Baseball

Ah, the timeless sport of baseball. Eight kids at home all summer, we divided ourselves into groups; generally, but not always, age wise. The five on the top end tended to hang together, likewise the three younger ones formed a group of their own. Our cousins down the road did the same, and three of them were around our age. Plenty enough kids to play baseball all day long. My older siblings Pat and Mike, myself, two younger brothers Paul and Joe, cousins Mike, Bob and Jerilynn.

Baseball was a pretty big deal. We watched the Twins on TV on game nights, after racing home on our bikes from our own wins and losses. I had a hand-me-down glove, but my brothers' carefully hoarded money went toward purchasing baseballs, bats and gloves. We saved the baseball cards that came with the bubblegum we bought, and studied the stats on the backs, quizzed each other on them. Pat and Mike had it all down, and couldn't be stumped.

We started out playing at the Wilson town hall, which was a converted one room schoolhouse back in it's heyday, complete with still standing outhouse, out back. Home plate was the front entrance, and since the building sat at a diagonal on the lot, the shape was just naturally conducive to a baseball diamond. Second base being the corner where the north/south and east/west dirt roads crossed. The outfield was, well, anything past that. It was a good place to play, we thought.

One day someone cracked a pop-up foul, hard, up and arcing backwards just perfectly enough to smash through the transom window high above the door. Dang. When Dad got home from work, he said we'd have to call Curtis, who was on the town hall board (and by the way, was also the one who paid us for trapping gophers during the soft ground months), tell him we'd broken the window and would pay for the repair. We looked up his number in the phone book; there was some discussion over who would call, and some anxious conversation over how much it might cost to fix it. We hashed it over a bit - maybe $5? What if it's $20? We'd certainly all have to chip in, and gopher money only went so far. I've got to believe Curtis got a pretty good chuckle out of that phone call. My older brother Mike did the phoning duty, and then afterwards reported that Curtis didn't seem mad at all. In fact he said we wouldn't have to pay for it, and said he was glad we'd called and told him. Huh.

A couple years went by, and we graduated to a better ballpark. My brothers used our lawn mower to mow a ball field into the meadow across from our house. It was one of those things where if they'd asked Dad beforehand, he'd have said no, but since they went ahead and did it without asking, he got a chuckle out of it when he saw it, and it was fine after that. They made a darn fine backstop behind home plate, a fancy thing made of woven wire (readily available on a farm) and two by fours set upright into the ground, and they cut in all the base lines. It was a mighty nice play to play, almost professional like, with the real backstop and all. Wait - who is that stepping up to home plate? Is it...? Could it be...? Harmon Killebrew, just about to crack out another mile long home run? Nope, it's 11 year old Mary Ellen, leaning in to bang out a very bad, bobbling, bouncing double, and drive in a run. Yaaay!! The crowd roars...!

We played all summer, every summer, for a long time. I wonder when we played our last game, all those years ago. Whenever it was - I'm glad I didn't know it was our last.