HUMOR: Baseball Seasons
Drew - like the Advance - loves baseball. If you don't, read this anyway. All the way to the end. You'll be glad you did.
By Drew Gallagher
HUMORIST
My parents had a sign in their basement that read: “We Interrupt this Marriage For the Baseball Season.” My parents had diverse interests, but baseball was always a keystone in their lives and, as a consequence, very important in mine. At the dawning of yet another baseball season, I find myself missing my parents more in these moments.
My life in baseball is ongoing as I coach my seventh season at Chancellor High School, and I still think of my father every time I rake the pitcher’s mound. When my father coached my teams growing up, we would always arrive at the field early with rakes from the metal shed in our backyard to prepare the field for that day’s game. I hated raking the fields at the time, but I realize now there are indelible images of me and my father, together in that moment. On a baseball field.
I could “retire” from baseball tomorrow and still have enough stories to bore my wife and children for the rest of our baseball-less off-seasons. Had Gloucester been addressing me at the opening of Richard III he would have said, “now is the winter of our discontent … just like the last winter and the one before that but at least the Yankees didn’t win the World Series.”
Some of my baseball stories deserve more than a blurb in a humor column, and maybe one day they will be fleshed out to truly capture my greatness within the game that I love which seemed to peak around age 8-10. I believe if you asked Mrs. Hafetz or Mrs. Archer, they would both corroborate the greatness that was once me. Although both would probably need reminders, preferably visual and contextual, to even remember who I was.
Mrs. Hafetz experienced my greatness a year or two before Mrs. Archer. And, as far as I know, those two women never knew one another or met for coffee or to dedicate monuments to 8-10 year-old me. However, I like to believe they both probably speak of my exploits on the diamond in hushed tones even if they don’t remember me.
Mrs. Hafetz had the privilege of coaching me in a youth co-ed softball league at the Antietam rec center in Pennsylvania where the boys’ age was capped at 10 but the girls could play until they were 12. It was fast-pitch softball, and the girls pitched and dominated. I believe that I first fell in love watching a girl named Marcia pitch for my team, the Antietam Angels. I never knew Marcia’s last name (and she could have spelled it Marsha for all I know), and I’m pretty certain that I never had the courage to speak to her even though I was her shortstop, but I would watch her on the mound, snapping her bubblegum with each strikeout of boys who were older than I was, and thought her pitching was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
It was at one of those long-ago summer games playing defense behind Marcia when I turned an unassisted triple play that I can vividly recall to this very day. Had there been ESPN, or video cameras, in 1978 that play would have assuredly been on their Top-10 plays of the day. Marcia had atypically allowed runners on first and second with no outs when the batter hit a line drive. When the ball was hit, both runners ran with the knowledge that no mere mortal could have caught such a bullet, but I lunged to my left and caught the ball in stride. My momentum carried me toward second base where I tagged the bag to record the second out, and as the runner from first slowly realized that I had caught the ball it was too late to retreat to first base and avoid my cat-like quickness. Instead, I tagged her on the small of her back and she began crying. After the impossibility of my unassisted triple play, I ran to our bench where I sat down and awaited my turn to hit and possibly a marriage proposal from Marcia.
Mrs. Hafetz, by her own admission, did not know much about baseball and was only coaching because her son Danny played on the team. Mrs. Hafetz came up behind me on the bench (we did not have dugouts and had to lug the benches back to the rec center after every game) and asked me what had just happened. I told her I caught the ball and then got the other two runners out. She was confused though and said we did not have any outs when the ball was hit so I explained to her in meticulous detail how I had executed the triple play. She shrugged and went back to reading out the next hitters to bat.
It was becoming obvious to me that marriage to Marcia would have to wait beyond the summer since I was destined for greater things than parks and rec softball, and Marcia still did not know my name even though I had saved her ERA for the season. The siren call of Exeter Little League was getting louder, and I, as Pennside softball’s Odysseus, had to go.
My Little League team was sponsored by Boscov’s which was a Berks County-based department store which remains a staple in the community to this very day. Malls may close in Berks County, but Boscov’s remains. I like to believe that my efforts on behalf of the family-owned retailer, now with 51 locations, contributed to their ongoing success.
In Little League, I was once again installed at shortstop, but there was no Marcia on the mound and most of our pitchers would have choked or balked if they tried to chew gum and pitch at the same time. Unlike my unassisted triple play, I remember absolutely nothing of my first season in Little League except for the fact that during one game my mother was sitting next to Mrs. Archer (her son John was the catcher), and she said that the best chance Boscov’s had of getting outs was putting a runner on first and then having the batter hit it to me at shortstop because I would usually turn a double play.
Mrs. Archer’s logic was certainly flawed, but it did not curtail her ability to become the den leader of my cub scout troop a few years later where I am certain my inability to master the tasks required to get my Bobcat badge might have soured her overall opinion of my ability to tie a knot in life. But if we ever needed to turn a double play instead of build a Pinewood derby car I was her guy.
As baseball begins again, with the promise of hope and of a Red Sox pennant, I find am increasingly nostalgic for the ballfields I once knew and the glorious game I still love.
(I Take Requests: We have a four-year starting catcher at Chancellor whose name is Shawn Dillard. I call him Shawn ‘Drillard’ because of how hard he hits a baseball. Shawn is one of those players that keeps me coming back to rake the pitcher’s mound and put on baseball pants which should not be allowed on anyone old enough to live in a Del Webb community. In Chancellor’s first two games this season, Shawn hit home runs in both games, but after his tape-measure blast in our second game he collapsed at home plate. He had dislocated his kneecap and torn ligaments in his right knee with the force of his swing and could not even limp around the bases to finish his home run trot. His best friend Brendan Pifer ran the bases for his fallen teammate to give us a 1-0 lead. The reality is that Shawn may not play another game in his high school career. He asked me earlier this season if one day I would write about him in my column. This is that day.)
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