Early this year -- Easter Sunday, to be exact -- I lost my father. He was 92. In his own words, he "lived too long." I am not ready to speak about his final 6 months. There were some great moments; however, for the most part, this entire period was excruciatingly difficult for everybody. Funny story, Easter Sunday was my dad's favorite day of the year. One day I will talk about all the traditions he fought so hard to maintain on this day for nearly his whole life. The brother loved Easter Sunday breakfast the most...
Anyway, I want to talk about baseball and time machines. It seems that, back in late 1950s and early 1960s my father was a pretty well known baseball player. I don't know exactly how it worked but he was somehow playing like semi-professional baseball for the steel mill he worked for. I think he even mentioned that there were big league scouts that sometimes showed up to watch a few games. I don't know if they went on the road much or if this was just a local industrial league thing. But it was a big enough deal that he often played in the same stadium as the local CFL team. And he caught the attention of his future wife, who used to go with his sister specifically to watch him play.
By the way, my mother was also an excellent baseball player. During the depression, she once won a whole dollar as she was named the most valuable player in a small town Sports Day tournament. Actually, I think she was the only one who hit a home run. Anway. A whole dollar! Back then that must have been like a million dollars to her. She said that she used the money to buy candy at the general store and that she really didn't want to share it with her 12 brothers and sisters. But she did anyway. My mom was always like that. She'd often times do without to make certain that others were always cared for. Often times to her own detriment. But that's a whole other session...
Anyway, I was thinking about how cool it would have been to see my dad play baseball during the peak of his skills and glory. As a kid, I played catch with him but I was always terrified in the early days, as he threw the ball exceedingly fast. He also often threw grounders at my knees and ankles. I think he was trying to get me to move for the ball. And he was teaching me to lose my fear of getting hit. I was a late bloomer with stuff like this. But I eventually caught on. I used to watch him playing catch with my uncles. They were also very good baseball players. It was amazing to me how hard and accurate they could throw. But I don't remember ever seeing my dad hit. And this was what he did best, according to the stories from all my relatives. He won a few batting titles and, for a while, held the home run record in his league. I would have loved to have been able to witness that.
He also had great stories about black teams during the late 1940s that used to just show up in his town and challenge the local teams to game. I believe this was called Barn Storming? They would charge admission for a doubleheader, take a cut of the profits, and then move onto the next town. Sounds pretty dangerous during those times to me, no? In any regard, my dad had such great stories when describing the skills and tallents of those players. He said that the black teams always beat the hell out of the home teams. They were that good. He said they were "so fluid" - the way they caught and threw the ball. So effortless, I guess. And then he would make a motion with his shoulders and arms, kind of like doing "the wave."
Yeah. So, I guess, if I had a time machine, instead of going back and stopping the Kennedy assassination or killing Hitler as a baby or whatever the hell you are supposed to do to right history, I would simply love to go back to say, the summer of 1961, sit next to my mom and watch any single one of my dad's baseball games. This is first on my list.
Here's a picture that I found on the web that looks nearly identical to my dad's old baseball glove. It was such a relic to me. It might as well have belonged to Caesar. For some reason, he just never wanted to buy himself a new one. Whenever we played catch, this was the glove that he always used.
