Fast forward to the late 50s. When everybody else in God Bless America was busy prepping their kids for college, our neighborhood public high school (the Parkville Black Knights) got featured prominently on Edward R. Morrow’s pre-60 Minutes expose’ TV show as the country’s worst High School. The juvenile delinquency didn’t just run thru our community – it practically galloped. My older brother had evolved into a hood in waiting, complete with a James Dean attitude and Elvis Do. Jeff was an enforcer in the local Animals gang with a legendary frothing at the mouth type anger (he never said much but frothed quite regularly and he shared this trait with our mom who would follow her frothing with a kick in the shins to get things moving). Though my family’s lack of anger management kept the bullies snarlingly distant from my vulnerable butt, we were a tad on the scary side and relatives would only visit our humble digs when absolutely necessary. The fact that I was learning to play the accordion and my brother an electric guitar methinks also had something to do with our isolation. Anyway we were fatherless/rudderless except for when playing some sport and our working mom was a secretary at a Towson construction company where she would be the ONLY person in her building to vote for that radical, pope-packin’ JFK in 1960.
Are you still reading this?
Good.
So Catholic to the core was mom that I have held the deep suspicion that my dearest actually cut a deal of some sort with the local Catholic school nuns to accept her kids unto their protective habits with the proviso that while Jeff was deemed quite irredeemably bad and destined best case for either a football helmet or a bazooka, I, the holier young one, could be salvaged and possibly schooled for a trip to a Seminary. Apparently I was that good – so good that my mom told me I was “picked” to be an altar boy based on my virtue. “What virtue?” I asked. “I steal watermelons and apples like everybody else without a tweak of age of reason conscience”. She smiled with that classic curve ball (read: bold faced lying) answer that twisted and turned right into the heart of the matter “Well, you see if you want to play baseball, you have to become an altar boy and that’s final.”
“Oh. Well okay then.” The sting was on and I was the bait.
So I learned my Latin (“a language buried in the dust, first it killed the Romans, now it’s killing us!”) and here’s where a colossal collision of spirituality and sports fanaticism occurred.
Opening day was on a Sunday and I was to serve a high mass that would start at 11am and end somewhere around the first inning of my game. Thinking way ahead of my time and as a Cub Scout, always being prepared n’at, I decided to wear my new bulky Cub Hill Cubs baseball uniform beneath my cassock. (footnote: I could have played on the defending champ Carney Rod and Gun Club Murderers Row (I kid you not) club but my mom had suddenly become a “pacifist” (whatever that was – she never really bothered to explain anything she could pass off as a mystery of her faith). Anyway, my plan would surely get me to my game by the second inning and except for the fact that I was beginning to perspire bullets since the uniforms those days were 100% wool, nobody would know the diff. That is until we led the frail, grey haired Monsignor of St Ursula’s out to the Sacristy and he grabbed me by the nap of my fallen halo and pointed disapprovingly up at the six unlit high mass candles. I scurried backstage to fetch a ten foot, twenty pound wicker pole and what happened next I dare say has never been repeated in any Catholic Church High Mass in these here United States.
As the priest proceeded with his opening prayers, there I was going hellbent from candle to candle reaching unsteadily to light these very, very, like really high, high candles, and with each tippy-toed stretch my uplifted cassock revealed somebody’s bright orange and blue baseball socks. Snickers rose to guffaws and by the time I had completed my round, the choir was drowned out by a full house congregation consumed by belly laughter. I could feel my mother’s mortification ten pews deep and hear my brother’s less than thoughtful outburst of “what an idiot!”
Well that’s it. I did make my game by the third inning. We lost to the Murderer’s Row 25-1. I missed a couple pop ups to right that resulted in a few grand slams but, hey, I did drag bunt for a hit, and that was pretty much all that mattered.
Despite this episode, mom liked the male influence her kids were absorbing by playing baseball so she became the first lady to sit on the Parkville Little League Board. Never without my three fingered baseball glove in tow, I tagged along everywhere with Jeff and his older crowd because Madre made him take care of his “me too” lit’l bro pest. On one Father’s Day in 1957, as a reward for not killing each other (not to say we didn’t try) she bought us both brand new baseball spikes. As luck would have it on this holiday, only 8 showed up for Jeff’s pony league team and I was destined to fill the magic 9 spot!
Jeff’s pony league manager was a tobacco juice spittin’ guy from Saint Louis nicknamed Scratchy for all the wrong reasons. Scratchman was a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals and to perk me up for my first game in the “Bigs”, told me the story of one “Pepper Martin” – the runt of the famous “Gashouse Gang” 1940-something Cardinals who would routinely stretch singles into doubles with his daring base running and one World Series afternoon, leaped completely over the Detroit Tigers outstretched hall of fame catcher Mickey Cochrane and landed squarely on home plate for the winning run!
Well, Scratch stuck me in right field where I would do the least amount of damage but wisely had me hit lead-off since I was pathetically small for my age. He told me not to swing and sure enough, the lanky lefty pitcher walked me on 4 pitches. I took a Ty Cobb lead off of first base and instantly got picked off and forced into a run-down. Each infielder began taking a turn chasing me back and forth between 2nd and 1st as my brother’s bench, save coach, turned their backs on the degrading spectacle. Rather than give up the ghost, I suddenly reversed my direction and hit the deck, becoming a boulder in the base path and causing their big first baseman to trip head over heels and when the dust finally settled the ball had squirted into right field and I was rounding third and heading home.
Unfortunately, when I got about ten feet away from home plate, I saw that their fireplug catcher had the damn ball in his mitt. Retreating into another rundown never entered my mind. Something else did. As the catcher knelt down to tag my silly slide, I suddenly vanished into thin air. I detected in the catcher’s skyward gaze nary a glint of recognition for what Pepper Martin had made possible as my inspired kamikaze form descended down upon him. Now, unlike Pepper, I did not quite make it over the catcher. Instead, my spikes sunk deep into his bright orange chest protector and for an unholy moment of reckoning, I stood like a dart in his staggering carcass until he straightened up and deposited me to the dirt at his feet. He then gave out a wounded animal shriek and proceeded to chase me up the left field line all the way to the parking lot until subdued by the clacking of a loose shin guard.
My brother and his mates thought this was the funniest thing they had ever seen and that summer I got to play a few more times affording our storytelling Skipper a chance to impart other Gashouse Gang tales about guys named “Dizzy”, “Daffy” et al.
So that’s why I don’t want the OIC to scratch baseball…Ok, while you’re scratching your head, here’s more about my gut defense of wrestling.
