Maybe Baseball Isnt Child Abuse ----------------------------------------- When I lived in the Bronx from 1946 to 1952, I lived on East 205th Street. That was just a few miles from Yankee Stadium, and only a few more miles from the Polo Grounds in upper Manhattan where the Giants played before they moved to San Francisco in 1958. Despite all this nearby major league activity, I was no sports fan. I didnt give a damn about baseball, and couldnt understand why others did. When other kids asked who my favorite player was, I’d quickly answer “Mickey Mantle.” It was an easy answer, because Mick and I shared initials, and no kid in the school yard would challenge my choice. Fortunately, none of them asked me for his batting statistics. My mother’s parents, who lived near us in the Bronx, were big baseball fans and wanted to convert me. They surprised me with tickets to a double-header, and it was a double-dose of torture. It was the longest day of my life. I spent hour after interminable hour staring at white spots on a green field, listening to old men belch from their beers, and asking my grandparents, “can we go home yet?” I loved Gramma Del and Grampy Jay, but this was child abuse. In later years, I didnt get to like ballgames much more. In mandatory games during gym class, my favorite position was to be “left-out.” In college, I went through a strange metamorphosis. There was an intramural softball program, and a bunch of hippies and assorted misfits thought it might be fun to form a team to play stoned, with absolutely no intention of winning. Wed get to smoke some weed, enjoy the great outdoors and get free T-shirts. It sounded like a good plan. What I didnt plan on was that I turned out to be a “power hitter,” a “home run king” just like Mickey Mantle. I found no joy in running around the bases or catching balls hit by the opposing teams -- but I loved whacking those balls as far as I could. My teammates thought I was a traitor to the cause. The team fell apart, and it was many years before I picked up a bat or saw another ball game. Around 1995, my nephew and nieces nagged me to take them to a Yankees game, at the site of my long-ago — but never forgotten — abuse. I really didn’t want to go, but I like the kids, so I agreed. I packed a radio with a headset, and plenty of reading material, and glumly resolved to pass the hours as pleasantly as possible. I tuned my radio to WCBS, allegedly an all-news station, and was disappointed and shocked to hear a play-by-boring-play description of the game in front of me. For some unknown reason, I didnt immediately select another station, and soon, for the first time in my life, I understood what baseball was all about. In baseball, it always seemed to me that the hitters were the heroes. People like Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and Mantle (and even me) hit the home runs that drove up the scores that won the games and the pennants. But what I learned from listening to the radio that afternoon was that it was the CATCHERS and PITCHERS, not the hitters, who were really in control. Balls, not bats, made the big difference. Throwing was more important than hitting; and it was the sneaky, stealthy, silent catchers, squatting in the dirt behind home plate, who signaled secret instructions to the pitchers who caused hero hitters to strike out. Because of those good pitchers, even really good hitters seldom got a good hit. And when they did, the balls were usually caught by really good fielders, and the hitters did not score home runs. I actually enjoyed baseball that day. If someone had properly explained baseball to me in 1950, my life might have been very different. I might have liked baseball enough to become a home run king for the New York Yankees. As Marlon Brando said in “On the Waterfront” in 1954 — shortly after I left the Bronx — “I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody.” from amazon/dp/B004UOH71C/
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 14:51:52 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015