Father and Sons...
...and baseball ⚾
It’s played in my consciousness for a while now that I need to do a story about my father and our early years. I’ve put it off more than once. I think my family deserves its due in the sometimes-stormy private lives we lived, but one must be careful: Several are no longer living. They deserve discretion and a degree of privacy. I guess it falls to me to complete the record as best I can and as honestly and as honorably as I can. We actually did play an important and too-rarely acknowledged role in the history of my hometown. It’s not something I want to do and I’m not entirely sure it’s something I can do, but I have to try.
____________________
One of my life’s happiest memories came on Christmas Eve in the mid 1950’s. I was about nine years old. It’s maybe thirty seconds long in my actual memory (Forgive me to my larger audience. I’m going to get into some local knowledge here about Mount Sterling, KY): I recall as if it were yesterday walking with my dad on the right side of the street, westward on West Main Street somewhere near Saint Patrick’s Church (presumably toward our car parked on Main or maybe on Sycamore Street (?). I lose track of this part).
I was on the inside, and he was walking to my left. It was a crisp, quiet, magical Christmas Eve night; dark and chilly with a mild sharp snow falling. The street was slightly glistening and nearly empty. My feet were barely touching the ground anyway, because we had just left Gay’s Sporting Goods (in the block where the Traditional Bank is today) and I was carrying a brand-new Wilson Nellie Fox baseball glove: top-of-the-line equipment for those days, as good as what they used in the big leagues. I would use it for years to come.
That was a great memory then and to this day it so remains. It’s a frozen fragment in my mind long after more recent and presumably more important memories have disappeared. It was also before the skies began to darken, in a child’s time when everything was innocent and wonderful.
It’s noteworthy how the really happy memories last the longest and burn the deepest. Could it be because there are so few of them in an ordinary life? 🙂
___________________
My dad and I had a complex relationship. It had elements of the cliche’ Norman Rockwell small-town parent/child interplay, but there were other parts to it as well. My dad had a ‘country’ background. He was raised early-on in an adjacent county at the fringe of the Appalachian foothills. Even being right next door, it was as different from our small town as night from day. He carried simple (not simplistic) ideas gleaned from that early experience over most of his life. In spite of my best efforts otherwise, I would carry things from there as well.
He could be nearly overbearingly kind and sentimental. He was easily wounded and quick to take offense. He never attended college. He maintained a house-painting and small contracting business. He was an expert (seriously) at automotive radiator and small engine repairs (I somehow picked-up a very small portion of his handyman skills). He was a classic, outgoing ‘live by your wits’ type who understood networking before there was a name for it. I suppose this is true of many people, but it seemed to me he was more popular out in the community than he was at home (“A prophet without honor…” etc.).
I was different. My brother (and later, my sister) and I were basically ‘city’ kids (at least to the extent that was possible in 1950’s Mount Sterling😉). We had a harder and more cynical edge that was completely foreign to my dad (more like my mom; another story). Even in those early days, I was a reader and thinker, and something of a dreamer. I know my father loved us all (we certainly loved him in our way), but I don’t think he understood any of us beyond a certain point. We had landed in places he could not go.
I had many wealthy young friends with prominent names and public status. It seemed nearly everyone I knew was the child of a banker, landowner, doctor, lawyer, or executive business owner. My father could at times seem narrow and parochial to me in that context. I dislike admitting this even today, but there were times I felt somehow beneath the neighborhood situation I had inherited (Sometimes I still do. Some things stay with you). I took from it a kind of outsider’s mentality that I’ve never entirely left behind.
__________________
If there was a unifying thread in those early family days, it was baseball. This won’t surprise anyone who’s read my previous work. I’ve scattered stories and photos around (all true!) that make this connection clear (I’ve also got a few old photos on Instagram and on my Facebook page that go some way to expand upon this theme). My dad was a past local baseball hero who had entertained major-league possibilities at one time.
In the 1950’s baseball was still the game. Football and basketball were making themselves felt, but they had yet to completely arrive. Baseball seemed to have been invented entirely for the purpose of encapsulating outdoor small-town community recreational life. We played every major sport in its season, but baseball was the first one to broadly and democratically matter. No young man’s childhood was complete without at least one trip three hours north (faster today) to watch the Cincinnati Reds at Crosley Field.
The World Series in October was a unique event in each year’s calendar. All unnecessary activity came to a stop. It was followed pitch-by-pitch on radio (and early mostly-b/w TV) all over the country by people on their jobs or at home or even in their cars. It’s hard today to imagine any single event that could draw as much focused attention. Like baseball itself, the series was a point of intense social cohesion in our community and in all communities. Baseball wasn’t called “the national pastime” for nothing.
___________________
Both my parents were an important part of baseball at the American Legion Park for as long as I can remember (before that, it was the old Fairgrounds Park east of town). Mom stocked and worked the concession stand (not alone; there were many other helpful contributors on a rotating basis). Dad tended the grounds, ‘dragged’ and lined the fields, installed the bases, and generally prepared for games.
When he was coaching, he would sometimes buy baseball equipment for our teammates and do other small good deeds. I can remember (no exaggeration) our 1948 Plymouth so full of ballplayers back-and-forth from the park that you could hardly close the doors. I’ve had several people over the years tell me what a good influence he had been to them in our younger years, and how much they appreciated it. He was regarded as a patient and very good teacher of the game.
Mount Sterling had its own independent amateur team in those days for adult men, and we also had a so-called ‘Pony League’ for players just past Little League age. Church league softball was a popular pastime. There was a lot happening in the baseball world at Legion Park, and my dad (and indirectly, me and my brother and my mom) were part of it all. Dad coached at different times at three separate levels.
If a little league game was scheduled, it was necessary to install the temporary outfield fence (it asked too much of 6th graders to hit 300-foot home runs). At first, this ‘fence’ was literally chicken-wire anchored at intervals with posts secured in paint-buckets weighted with concrete. Later, we graduated to a decent picket fence that rolled up like bales of hay when it was time to put it away.
I’m sure he had help on various occasions, but I can recall a fair number of times that he and I were the only two there while this was happening (later on, my younger brother helped out as well). At that time, I felt more at home at the ballpark than I did at home (I spent nearly as much time there). That was a context in which I genuinely looked-up to my father in a way I was not always able to otherwise do. Like me, he also seemed at home there in a way that wasn’t always true at our actual home. There are scattered bits and pieces of good memories there as well.
When I began to actually play organized baseball at about eight years of age, it was just childish good fun at first. I was just an ordinary kid stumbling awkwardly to learn new motor skills and the mechanics and tactics of the game.
__________________
I realized early-on that I was a good fielder. I had good instincts and range, and I could really catch the ball wherever I found it. I played mostly infield, but I had experience at all positions. Because I lacked a strong throwing-arm, second base became my natural position.
All was well for a year or so, but it began to become obvious to everyone (mostly to me) that I wasn’t a very good hitter. Little League pitching distance is only forty-six feet. Many overgrown pitchers at age twelve can throw hard and not always accurately (The fact is, your team is going to rise or fall at that level on the strength of your pitcher. He’s often your best overall athlete, and nothing else is going to matter nearly as much to a game’s outcome). I found it intimidating and hard to react.
No son of my baseball-hero father was going to be a poor hitter if it could be helped. I began to press and worry, and that just made everything worse. I lost all sense of the strike zone. The more nervous and indecisive I got, the worse my at-bats became. It was only a matter of time before the post-game home kitchen-table seminars started, and that was when the first grey clouds became visible on an otherwise-sunny horizon.
I spent more than a few nights sitting there nearly in tears when dad would lecture and critique my effort (not violently to be sure, but firmly and leaving no doubt in my mind that I was a disappointment to the family name). My mom didn’t like it. It was just about the first time I saw them in open disagreement about anything (It wouldn’t be the last by a longshot). Naturally, my apprehensions only grew, and I went from bad to worse. I think in looking back now that the anxiety issues and the persistent unease that have trailed me for much of my adult life started there. This was a part of our curated family life that the larger community never saw (There would be others later).
I gradually got a little better as I got older, but I was never an outstanding Little League hitter. I think I hit about .250 in my final championship year (I’m #19 in the photo above. My brother Rick is #31. My dad is to the left). year. I only got more comfortable when I got to Pony League and the pitcher moved back by eight feet. I batted .321 in my last year of organized baseball. That’s not great for a good Pony League hitter, but it ain’t bad.
But some wounds never entirely heal (‘Ball glove night’ was pretty far in the rearview mirror). 1962 was my last participation in baseball. Other than the occasional softball game at college or later, I never played again. We all went on to other things. The storm was almost overhead now, where it would remain in fits and starts for the next 35 years. We would still have our good moments in the lulls. That’s for another time, or maybe for never.
___________________
My parents bookended 1998 with their passing. My brother died in 2015. Rest in peace, and may we meet again soon in a better place.