Today, I was detoured down some backstreets and happened to pass by some old baseball fields that my son used to play on when he was in Little League. It was around noon and the five fields lay dormant, not a player or game in sight. It got me to thinking about my youth, when I was growing up in Kenmore, New York. At high noon, on any day when there was no school, those fields would have been packed with yelling, screaming and laughing hordes of players of all shapes and sizes. We never let a free moment go by without walking to the sandlot and getting a pickup game going. All we had to do, was, as you most likely have heard before, “Be home before the streetlights go on.” We played and played and played, always dreaming of making the big leagues, where we could play this game every day and get paid for it. Sadly, those dreams never came true. Even more sad, as I witnessed today, is the question of, “Where did all those pickup games go?” Surely someone must want to play. As has been quoted from Field of Dreams, “Build it and they will come.” Well, Ray, they did build them. It just seems that everyone stopped coming. How did that happen and where did those dreams go? I think I just may know the answer.
Those sandlots are vacant because we simply let them get away from us. The pickup game of baseball has given way to organized leagues, traveling leagues, leagues where you have to drive to play another team. The kids in the neighborhood are scattered through traveling leagues, elite teams, teams comprised of the best talent from the area. Gone are the teams from the neighborhood, replaced by teams of superstars, chasing the dream. Gone is the bucolic nature of a pickup game where everyone gets to play pretty much every position and everyone is a star. (At least in his or her own mind.) Score was kept, but standings did not exist. We played nine inning games, 3 or 4 games a day, so slumps were pretty much impossible. You might have a bad game, but there was another game coming right up, if not today, then certainly tomorrow. You would pick up your glove and your battered wooden bat, hope you could find that ball you hit in the weeds and be ready for the next game tomorrow. That is where the sandlot game went. It left us while we looking away.
My greatest baseball memory played out on one of those wonderful sandlots. Our neighborhood team was truly a neighborhood team. We were made up of kids who lived no further than 4 blocks away and were coached by my best friend,Skip”s dad. My father, a doughnut baker, was the sponsor and we were always rewarded with doughnuts after every game. (Win or lose.) Since my dad was a baker, he rarely could get to every game as he had to be to work early, but on this day, he was there, doughnut boxes in hand. My ambition was always to play center field for the Detroit Tigers. I was not a great hitter, I batted right and threw left, a rarity in the sport. However, I was fast and actually enjoyed playing the outfield more than hitting. (It might explain why I could never make even my junior high team.) I loved to chase down fly balls and then “double up” a runner who never believed I would catch that hard-hit ball. I was quick back then and had already figured out how to track the path of a ball, so I was a starter and usually played left field, where most of the hits in our league seemed to go.
Another plus for playing sandlot baseball is that your team practices were actually just more supervised versions of what you did every day. One big difference, was that our coach would always tell me to “Back up third base on all throws” and would holler at me if I did not. After a bunch of hollering, I got to the point where it became a habit and all throws to third base would see me running to be certain any wayward toss would come my way. And on that special day, all my practice and all that hollering paid off.
It was the bottom of the last inning and we were leading Knabb Brothers Construction 10-9. Our pitcher was tiring, but we had two outs, even though there were runners on first and second. Tension was running high because our pitcher, Dave, was not himself and we really did not have anyone else on the team who could pitch. He had to finish, he was only one out away from victory. The opposing team seized on opportunity and attempted to conduct a double steal with both runners taking off as soon as Dave delivered the pitch. It was wide left and our catcher, Jimmy, grabbed it and sure enough, tried to throw out the lead runner, who, by that time was about 5 feet from third base. From my training and all that hollering, I was sprinting as fast as I could toward third base, gaining ground on the bag and watching the play unfold in front of me. Sure enough, the throw was high, too high for our third baseman to catch and the ball sailed high over his head….right into my glove. Since I was running at full speed all I had time to do was to wind up and throw as hard as I could toward home, trusting that Jimmy would be there, blocking the plate. He was. The ball bounced once, about 3 feet in front of Jimmy. He tagged out the totally surprised runner, who did not even attempt to slide, (after all, who would be backing up third base anyway?) He was out by 5 feet and the crowd, all 50 of them, went crazy. I kept right on running and was mobbed, along with Jimmy, by our team, our coaches and a few folks who had scampered down from the stands. All I remember is telling coach that “See, I backed up third!” Mr Nies simply smiled and said, “I knew you would be there.” How could I not? He had drilled that play into me for over 4 months. We won that game on that tiny and remote sandlot over 50 years ago and I still remember it as if it were yesterday. That memory remains, as well as all of those games on the dusty sandlots of my hometown. Where have the those sandlots gone? They have retreated to the recesses of our minds, where we can replay those games over and over again….as long as we are home before the streetlights flicker on.
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