One of my favorite baseball moments occurred on October 18, 1972. The Oakland A’s, who had not yet attained the status and respectability that was surely coming and would cause them to begin again to refer to themselves as the “Athletics”, were up two games to none on Cincinnati in the World Series. It’s hard for many folks to imagine now, I am sure, but long before today’s ubiquitous tattoos and body piercings, the Oaklanders were considered eccentric and somewhat rebellious just because they allowed, even encouraged, facial hair. Consequently, to aspiring hippies such as myself, they were the favorite compared to Cincinnati, the clean shaven middle American organization that had not yet become the Big Red Machine but were very good. The Reds were not really representative of the Spiro Agnew element in America, at least not the players, but we used to be really polarized around certain things like the war in Southeast Asia, racism, and women’s rights back in those days. Not like today. So the whole thing became an us versus them thing in my mind, at least, and I was a big A’s fan.

As for the players, it made for a great match. It helped me root against the Reds that they had the loathsome Pete Rose, who was playing the outfield at age 31, hitting lots of doubles, getting lots of walks, stealing the occasional base and otherwise being his usual pain in the ass self. They also had the outstanding second baseman of all time, Joe Morgan, Dave Concepcion at short, and strong power hitting Tony Perez at first base. The big deal that year, though, was 24 year old Johnny Bench who was merely the best catcher in baseball and hit 40 home runs and drove in 125 to boot. The pitching staff was strong that year with another 24 year old, Gary Nolan, posting a 15-5 won lost record with an earned run average of 1.99 and Jack Billingham and Ross Grimsley doing well enough for a short series, especially with Clay Carroll, Tom Hall, and Pedro Borbon in the bullpen.

Oakland’s pitching staff was even better than that once Vida Blue ended his holdout and joined Catfish Hunter, Ken Holtzman, and Blue Moon Odom in the rotation with the very deadly Rollie Fingers and Darold Knowles in the pen. Lots of people played second base for the A’s and none of them came close to being Joe Morgan, but otherwise they were solid on defense with Joe Rudi, Reggie Jackson (yes,him), Sal Bando, and Dave Duncan. Mike Epstein played well at first base and led the team with 26 home runs. The other thing that made me an A’s rooter was that they had knocked off Billy Martin‘s Detroit Tigers in the playoff. That Tigers team was very interesting, but what bothered me was that, after the season lost a week or so to a labor dispute, the Tigers finished 86-70 to the Boston Red Sox’ 85-70, and they were given the Easter Division title without any kind of playoff. That irked my fair minded young soul.

So back to October 18. The third game of the ’72 series was being played in Oakland (in daylight, by the way) and A’s fans were excited because their team had already won the first two games back in Ohio. The Reds took a 1-0 lead in the seventh inning and were threatening for more in the eighth. Rollie Fingers was pitching to Johnny Bench and the count was three and two. Manager Dick Williams of Oakland, sporting a moustache, visited the mound and emphatically pointed toward first base, leading most people concerned to believe that ball four was to be pitched. Catcher Gene Tenace signals for the intentional walk and it made sense, since there were runners at second and third base and the big slugger at bat. Instead, Fingers fired a strike and Bench was out looking. The Reds won the game after all, but it was still a great moment.

So, the powers that be can save a total of 6.4 minutes per season by enforcing a new rule that intentional walks skip the throwing of the four wide ones if they like. It won’t make the game more fun, especially if there has to be replay to see whether or not the manager actually held up four fingers. Plus, what about wild pitches or passed balls? Back to the drawing board, folks. Try cutting the commercial breaks. Whoops, I blasphemed.

I’m putting my money–all 63 cents–on the Dominican Republic in the upcoming World Baseball Classic to be held from March 6 to March 22. But first, a couple of unpaid advertisements. Putting a runner on second base for free to start any extra inning? Take whoever came up with that one to the woodshed.There are enough cheesy clown tactics filling up our everyday lives already and the bid from the new commish to cater to short attention spans is lame to the extreme. Some less than intelligent individual suggested another way to hurry things along would be to limit the number of throws to first base to hold runners. Let’s see now, the pitcher only gets two throws to first, so, if I’m the runner, I guess I just wait and then go. Brilliant. Maybe we could have a mandatory game of pickle with that free runner on second to start the tenth inning so that he could possibly score without even one pitch being thrown. I think that these calls for “speeding up” the game come from two directions. One, there is a saturation point for writers and other media types because they work with deadlines and get too many free passes to major league games whereas, at least when I was kid back in the Slide Rule Age, if I ever got a chance to go to a real major league ballpark, I wanted doubleheaders and extra innings in both games. Also, the proliferation of frantic, multiple sources of over stimulation of the senses and over taxed brain cells does indeed make for short attention spans. One of the best things about baseball is that it is an antidote to that stuff.

The way the WBC goes now is a mixture of good and bad, chiefly because of WHEN it gets played, which is bad, and HOW it is organized by countries, which is good. Many of us, especially multi-millionaire team ownership groups, worry about players pushing themselves too hard too early in the season because of the competitive instincts and damaging their bodies before the REAL season begins. That’s a real concern. At the same time, it is wonderful that players are able to represent their geographic homes and it probably does help spread the joy of the game around the globe. Perhaps if it were held at the end of the major league season or, better yet, in the middle of it, it would be more fun for everyone. If we really wanted to go off into dreamland, how cool would it be if the major leagues truly were global with teams from Cuba, Australia, Japan etc. that had territorial rights to players in their boundaries? Futbol teams in Europe mix national sides with multi-national professional leagues fairly smoothly already, so it’s not as though it can’t be done. Of course, Rupert wouldn’t like all of the time zone differences but it could be worked out. It is a global economy now, ain’t it?

At any rate, the Dominican team is bad ass. Just look at the pitching staff: Dellin Betances, Santiago Casilla, Johnny Cueto, Bartolo Colon,Edinson Volquez, Fernando Rodney,and Jumbo Diaz. Wellington Castillo at catcher. The infield is super:Adrian Beltre, Robinson Cano, Manny Machado,Hanley Ramirez, Jose Reyes, Carlos Santana. Outfielders? How about, as Joe Buck would say, Jose Bautista, Nelson Cruz, Starling Marte, and Gregory Polanco? This is a pennant winning team in my opinion.

Mexico would be formidable with the likes of Adrian Gonzalez, Sergio Romo, Yovani Gallardo,Joakim Soria and Oliver Perez. Cuba has Yoenis Cespedes and a bunch of guys we haven’t heard much about that I’ll bet are pretty good. Puerto Rico would of course be well represented with J.C. Romero, Hector Santiago, Yadier Molina, Javier Baez, Roberto Perez, Francisco Lindor, Carlos Beltran, Angel Pagan and Eddie Rosario. Australia would not be favored but they have pitchers Travis Blackley, Liam Hendriks, and Peter Moylan.

Venezuela, managed by Omar Vizquel, will be very tough with Jhoulis Chacin, Jeanmar Gomez,Yusmeiro Petit, Salvador Perez, Jose Altuve, Miguel Cabrera, Alcides Escobar,Felix Hernandez, Frankie Rodriguez, Martin Prado, Freddy Galvis, Victor Martinez, Ender Inciarte, Carlos Gonzalez, and Odubel Herrera.

Would this strip the United States of too many good players? Hell, no. The USA will have Chris Archer, Buster Posey,Jonathan Lucroy,Tyler Clippard,Eric Hosmer, Daniel Murphy, Brandon Crawford, Adam Jones, Andrew Miller, Danny Duffy, Tanner Roark and Paul Goldschmidt. That would be definitely a contender.

It would be a bunch of fun, which I think used to be the idea. Let’s do it around all star game time, and the winning team gets to host the next one. Play ball!

We were lying in the outfield grass, tired and happy after a long session of baseball. Patty Fulkerson was my age,9, while his older brother Dicky was 11 and my brother Jimmy was 10. Dicky and Jimmy were conspiring about something and Patty and I were about to discover what it was. They wanted to smoke.

We had no cigarettes, so that was a problem. A plan was hatched. The older boys had the stronger desire to smoke. They had possibly gained some experience prior to this occasion whereas Patty and I had not but the hatched plan nevertheless involved Patty and Jerry taking the chance and obtaining the smokes for the four of us. This often seemed to be the case when adventures were planned. If a fall was to be taken,the younger guys would be the ones to take it. Somebody produced a quarter and I proudly took hold of it and went off to score with Patty. Up above the ball field was the truck stop Bailey’s, a noisy, usually busy place that had diesel and gas pumps, a garage for maintenance and minor repairs, dormitories and a restaurant. The greasy spoon had a pinball machine and next to that a cigarette machine. The vending machine made our quest much easier since no adult would need to be involved. We were ever so clever and careful. As we came through the door I said to Patty in a voice clear enough to be heard, “What kind of cigarettes did my dad say he wanted?”

“Marlboros!” he replied on cue. In slid the quarter, the proper lever was pulled, and out popped our pack of Marlboros. Our fast walk soon turned into a hurried run and soon we were back to the outfield, worthy earners of the reward to follow. I don’t recall how the matches were obtained but soon we were puffing away and pretending to like it, far enough away from parents, neb noses and tattletales. Dicky and Jimmy scolded their younger brothers for not inhaling properly and soon coughing ensued. We weren’t yet men but we were on our way. In those days, of course, smoking was anything but a crime except for those , like us, who were deemed too young to freely enjoy all the good things in life. Mickey Mantle bragged about smoking Viceroys in an advertisement in a national magazine and other athletes did the same. I don’t recall any of my beloved losers, the Pittsburgh Pirates, appearing in smoking ads but that was probably because they didn’t have the fame that New York stars like Mantle and Duke Snider enjoyed. There were probably adults I knew who didn’t smoke but there weren’t many.

Well, we couldn’t smoke the whole pack right then, so now we had another problem. Much discussion followed that dealt mainly with the fact that none of us wished to be caught holding the goods. The Fulkersons’ father frequently spoke of wringing people’s necks and Jimmy and I knew that our parents were not averse to corporal punishment either. Finally, a solution was arrived at that suited the situation. We walked past the outfield to a more wooded area, selected a tree, and one of us, probably Patty, climbed it a bit and carefully tucked our Marlboros on a branch just as though it was a bird’s nest. That way it would be there for us next time we wanted it. Sure it would.

In January of 1979, 23 voters did not vote to allow the newly eligible Willie Mays to enter the baseball Hall of Fame. Assuming that those 23 voters were still alive at the time, the only way to look at that fact is as proof that yes, anything can, indeed, happen. So far as we can tell, there was no involvement on the part of the Russians.

Fortunately, 409 voters thought that the Say Hey Kid qualified for the hall, so he made it. It is also fortunate that human beings still do the voting on these matters rather than having the task assigned to some soulless computer evaluating ballplayers based on what the corporate types now refer to as the metrics. One does have to wonder sometimes, though.

Tim Raines, Jeff Bagwell, and Ivan Rodriguez will each deservedly join Mr. Mays in Cooperstown this summer along with the car salesman. Several athletes suspected of helping the owners regain prestige until blabbermouth Jose Canseco tried to squirrel the deal have not yet garnered enough votes to qualify. Two great players that came close without getting the requisite 75 per cent of votes tallied were not harmed by steroid suspicions and may, eventually, make it. Those two are Vladimir Guerrero and Trevor Hoffman. I think that the slugger from the Dominican Republic should be there and the relief pitcher from Bellflower, California should not.

The career numbers on Guerrero are impressive if not sensational. Perhaps the fact that serious injury robbed him of part of the superb skills he demonstrated early in his days while he played in relative obscurity in Montreal has caused the voters to remember only his later seasons when he was slower and less agile in the field. You wouldn’t want to evaluate Mickey Mantle based on his last few seasons either but, like Mantle, Guerrero was still very dangerous as a hitter to the end. Okay, metrics: a career on base percentage of .379, career batting average of .318, 449 home runs, 477 doubles among 2,590 hits. Career slugging percentage:.553. 37 stolen bases in 2001 and 40 more in 2002. Plus, again, in the earlier years he was very good in the field, with a rifle arm matched by few in cutting down baserunners. Sixteen very above average seasons gets him to the hall in my opinion.

As for Hoffman, he was valuable with the deadly change up but Hall of Fame? Sorry, but it’s that over rating of saves thing. 601 saves in 18 years would impress me if saves really meant something. His best years were very good, between 1996 and 1999. He never appeared in more than 70 games or pitched more than 90 innings. I realize I am part of a growing minority but hey, if you don’t want to pitch the ninth inning (with a lead!) put me in, coach.

Opinions are like, uh, belly buttons–almost everybody has one. These are mine.

It seems appropriate to re-publish this post from May of 2015 in light of the latest Hall of Fame voting. Next time up, I’ll address Vlad Guerrero, Trevor Hoffman, and some other fun stuff. T…

Source: Steroids, Hypocrisy, and Cooperstown

Okay, when do pitchers and catchers report? Is it next week? Come on already. I suppose I could become a European soccer fanatic but I don’t have access to the kinds of drugs that would enable me to start watching live games at 3 o’clock in the morning and , besides, I’m not a total hermit. Yet. I know, many sports minded people are pacified by the NFL, the NBA and college basketball, the NHL or (gulp) golf. Not me, buddy. I parted ways with football for good after the Montana-Young 49ers dynasty stumbled back to Youngstown and they started putting actual bounties on quarterbacks. I think the whole twin towers and W thing put this great nation of ours into a bloodthirsty frenzy to show everybody who the meanest son of a bitch in the world was and football and all those weird new fighting games feed into that in a very end of empire sort of way so I stopped participating in even the typical passive American way of watching, downing beers and yelling. As for hockey, I’m with Rodney Dangerfield. Besides, my eyes are too weak to follow the puck.

As for basketball, well, I still enjoy the high school game. The Warriors I follow rather indirectly. I don’t watch games much, never the whole thing. I don’t mind reading about them the next day, but the games are too much for my nervous system and no, I don’t mean because they are exciting. A few simple rules changes would make hoops fun again, but they will never be made because Rupert and the others who now rule sports with their television money prefer Charles Barkley type collision ball with lots of time outs so players don’t get winded and bad food and lousy beer and irrelevant cars can get sold. Here’s what I would do. An offensive foul means the team loses possession. Period. On a defensive foul, the offensive team gets a free pass, meaning the defensive team can’t defend until the pass is received by an offensive player. Screw the boring free throws. Yellow cards would be issued for an unsafe obstruction with a warning that a second yellow card means that the offender is removed from the game. The first yellow, as in soccer, would require that offender to leave the game until the next time out. Red cards would be issued for flagrantly unsafe obstructions clearly meant to prevent a goal and the offender goes to the showers. No team would be forced to play with fewer than three players, however. In other words, let’s replace thuggery with real defense. Sorry, Chuck. Free throws would only be taken after shooting fouls, and then the team shooting the free throw would retain possession. A “technical foul” would earn a yellow card. Play ball, fools. Of course all of this means that the spectator would need to be paying attention. One other thing—a new circle, making all shots made within six feet of the basket score one point. For bonus points, let’s play fewer games so that the playoffs could begin in March and be finished by tax day. Attention, Donald Trump, that’s April 15. These changes would reward athleticism rather than brutality and result in fewer injuries. While we’re at it, let’s restore the guarantee of the first amendment to the NBA and forget fining players and coaches who dare to speak their minds. Okay, one last thing. Barkley would hereafter be confined to reporting on golf.

It’s not baseball to blather on endlessly about contracts and how much Mike Trout is getting paid and whether or not Eduardo Nunez is worth four million a year or why Danny Duffy got a five year contract. That’s business page stuff. No, I want some ball, damn it. Are there still winter leagues? Why aren’t they televised?

Despite his ties to Tommy Lasorda, I wholeheartedly agree that Mike Piazza is most deserving of his selection to the Baseball Hall of Fame.  He was no Johnny Bench behind the plate, but his career …

Source: Why Make Tim Raines Wait?

Beg, borrow, or steal the price of heroin, nicotine, and gasoline is always met. What they call market forces do come into play on other popular items eventually and, when the new administration in Washington, D.C. gets going next month, we are likely to see that what has mistakenly been called “trickle down economics” will instead become a Niagara Falls of impoverishment.

There has been so much money being made in professional sports lately that we are seeing some things that heretofore would have been considered unimaginable, such as the building of stadiums without any team or ownership entity committed to occupying them. Will the coming recession or downward cycle or whatever bullshit term economists choose to use have an effect on this relatively recent boom? Chances are that it will, but there has already been a big change in the way sports teams are marketed and financed. I think it is safe to say that the disastrous cancelling of the 1994 baseball season was the result of a conflict between money and big money.Hall of Fame Chevy salesman Bud Selig was just “acting” commissioner then, and his prescribed job for the owners was to sell the public on the “fact” that 19 of the 28 teams were losing money in their charitable passion to deliver major league baseball to all of us ungrateful slobs out here who had no appreciation for what they had to endure. The two main issues were revenue sharing by the owners and acceptance of a salary cap by the players. No profit cap for the owners was on the table. So the awful strike happened and of course, in the spirit of divide and conquer that has always ruled our fair and decent land, the fans blamed the players. At any rate, when peace was eventually restored in 1995, many things changed. Revenue sharing began, so that television money enjoyed in large markets such as New York, where the Andrew Carnegie of American sports George Steinbrenner still reigned behind the scenes, had to share with relative paupers in smaller markets like Pittsburgh, Seattle and lo! Milwaukee. The idea of the salary cap went the way of orange baseballs. Baseball and its new commissioner could go back to making money, except that a large public relations problem had developed after the World Series, never cancelled even during World War Two, had indeed been cancelled in ’94 and many followers had lost their enthusiasm for what now seemed to be a big greed game.

What to do? The leagues had been divided into three divisions for ’94 and now the wild card team idea arrived to help create fan interest. Big money meant ownership “groups” and the individual ownership era began to dissolve as people like Tom Yawkey, Phil Wrigley, Clark Griffith, Charles Finley and others were being replaced by conglomerates of anonymous investor groups. Perhaps coincidentally, baseballs began flying out of ballparks at unprecedented levels as the Mo Vaughn, Jose Canseco, Albert Belle and Mark McGwire types began to dominate the scene. Tightwad executives now changed policies as foul balls were no longer pursued and hoarded but rather distributed cheerfully to fans who learned to chirp like baby blackbirds in their nests for a souvenir. Despite all of the TV loot, ticket prices went up and up and up. Home runs and eight playoff positions got the masses involved again—at least, the masses that could afford it.

Much of the new largesse in baseball has been a good thing. It’s good to be beyond the days like when I was in fifth grade and Chuck Tanner, now famous for his managing career but at that time a backup outfielder for the reigning World Champion Milwaukee Braves, came to my school to take our school pictures. That was his off season gig, which was a thing that many, many pro baseball players needed to do in those days to supplement income. It is also a good thing that the players’ bodies are much more trained and protected against permanent injury since both their employers and their agents have an interest in keeping them safe. In the old days, one could always find a body to replace a sore armed pitcher, and on the cheap at that.

Of course, the wide availability of games to view on television is convenient and fun. Attendance is generally very good at games, but it is a distinctly different population of attendees than I remember from my youth. You have to be of a certain (high) income bracket in order to afford tickets. Then there is parking, which, the last time I went, cost me three hours of wages. So I often wonder how much the people I see stuffing their faces with ballpark food and drink are really into the game they’re watching. I don’t know, maybe they are real fans, just like the cheap beer slurpers I used to observe at games who could get in for 75 cents or a buck and a half and knew all the players without a scorecard, let alone the monstrous electronic scoreboards and their own electronic devices that seem to be of as much interest as whatever pitch Madison Bumgarner is going to throw next. I know, I’m an old fogey, I should just go with it and enjoy the pleasures of wealth management. I wonder about the future near and far though, and the lack of participation and interest on the part of the young people who the rich geezers seem to be leaving behind. What do you think?

Can anyone out there please explain to me why Bud Selig was selected for the baseball Hall of Fame? What was his skill set? Upon further review, it is fitting that the Chevy salesman will enter the hall shortly after the Donald enters the White House, but aren’t people supposed to have accomplished something? It was a bit of an accomplishment for the man who made Milwaukee famous again to somehow avoid a debilitating neck injury while frantically looking the other way during the Steroid Era as home run totals and earned run averages resembled the Deutschmark after World War One. How about, as Joe Buck would say, the deft manner in which he freaked out after a tie in an All Star game and decided that it was necessary to Make It Count by having it determine home field advantage for the World Series? That was brilliant, like selling some fool the safety package on a new Corvair.

One of the similarities between Trump and Selig is the way they each made themselves a ton of money while essentially bullshitting the rest of the world. Selig reigned as the game, hereafter referred to reverently by its acronym MLB, increased revenues as never before in recorded history. It happened first by the winning of sensational new television contracts that guaranteed that even success challenged organizations like Oakland and Milwaukee could garner millions just by showing up for work. Now, an even more lucrative field of cash has blossomed as the marketing of everything from “game worn” jerseys to every different cap that every different team has ever worn separates people from their presumably hard earned cash. Selig, I guess, gets credit for these revenue streams and that, no doubt, accounts for his selection to be honored in the same building as his “good friend” Henry Aaron and the likes of Willie Mays and maybe some day Pete Rose. I don’t know about you, but when I think about some skinny eleven year old kid in Cincinnati wearing a replica Reds jersey that says Kluszewski on the back I kind of feel sorry for not only the kid but also Ted Kluszewski. Because I remember being that age and finding, in a closet where I probably shouldn’t have been looking, my older brother’s letterman jacket he earned by playing high school football. It was a little big on me but I wanted to wear it to bask in some glory. So I did, but not for long. My mother sternly pointed out that my brother, who was now old enough to have moved out of the house, would probably not be pleased to learn that I was wearing his jacket. I soon realized that while it felt cool to act like a star I had not yet earned that right. So it went back into the closet and I felt a bit ashamed. These days I cannot imagine going out in public wearing an “authentic” jersey with the name Posey or even Puig on the back, and not just because it would cost me a couple hundred bucks to get one.

So all hail the commissioner. He was the commissioner for the owners, the money people and not the fans who just love baseball and that’s the way it has always been In the same manner, the president, who now gets his own acronym too, “POTUS” because no one likes to speak in complete sentences,is the president of all the money people who paid to put him there. We can still love the game, and we can still love our country. We don’t have to genuflect before phonies, though.

Before the whole world and everything done on it got completely organized, homogenized, and made into video games, we were often called upon to improvise our own fun. Back when he was still considered funny, Bill Cosby recorded a hilarious bit about playing football on an urban street with parked cars and lamp posts and other obstacles not generally associated with a playing field. You could seldom count on having enough players to field a regular side whether it was football, basketball, or baseball. My brother Jimmy and I even had an improvised game of “golf” which featured a ball (not necessarily a golf ball),a baseball bat (usually cracked) and a small hole dug into the ground in our backyard with the heel of one of our feet. No driving, just putting.

Most often, though, we played “stocking ball”. The equipment was pretty easy to obtain. We needed an old sock or two, the kind that came up over the calf. An old rag or the other sock was stuffed inside and a round shape was created. No stitching was involved; the ball was held together with a strong rubber band. The rubber bands that came with the boxes of wieners to our meat market were the treasured ones for this purpose. Before the first inning was over, these balls were not round at all but rather flat and roughly square. This affected the pitching more than the hitting but nobody cared. The bat was sometimes an actual baseball bat but most often we used a pick handle, which wasn’t round either but great for bat speed. Gloves were extraneous and disdained. The batter’s box was at the foot of the back porch steps. The pitcher’s “rubber” was on a line with the second garage window, the one farthest from home plate. We would mark a line with our feet but you could tell that you were in the correct position by looking at your reflection in the garage window. There were no bases unless you had teams but generally it was one on one with me and brother Jimmy, who was a year older. Occasionally it would become more of a family affair with my brother Paul joining Jimmy’s side against me and our dad. In those cases, the corner of the garage became first base and we would go first to home, sort of like cricket.

The layout of our backyard “field” was even stranger than the Polo Grounds that the New York Giants played in. We had a two car garage with wooden doors that swung open east and west and halfway across the door closest to us was the right field foul line. The left field line was extremely narrow for political reasons. Facing the pitcher as a right handed batter, to your left would be our next door neighbors’ back yard. The Sherbines’ driveway was on the border line, so to speak, because they entered from the alley whereas our driveway was accessed from the street and was on the other side of our house. Therefore the bushes planted next to our yard just before theirs became foul territory because, while the Sherbines were somewhat tolerant of our shenanigans, they were not amused by the fetching of foul balls into their backyard. That’s how I learned not to be a pull hitter. Now, if you hit one on a fly to the alley past their property, it would be fair. There were lots of ground rules like that.

So without bases, how did Jimmy and I determine hits and runs? It was the length of the hit before the stocking ball hit the ground. If you got it past the sidewalk that ended just before the garage, it was a single. Past that second window toward the alley was a double. Into the alley on a fly was a triple. Beyond the alley and into the neighbors’ yards on the other side was a home run. It was doubly important not to yield a homer to center or right because then the pitcher would have to deal with a feisty dog in order to retrieve the ball and often, in those cases, re-wrap the sock. Any ball caught on the fly was an out; balls not making it as far as singles territory were ground outs.

I lost a lot. Jimmy was just a year older, but he was a lot better. We both threw pretty hard for adolescents but he was more accurate. Despite being younger and less skilled, I was not necessarily learning to be a better sport. It got rather antagonistic at times. He would start bragging about how far that last homer had gone and I might be tempted to throw the next pitch at him. Getting hit wouldn’t hurt much unless our ball had been rained on and hardened up a bit, but of course it was an insult. We would sometimes be in angry moods anyway. The games would start on Sunday afternoons after we had been altar boys at 7 AM Mass so that we could finish our Sunday paper route before noon so we’d be a bit tired going in. Plus we umpired the games ourselves and balls and strikes had to be agreed upon, so to speak. His strategy was to let me walk him two or three times and then blast one. In retrospect, that was a good strategy but at the time I was kind of Puerto Rican as in, “Swing the bat, asshole!”. The fights sometimes got physical but then the commissioner, our mother, would threaten to call the game and we would try to cool off. Most of the time the war was peaceful, though.

When I was batting I also liked to be the stadium announcer as in “Now batting, number 9. Bill Mazeroski, etc. The other thing I liked to do was mimic the form of players I’d recently seen on television. I would try to pitch like Jim “Mudcat” Grant or affect the batting stance of Roberto Clemente or Dick Stuart. I’d watch an inning or two if a game was on TV but not be able to sit still anymore and go out to mimic those players. I could keep Jimmy in a better mood in this way but he would usually still pound me. We lived between Pittsburgh and Cleveland so those were our guys to root for and try to emulate.

Whiffle ball came along one day and, while that was fun and funny in a different way, stocking ball somehow seemed more like the real thing. I’d like to play today.