My Only Bad Baseball Memory

I played baseball from 1970, until 1981...ages 7-18. 12 seasons...12 summers. In that dozen years there was only one year when I really had a bad summer and baseball let me down.
In the summer of 1977 I was 13 and it was my first year for Senior division. I tried out for the Cochran and Trivetts sponsored team. I had been an all star for the two seasons before and was amongst the best of my age group. The only problem was now I would be playing with boys as much as 3 years older than me and they had seniority.
It was tough for a twelve year old to crack a lineup of 13-15 year olds. To make matters worse, at that time, Suburban Little League was producing great catchers. Every team had at least one great catcher. Guys who were legends even then...Mike Scully, Sherm Johnson, Jerry Faragher, Kevin Prather, Bobby King, Doug Price, to name a few. Some of these guys went on to play pro ball and most would go on to college.
The problem was, I was a catcher.
Cochran and Trivetts had Kevin Prather and Jeff Farris and they didn't need me. After two weeks I was cut. The only time I'd ever been cut from a baseball team in my life. I went from being a star to not playing at all and I was devastated. The ball field was my home in the summer. I'd rather be playing baseball than anything else on earth back then. The team was my family. The coaches were father figures to me. I loved the game. I loved the dust behind the plate and setting up the infield and whispering "swing" every once in a while and inducing a third strike from a hesitant batter.
I loved the way the catchers mitt looked, I loved the gear. I loved lining up the cutoff man for the throw from the outfield. I loved watching the left fielder go back as far as he could when I stepped up to bat, and it still not being far enough. I just loved the game.
Suddenly that one summer I wasn't playing. I felt lost. I went home that afternoon and stayed in my room all weekend. I felt like someone I loved had died. Not playing was about the worst thing that every happened to me.
The next spring I got a phone call from Russ Staats who was coaching a new team in the Senior Division; Lafeyette Radio. Coach Staats had selected me in the draft and I was on the team. That was the good news. The bad news was that they had also traded for Jerry Faragher and I would be a backup. That was okay, I thought. I'm on the team and that's what matters.
Practices began...as Little League practices do in the Northeast...in March and it is always too cold for baseball. Every ball you hit in batting practice feels like it chopped your fingers off. It doesn't tingle...it hurts. And it hurts all day long. But it is part of the tradition and it's a fond memory for me. It's nothing you haven't long forgotten by opening day.
That summer...and the one that followed...were very different summers for me as a player. I got my very first taste of what shattered confidence will do. (I didn't realize all this at the time, of course) I had always been a prodigious hitter. I had power, I hit for average, I drew a walk instead of swinging without restraint. But those next two seasons when I returned to the game after my one summer without it, were very different. I couldn't hit anything. Not because I was seeing faster pitching, not because the mound was now at 60' 6". Not because they were mixing in breaking balls with the fastballs. It was because I was afraid. I was afraid of failure.
Sports had always been my domain but baseball was special to me. Hockey too by this point, but baseball had captured my soul when I was 4 years old and it never let me go. I was good at it and I needed to be good at it. Nobody at home really liked sports and so the coaches approval became vital. If my abilities as a player went unrecognized at the dinner table it was okay, because at places like George Reed field, William Penn field, and Pleasantville field I was noticed and accepted. I was held in awe for massive home runs and great throws to second base.
All that disappeared that one summer when I got cut. I was nobody without baseball.
So making the team was crucial and not failing again was as important as breathing. I was so afraid of screwing up and failing that I took the safest route...and refused to swing the bat.
For two whole seasons I would not take that bat off my shoulders. I waited out a lot of walks and I went down looking a lot. But I would not swing. I couldn't. I was so scared of failure. I was so afraid that if I swung and missed they would cut me again...then what would I do? Where would I be?
At one point coach Staats was so frustrated with me that he grabbed me by the shoulders, looked into my eyes and said "Swing the damn bat!" but I could not.
In retrospect, Coach really liked me and he kept me around because I threw myself into the "great teammate" role with gusto. I contributed from the bench by yelling loudest for my teammates. It was sad.
We won the league championship the summer I turned 15 and I got a jacket and a trophy. Coach Staats gave us all a nice plastic encased baseball with our names, position, and batting averages on it. Everyone accept me, of course. I had no average. He wrote, "Most spirited" on mine where my average should have been. He smiled when he gave it to me and I think he was as embarrassed as I was.
The next summer I didn't play ball in a league. It didn't hurt because I thought I was just out of opportunities. There actually was one more level I could play at but I wasn't aware of it. I spent that summer just playing pick-up games in the sandlot fields near my house. I wasn't performing for anyone and I rediscovered playing the game for fun.
...and I got my swing back.
The next year, my senior year in high school, my school had our first baseball team. I tried out, and there was never a question of my making the team and being a great player. Not when I was regularly bouncing the ball off of playgrounds 400 feet away or driving in 3 runs at a time with line drives that might have killed anyone trying to stop them. Kenny Wilson and I platooned behind the plate. I caught when he pitched and I caught when my best friend Mark pitched. When Kenny caught I played first, if Kenny had pitched the day before, he played first and I caught in order for him to rest his arm.
We had an incredible team and from the first day of practice we knew we would be champions...and we were.
Most importantly I had my stroke back. I hit .280 that year and was either 1st or 2nd in every batting category. I hit one memorable shot at the fields at 18th and VanBuren that my best friend and I paced off at 439 feet to the point where Matt Coty, their left fielder, made the luckiest catch in history.
The next summer I would play one final season of Little League ball for Suburban's Big League (16-18 year olds) team and then my playing days were through. I did try out for the team at Liberty the fall of my freshman year. I was a nervous wreck. Al Worthington was the head coach back then and he was a former pro pitcher. My first 4 swings in BP I whiffed like a madman. I stepped out of the box, caught my breath and crushed the next pitch out of the park, over the 20 foot foul pole in left field, across the train tracks and halfway down the hill to Ward's road. I watched the ball disappear into the bright September sky and I was as proud as I'd ever been. Whether I made this team or not, I had just taken a college pitcher out of the yard in a fashion I'd never seen before. It was colossal. Coach Worthington scribbled something on his clipboard, I took another cut and whiffed again. That afternoon I was offered a job at an auto parts store and I figured I'd better take it.
And baseball was done for me forever.
But I went out the way I always played...with a gigantic blast that others admired. (Darren Talley, a dorm mate, was also trying out for the team. He was in left field when I hit the ball and said he'd never seen anything leave the park so fast. He said it cleared the pole by 20 feet and was still going up when it went over his head)
Maybe it was the time away from the game that one summer when I turned 16. Maybe it was putting enough distance between getting cut, refusing to risk swinging again, and rediscovering what it felt like to hit the ball. Something derailed the train of fear and failure.
Life is like that. I would once again find out what failure felt like when I went through a divorce. And again when I lost my career and my home. But it was baseball that reminded me what success felt like...the night my Phils won that series in 2008. And it was Baseball that reminded me that sometimes we fear our failure so much that we fail even more.
But is was baseball that also taught me that if you're good..you're good...and nobody can take that from you. Good as a ballplayer...good as a man...good as a dad. You're great at something...just find it, remember it, and repeat it!
Play Ball!

Note: In October of 2009 at Homecoming I went to Worthington field and walked off that shot as best I could...it was around 510 feet. Yep...I'm proud of that!

Summer Kickoff

It's memorial Day weekend. The official launch of Summer. This was always a big deal growing up. Suburban Little League would schedule a jammed schedule of games for both Minor and Major divisions at Stahl Field, and it was our chance to shine at that special little ballyard. Dugouts, lights, a real fence.
Then of course, there'd be Phillies games. A cookout at the home of some family member or some friends, a desperate venture into an icy swimming pool, only recently filled. There would be burgers, hot dogs, barbecued chicken, Frank's Black Cherry soda or Hires Root Beer and Herr's potato chips. And somewhere in the background, there would be a little radio and the soul of the Summer would be coming through loud and clear...Harry Kalas would be calling the ballgame. Underneath his smooth baritones you could catch the sounds of the ballpark, if you listened closely. Kids squealing in delight. The rise of the crowd and the sudden desperation as a towering shot hooked foul. The pop of the ball in the mitt or the crack of the bat.
All of that was clicking in the background like a metronome, keeping time with the lengthening days and the warming temperatures. Always there, regular as my heartbeat. Harry and Whitey, telling stories, laughing with each other, describing the game so well for me that I didn't even have to close my eyes to imagine it.
I was 11 years old when I went to my one and only Phillies game as a child. The Vet looked exactly as I imagined. I knew the place like my own home because Harry had told me about it so many times. He and Richie Ashburn would have such an enjoyable time together, they made you wish everyone had a friend like that. No matter how professional they were, they were locals at heart. Inevitably someone would send up a plate of brownies or a pie to the booth and they were not above giving a public thank you. "Hey Harry, wanna send out a special thank you to Delores Boncetti from South Philly for the wonderful brownies she sent to the booth" might be Richies' pronouncement.
They were having fun...they were kicking off the Summer for me and I was loving it.
Being a kid, I naturally didn't have the appreciation for it then, as I do now. How blessed I was to have grown up in a time when announcers sounded that way. Thank God they didn't have a Free Agency mentality like pro sports do. I would have hated to have heard Harry broadcasting for the Padres or the Braves some day. He was one of us, and he stayed a Phillie until...literally...his very last hour.
This is going to be a far better summer than I've had in the last 3 years. Things have been tough and my daughter and I haven't had much of a vacation together in a while. This summer we will. She is growing up and growing into a wonderful young woman. We've done a lot together in our travels. One thing we've never done, is go to a ballgame together. I think this is the year for that. I want her to be able to look back on a bright summer day spent with her dad in a sunsplashed ballpark. My only regret is that she'll never hear a game called by Harry Kalas.
She already reveres him because of what I've told her about him.
We have summer traditions of our own, my daughter and I. I only wish we had the same narrator.
Happy Memorial Day everyone...make it special. Make it something to remember when the cold winds of winter blow once again.
Play Ball!

Down 3-0...just like life.

Last week my beloved Flyers came roaring back from a 3-0 deficit in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, to defeat the Bruins. They even went so far as to fall behind 3-0 in the final game before scoring 4 unanswered goals. Now they march on to Montreal and hopefully to the Cup finals.
Once again, Philadelphia sports teaches us a valuable lesson about life.
This team had lost two goalies and it's two biggest stars by the time the playoffs began. We went to war with Brian Boucher, whom we had drafted initially and whom Bob Clarke ran out of town because Boosh was a critic of Bill Barber and Clarke has never managed to find a way to separate his personal feelings from his ability to do what is best for the team. If he had, Eric Lindros would have retired a Flyer with a couple of Cup rings. But I digress.
But our boys battled back from life support to win the series. How did they do it? What was the secret? Simple...they won it the only way they could have. They won game 4. Then they won game 5. Then they won game 6 and it was level ground again. They they fell behind early in game 7, but having the strength of those 3 previous miracle wins to draw from, they stayed calm, scored 4 more goals and sent the Bruins golfing.
That's how you do it in life too. You can't come all the way back from devastation in one fell swoop. You get up each day, do what you can for as long as you can and then you do it again tomorrow. You refuse to admit defeat and you never quit.
One day you wake up and you realize what you just did, how much you just overcame, how much of a hero you really are. After passing a test like that, there is no mountain you can't climb...or at least you won't try climbing.
"Everything is possible...with High Hopes!"