I got beaned several times during warm up tosses and I could not hit for shit, so they wisely did not allow me to play. So my dreams of playing pro baseball died on the baseball field at Jonesville High School.
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But my ball playing days did not die that day. In the late 1980's I moved to Roanoke, VA and I joined a local church, not because I believed in any of that Jesus and the holy spirit mumbo jumbo but because I wanted to meet people and make some friends. When I found out they fielded a team in the church softball league, I was definitely in. They welcomed me with open arms on the team and I was allowed to be a relief pitcher, they'd usually put me in after we were ahead the game was well out of reach. But one night I got shelled like a howitzer and I gave up like ten runs. Somehow we climbed back in it and we tied it when I came to bat. There was a man on third and we already had two outs, inside I was shaking like a leaf from the pressure, after all I had let the other team back in it with my sorry ass ptiching, but I tried not to show it. I was not what you would call a power hitter and the other team knew it. They had their third baseman play way in on me and they decided to throw me strikes. I took two pitches, one of which was a beautiful strike, and then I watched the ball leave the pitchers hand on the third pitch. I had already made my mind to swing at it no matter where it went.
It turns out it came at me belt high so I swung as hard as I could. The ball sailed over the third basemsn's head and it landed about 15 feet in front of the left fielder who was playing too far back. As soon as I saw our guy score I jumped up and down like Carlton Fisk in game 6 of the 1975 World Series. I ran to first and was heading to second when they told me to stop because my hit had won the game for us and put us in the playoffs. I was the happiest guy in the world right then and I felt like all my years of loving baseball had finally paid off.
These days I usually fall asleep watching games, except during the playoffs and the World Series, so I usually just watch Baseball Toinght on ESPN but boy oh boy, I still love baseball.
I don't do plays anymore and I quit following the New York theatre scene when I quit reading the Sunday New York Times every week. But I still watch the Tony award even though I don't know jack shit about the straight plays or most of the new musicals. The reason I watch them is because I feel like it's an act of rebellion against the culture-less assholes I grew up with and around.
