Excerpts

A Home Run Life

Awarded Second place, August, 2004
Basil Stevens Memorial Writing Contest
East of Eden Writing Conference

In 1904, as baseball grew into a national obsession, my father slid into the world. When he died ninety years later, baseball paraphernalia littered every corner of the funeral parlor. Pennants tacked to the walls. Caps strewn on the tables next to prayer cards. An autographed baseball nestled in his casket. The morning we all said goodbye, we faced his casket as if looking to home base. The organist played mournful religious music, and then switched to the familiar melody, “Take Me Out To The Ballgame.” This wasn’t just another seventh inning stretch because emotions swelled and memories raced. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

Baseball is firmly entrenched in America’s culture-and the culture of my family as well. In the early 1920s, my father and siblings of every age and gender would run into the streets of a neighborhood too poor for horseless carriages. Someone would shout “Play Ball.” A manhole cover became home plate. The game would begin.

Big Leaguers sported nicknames like “Shoeless Joe Jackson” and “The Babe” so the family team quickly adopted snappy names too. “Big Pink” and “Little Pink” for their rosy cheeks and “Chippy,” for his chipped tooth. These monikers would stick with them for life. In my teens, I was astonished to discover my uncles had common names like Joseph and John.

Baseball colored my parents’ first encounter. In 1928, Dad wore a wiry ninety-eight pounds on a five foot six frame. Every week his team in the Polish National Alliance League played at a local park to packed bleachers. His position next to second base became his signature stance, arms dangling loose at his side, ready for fast action, eyes in constant motion scanning the field. Quick moves were his trademark. A newspaper dubbed him a major league prospect. One day, my mother, also ninety-eight pounds, wearing a diaphanous blue dress, sashayed through the park. Dad caught sight of her and nearly dropped the ball. From then on his favorite song was “Have You Ever Seen A Dream Walking?” They married in 1931 and began raising their own team. Nine or ten ball-and-strike guys piling in the family car with dusty uniforms and mud-covered cleats marked our summers as much as fresh corn on the cob and ice cream floats.

During the Great Depression, you were fortunate to have a job so, work took top priority. Baseball slipped to hobby status. But the sport prevailed. Dad carved out time after work to be a park team manager and a coach at a boy’s high school. Finally in 1963, a big-league opportunity came—the chance to be a scout for the Milwaukee Braves. While life kept him from being a player, baseball was in his bones. At age fifty-nine, he focused his talents on helping future generations play the game. After a few years with the Braves, he moved to Gene Autry’s new start-up team, the California Angels. He’d scout more than a hundred games a season and click the stopwatch, timing runs to first base even when no other scouts found players of interest. This was how he could share a lifetime of baseball experience.

He’d talk with parents, having assessed whether their son really did have promise. He’d tell them that getting an education was more important than getting into the minors or majors. If their son was really that good, the boy would be even better after college. I’m sure his advice resulted from having only a third grade education. He continued to scout for the Angels into his eighties, though he never signed anyone famous.

Our favorite family baseball hero is gone, but the ritual continues. It’s July again, the middle of the season. I smile knowing Dad’s on a diamond in heaven. He’s kicking the dry dirt, bat gripped in anticipation, his grey eyes sizing up the batter, confident he can steal third base—one more time.

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