Playing The Game

Yesterday I reached what many people might call a milestone in my life while others might laugh and say, “how did he make it this far.” I’m very happy about the former and amazed myself at the latter. I am three-quarters of a century old. And, I thank the many people who wished me happy birthday. Stay with me for a couple of minutes and read some of the things I’ve thought about in the last twenty-four hours.

If you’ve ever driven a 1959 Corvette equipped with fuel injection or duel four-barrel carburetors and a four-on-the-floor shifting pattern along a wide stretch of interstate in Kansas with nothing but perfect flatness all the way to the vanishing point on the horizon at a hundred miles an hour, then you will understand my summer at the age of 18. I had graduated from high school. I felt like a god. There were no foreseeable obstacles on the road ahead, and I was gifted with a seemingly unlimited amount of explosive power under my control.

In perfect physical shape despite past sports injuries, I spent that summer playing the one sport everyone, especially my father, had encouraged me to play since I was old enough to grip a baseball with my hand. The autumn looked promising as well. I had decided on going to college, and as long as I maintained a 2.0 GPA, I could avoid being drafted into an army that was fighting a war in some far-off country unknown to me until the year before. Not ready to completely cut the apron strings, I wanted to find a college close enough where I could return home on the weekends to cajole my mother into doing the laundry and cooking my favorite meals. I decided on a small private liberal arts school within seventy miles from my hometown. The only problem centered around economics. Being a private school meant tuition payments that were difficult even for my middle-class family.

At some point during this summer our American Legion baseball team played a team from the Owensboro, Kentucky, legion post in their hometown, which was also the location of the college I wanted to attend. I was having a great season batting lead-off with a .400+ batting average. I led the team in runs scored and stolen bases. My primary position was second base, although I played right field on occasion but didn’t like it. I had trouble with judgment on high fly balls at night and my throwing arm was nothing to brag about. During our pregame warmup, my father came down from the stands and called me over.

“The baseball coach from your college of choice is in the stands tonight scouting. Thank goodness you’re playing second base and not right field.”

“I’m really not that interested in playing anymore sports after this summer.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not good enough to ever play pro baseball like you did, and I’ve done nothing but play one organized sport or another since I was eight years old. I’m tired of them.”

“Baseball can open doors for you. Just remember to do your best in everything you do, that’s all I’m asking.”

Of course, that was all my father ever ask and I was beginning to ask myself “best for you or me, dad?”  I never stopped to think that a little financial help based on my athletic ability would ease the burden on my parents. Like most entitled teenage white males, I was selfish and relatively thoughtless outside my own concerns. Beyond that, I never would have had the courage to question my father out loud. It took a couple of more years and serious life changes for me to reach that point, and the change of attitude caused many more years of conflict within the family. It simply never occurred to me to think outside the center of my universe, and that center was me.

The game began just at 8 PM. At twilight the field lights came on and cast gray shadows around the ballpark. I played one of my best games. I hit a line drive single to the opposite field and stretched it into a double with some risky baserunning. Another hit later in the game added to my batting average. A run scored and a stolen base strengthened my offensive value to the college coach watching in the stands, but what sealed the deal was a defensive catch that I had no idea was possible for me, one I had never done before and would never repeat. To this day, I have no idea how it happened.

An opposing batter hit a pop fly directly over the first baseman’s head. I watched it sail and for an instant lost it in the glare of the high flood lights above the field. It came down out of the brightness and into the shadows above the right field foul line halfway between the first baseman who was trying to back pedal in an effort to get under it and the right fielder charging in toward him at an oblique angle. Neither had time to reach the ball before it landed in fair territory for a bloop hit. There were two outs already gone in the inning. Consequently, a runner on second base had taken off when the ball was hit, and in the corner of my eye, I saw him rounding third. If the ball wasn’t caught, he would score a run that could very well have won the game.

I bent low and sprinted behind the first baseman. In my mind, I saw the three of us reaching the same exact point underneath the rapidly falling baseball. The difference was that being in the middle, my angle put me there first if I went all out, and I did. My back to home plate, I caught the shadowed spec of the ball in my right eye as it dropped out of the glare from the lights. I was till two steps away from where it would land when I went airborne, my body horizontal to the ground, I stretched my gloved left hand as far into the shadows as I could. I felt no strain. My body did not struggle with gravity. I was weightless like one of those paper airplanes, folded and tossed to irritate my homeroom teacher in high school. As I hit the ground hard, rattled my teeth and bit my tongue, the baseball nested in the well-worn pocket of the Rawlings fielder’s glove, and I slid to a stop. I had done my best. The catch was major-league worthy, earning me on the spot what I did not want, an athletic scholarship. I agreed because I knew it would help my parents financially.

But before praising my altruistic effort, my self-sacrificing behavior, hear the rest of this small story. I never set foot on the ball diamond at college. Long before the spring arrived during my freshman year, I pledged a fraternity. Oh, my first semester concluded as my parents expected. I made the Dean’s List like the academic star I was supposed to be. I’ll be damned, though, that second semester as a frat pledge quickly became a whirlwind of being cruelly hazed, passing out at keg parties, and chasing sorority girls. In my first attempt at total freedom, I morphed into madness. No one told me that beer came in never-ending barrels, and my efforts to please the older fraternity brothers led to beatings, humiliation, and personal servitude twenty-four hours a day. What it didn’t leave time for were the two true purposes for being on campus, academics and baseball. By the end of the spring semester, I had gone from the Dean’s List to academic probation, from a golden boy to a badly tarnished shell of my former self.

Don’t get me wrong. This was all by my own choice. I had no one to blame but myself and, in an act of contrition, I dropped out of college to join the Marine Corps. This was the summer of 1967, and it was another impulsive judgment that changed the course of my life. I’ve written a lot on the direction of society and my individual path in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, and I’m not going to rehash it in this little essay. Let’s just say that after fifty-five years I have returned, in a way, to baseball. I’m glad to be here.

Birthday number seventy-five arrived on January 5, 2023. I’m living, probably for what’s left of my life, in a tiny town called Royston. The town nests in the northeast foothills of Georgia and its one claim to fame rests in the fact that it was the hometown of my boyhood idol, Tyrus Raymond Cobb, Ty Cobb, arguably the best baseball player ever and the first player admitted to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, Ohio. The “Georgia Peach” was a man who always tried to do his best and is credited with setting ninety major league baseball records. You read that right—ninety. I won’t list them all. You can look them up. So, in a way, I’ve come full circle all the way around the bases. It’s a good place to be, and I’m happy here.

In many ways my life has been normal, but in other ways extraordinary. Like most people I have been loved and hated, healthy and ill, had jobs I loathed and ones I enjoyed. I’ve been to war and survived while many comrades didn’t. I’ve travelled around the world more than once. My children still like me, I think, and my wife tolerates me after several decades. I drink too much and express my opinions too loudly. But I also laugh a lot and have explored the world from the vantage points of a hitchhiking hobo to college professor and all points in between. Like I said earlier, I’ve written a dozen books about the things I’ve done and seen, managing to stay out of jail for most of my adventures.

I guess the advice I trying to share after three-quarters of a century isn’t profound, but it’s important. I learned through experience that you can’t live life if you’re afraid of it, and you won’t be able to deal with the death we all have coming if you can’t feel you gave life your best shot. That may be the best mantra my father ever beat into my stubborn head so many years ago. Just do your best, My Babies. I’ve done my best to be the kindest, most honest person possible even though I’ve been selfish, stupid, and cruel at times. We all fail. The point is to regroup our values and keep trying. Be empathetic, breath deep. Risk something important every now and again. Take time for yourself and make time for others. I hope I have given more than gotten, although I’ve received a whole lot of good things I didn’t deserve. I’ve done my best to be generous in passing what’s been learned along to others. Be mindful of all living creatures. They have a right to be here. I’ve only begun to learn the importance of that concept. When I encounter an asshole, I no longer tolerate his or her behavior, but I try to remember I’ve been an asshole at some point myself. The bottom line is simple, I’ve worked and continue to work at doing my best to be the best person I can be because it allows me to transcend the idea of simply surviving. I can say with confidence that I have lived, truly lived. That may be all any of us can hope for, and I wish it for all of you.