Baseball season has begun, and that's always an occasion of joy in my own psyche. I grew up loving baseball, and had some middling success at it, mostly before I was 15. Once the other guys hit puberty, and started throwing real curveballs, and fastballs too fast for me to get around on, I sighed, learned how to drink beer, and moved over to the softball diamond.
Since I've been a father to sons, I've taken a lot of joy from watching my sons play (I've enjoyed watching my daughters play, too, but none of them played baseball; or even softball. . .). All of my boys have been ballplayers, and among them, they've had at least as much success as I did in my day; and, what I'm happier about, they've come to love the game almost as much as I do. My three oldest boys all learned how to play catcher, because I told them that coaches love a kid who'll volunteer to catch (and I wasn't even a catcher; but I did coach for a couple years). I took 'em to see the local minor league team a few times every summer, and I'd point out to 'em how the catcher would subtly 'drag' a pitch into the strike zone, and sometimes get his pitcher a strike call that wasn't quite, uh, true. And the first time I saw one of my sons do that in a Little League game (it wasn't exactly even minor-league subtle, but it worked on the teenage ump who was calling the game that day), I burst out laughing, which is to say, busting my buttons with pride. . .
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But that's not really the story I set out to tell you today. It's really just setting the stage for me to tell you about my friend Todd. . .
I first met Todd probably about 10 years or so ago, when his son and mine were on a Little League baseball team together. For most of that time, our relationship has been defined by our mutual fatherhood of athletically-inclined boys. 7M and Todd's son Joel were on baseball, basketball and football teams together, roughly from age 9 all the way through high school, and were often among the better players on the field for their respective teams. I blogged five years or so ago about a memorable weekend of baseball, during which their team won six games in two days, in 95-degree heat, winning the championship with a suicide squeeze play in the bottom of the final inning of the final game. Todd was the coach of that team (and I had some complimentary words regarding his, um, endowment afterward). When Joel and 7M were on the high school football team, Todd and I ended up sitting together for most of the games, all the way to the state finals their junior year (they lost), and another run to the state semifinals their senior year. And along the way, Todd and I built a really nice friendship. We had both grown up as jocks of one degree or another (his degree was a lot higher than mine, at least in terms of actual athletic success), and we enjoyed talking through the games with each other. When our sons graduated, our two families joined together for their open house.
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Todd is a bear of a man, thick and muscular, and strong as an ox. You can easily imagine him as a football player, and he was. But his first love was baseball, and as a young man, he had more-than-modest success. When he was in high school, he was probably the second-best high-school ballplayer in Our Town. The best was a young man named John Smoltz. Todd played for the Catholic high school, and he and Smoltz were actually teammates during their freshman year. After that, though, young Mr. Smoltz moved to Waverly High across town, and he and Todd would play against each other a few times every season. As you might imagine, Smoltz cut quite a swath through the baseball world of Our Town, as all future major-leaguers do. But Todd held his own, and even hit a home run (or two?) off young Smoltz. In those days, John Smoltz was the kind of high-school pitcher that young ballplayers would congratulate themselves for even fouling a pitch back off him, to say nothing of actually putting the ball in play. Much less getting an actual hit; much less hitting a home run.
I don't know what happened with Todd's baseball career after high school, if he ever played college ball, or what. I don't think he ever got a pro contract. For at least the past 20 years or so, Todd's life has been the typical, ordinary grind of work and raising kids. And putting in his time on aluminum bleachers, sitting next to me, watching our kids play. . .
John Smoltz, on the other hand, did get a pro contract, and went on to a distinguished 21-year major-league career, virtually all with the Atlanta Braves. He was eight times an All-Star, pitched in five World Series (winning one), and won a Cy Young Award as the National League's best pitcher in 1996. Pretty rarefied air for a guy who grew up playing on the sandlots of Our Town. Heck, along with Magic Johnson, he's one of the most distinguished athletes to ever come from here. . .
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Since our sons graduated from high school last spring, I've seen less of Todd, but we still enjoy the occasions when we bump into each other. Two summers ago, John Smoltz was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. A short time after that, I bumped into Todd, and he started reminiscing about when he and John Smoltz had been the two best ballplayers in Our Town, back in the day. So I stopped him, and said, "You know what this means, don't you?"
He looked at me. "What?"
"You hit a home run off a Hall of Famer."
He grinned, as big a grin as I've seen him grin (and he's got a pretty big smile, just normally). "I did, didn't I? How many guys can say that?"
Indeed, my friend. . . Not very many, indeed. . .
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Rarefied air indeed!
ReplyDeleteSome of my sons have played against (and with) guys who've gone on to play Div. 1 college football, and maybe even a pro or two. And I know that I played against at least one future pro, back in my day. It's cool, as Bijoux says below, to see guys you played against, playing on TV. But the idea of going deep off a guy headed to the Hall of Fame. . .
DeleteThat s a great story! On a lesser level, my daughter had much success as a fast pitch softball pitcher, but turned down a few colleges because she didn't think she could get a BSN while playing. She had been on a number of travel leagues, so played against girls from around the country.
ReplyDeleteWhile watching college softball, my husband and daughter would occasionally see players she had pitched against and struck out, which always made them both pretty proud.
One guy who 4M had played football against, played college ball for a team that came to Spartan Stadium, and we caught the game on TV. We weren't really thinking about the guy, but when his name got called out for making a tackle, 4M stood up and yelled, "That SOB dislocated my shoulder on a late-hit cheap shot!" So, 3-4 years later, the same guy is an assistant coach for a team that 7M played against, and in the handshake line after the game, 7M says to the guy, "You cheap-shotted my brother, back in high school. . ." Uhhhh, what did you say your name was? Uh, good game. . .
Delete7M was actually recruited by some smaller colleges to play football, and we took a couple of informal visits. But in the end, like your daughter, he was more interested in the education he wanted, than he was in playing more football. That whole decision process was fascinating to watch. . .
I never got much past tryouts in baseball because it interfered with my paper route.
ReplyDeletePlayed some inter-mural football and basketball.
Softball, fast pitch early on, slow pitch until the wheels took away the fun.
Playing catcher will do that.
Only hit one home run that I can remember, but had lots of triples.
Especially as I got older, I became very familiar with those triples-that-used-to-be-home-runs. . .
DeleteI never was much for Baseball .... too much standing around with only occasional bits of actual play, I just wanted to run. And hit somebody ;-)
ReplyDeletePretty cool that you know someone who homered offa Hall member. Best I got was running over a future reserve NFLer on the way to a flag football TD and stopping a dozen or so shots on goal from a future short-lived MLSer.
But I did bat .750 or better for over a decade while catching and/or pitching in fast-pitch Church softball, so there's that!
I went to school with a guy who played a year in the NBA, and another guy who got a couple cups of coffee in the majors, which was fun. . .
DeleteHitting .750 over a decade is impressive!
Only 2 home runs though, somebody had to get on base once in a while on a team of big swingers. You should have seen my OBP!
DeleteNeat story. In my various fast-pitch softball leagues, I've played with a few guys who made it to the minors. That's about my only claim to fame as an athlete. One of my good friends, Big Jay Atton, was a member of a national collegiate basketball champion (it was with New Hampshire Technical Institute, in the USCAA Division II, so not the prestige of the NCAA, but I'm still damn proud of him.)
ReplyDeleteI went to high school with a guy who got 72 major league at bats, and I've always thought that was pretty cool. And just for the sake of saying so, the team from my hometown Up North won the world championship of Senior Babe Ruth League, back in the 80s, and got themselves a mention in a back hallway of the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. . .
DeleteBut you know, this is like one of those 'Six Degrees' games - I'm two degrees from a Hall of Famer. . .
And congratulations to Big Jay. . .
Played bridge years ago with a fellow who'd gotten onto a semi-pro baseball team in the summer of 1946 after high school with Jack Breslin and Paul Cook and some others. One day the Cleveland Indians came to Lansing and played an exhibition game against them. My conversant foul-tipped in the seventh inning into the catcher's mitt. He was the hero because he was the only one on the team to get a piece of Bob Feller.
ReplyDelete