Buffalo, NY, where I grew up,
wasn’t a huge baseball town. While there were the minor league Bisons, my
family never got too excited about the game as we would have had we lived in,
say, Brooklyn, with “dem bums.” My brothers were more into other sports, like
swimming. Still, I remember a few crisp fall days when the crack of a bat could
be heard from a radio set in the window of our house while we raked leaves.
During the 1956 World Series, one
of my college professors put away his prepared lecture for the day in order to
listen to Don Larsen’s history-making perfect game.
But it wasn’t until the day my
eyes lit on a red-haired ex-airman who was filling in at second base for our
church team, though, that I decided there was a bit more to the game. I stayed
pretty close to the bench that year and even learned how to keep score. That
strategy paid off and in time, we ended up almost forming our own team, missing
only a shortstop.
Like my own family, our kids
weren’t really sold on baseball, although the boys all played a bit of Little
League (with Dad coaching) and our daughter Anne actually played in a women’s
league after college. Anne was a chip off the old block. She never felt a game
was complete unless she finished it bloodied and victorious. I got pretty good
at taking care of those long brush burns caused by sliding into second. Pat
also continued to play in our city’s “beer league.” He and a couple of buddies
were known as the “Tinker to Evers to Chance” of North Tonawanda.
In 1994, we moved to Cleveland
for the second time in four years. Our
first time around, I’d been introduced to major league ball and how much fun it
was to be in the stands on a summer day. There was now a new ballpark called “The
Jake” and we were excited about our adopted team, the Cleveland Indians. But
alas, our excitement that year was cut short by a general strike in mid-August,
just shy of the end of the season.
At the beginning of the next
year, people were slow to start coming to The Jake. When our entire family visited
Cleveland for a little reunion, we were easily able to snag sixteen tickets in
the Upper Deck. It was July 18 and in the bottom of the ninth, the Indians were
down 5-2. With two out, Albert Belle stepped to the plate and uncorked a Grand
Slam home run. The place went crazy and from then on, tickets became as scarce
as hens’ teeth. Occasionally, there were
more Indian’s fans in the Detroit Stadium than there were Tiger’s fans. Those were the good old days, when the
batting lineup stayed pretty much stable throughout the season. I probably
could still recite it by heart, or come close to it.
For Christmas 2001, my son
Patrick presented me with a book of haiku-like poetry called “Memories of My
Mother and Family.” He knows me well.
A warm summer night
with
an old friend at her side,
She
cheers the boys of summer
leaving
her voice at The Jake.
We’ve had a few lean years, baseball-wise,
here in Cleveland, but things do seem to be picking up slightly. A bit of the old magic is in the air as I
write this. Keep your fingers crossed, your radio/TV/iPad tuned in and Go
Tribe!
