Part V Little League And Big Dreams

The smell of freshly cut grass, the roar of the crowd, a birdseye view of the action from right field, and the feeling of butterflies in the tummy. The best sensory description I have for my little league baseball days. I was for the first several years of my little league career one of the worst players in Wood River peanut league history. It was hard to concentrate what was going on a hundred feet from me while there were so many interesting bees buzzing aroung my feet and head. I was the right fielder which is the little league's equivalent of special ed. Every half intelligent coach put their biggest embarassment out in right field and usually kept them there. I was just proud to be part of the team. I do believe it was this humiliation that led me to hone my baseball skills as the years passed. I think all in all there were maybe three attempts to field a ball per year in right field and I would manage to blow at least two of them. I could see the other fielders doing it with ease, but with my lack of practice and natural coordination left me scratching my head as to how they could do it. It was time for a change that is for sure. I wanted my name in lights. I wanted other players to fear me and other coaches to recruit me. I began by playing catch with my Dad and my older brother. My younger brother was only good for target practice at this point. I then found out that there were a lot of kids in our new neighboorhood that really liked to play and so I became steadily better at the game.

As I learned more about the game I decided that the best position to have for people to notice me was Pitcher. I would practice hours and hours to hit targets that I had set up or marks that I had drawn on a school house wall. I would throw at the targets until my arm was near death. My aim was great when there was no batter in the box that was a fact. I would throw to the catcher in practice flawlessly. It was the second game of the season and I was so ready for my debut. I had butterflies in my stomach as I faced that first batter. I knew that immortality was not far away and the days of fearing that ex-right fielder were about to begin. I was also only moments away from making some enemies. I faced a few batters with no problem, but somewhere I lost my rhythm and began to hit every other batter with a pitch. I was not prepared to fail at this so I would bear down even more and throw even harder. The cries of pain got louder and the parents in the stands began to voice their objections. I soon sat on the bench dejected. I would never be allowed to pitch again I thought. We pitchers that had better control, but most assuredly I was the most accurate without a batter. My accuracy led me to a position at third base for a time. I rarely missed a throw and even rarer a ground ball. It was during this time that I developed a rather good eye in the batters box and moved swiftly up the batting order until I held the number two spot. I was a swift and smart runner which helped as well. I only had one problem and that was my loud mouth. I would get frustrated with the other team members and voice my objections. I would also get a little mouthy with other coaches from time to time. The right fielder was no longer a push over on the field and it was not a good thing. I had several occasions where I even got into arguements with other kid's parents. I remember a time where I called time out and walked over to the fence, pointed at one of the mom's and told her to shut her fat mouth. My mom was mortified and I paid for that one almost immediately as my mom told the coach to bench me at the end of the inning.

In little league I played for the Cubs which in major league ball I hated and on the school yard I played for the Dodgers. I would take the name of the major league player according to each position that I played. I became a big fan of Steve Yeager who was catching for the Los Angeles Dodgers at that time. My dad began to coach the little league team that I was on so I had access to the catcher's equipment and would carry it to the school yard so that I could be Steve Yeager too. It was at this position that I learned the importance of protective equipment for the genitals. The repeated lessons that I learned about this may have been why it took so long to grow hair there. My brothers, the neighboorhood friends and I would head up to the school yard early in the morning, return for watering, and then play until we had been called for dinner at least five times. We would also play wiffle ball in the back yard of our house which was the main reason why no grass grew in the back yard for years and years. Every night the bathtub would be black from all the dirt we would collect during the day. I am not sure if there were any days outside of the rainy days when we did not look like coal miners when we walked back in from playing outside. We grew up north of St. Louis, Missouri so you had to be a Cardinal fan or since we were in Illinois you had the option to be a Chicago Cub fan. It was a great rivalry that has gone on for years and years. The kids in the neighborhood were both Cardinal and Cub fans so being a fan of neither I would usually stir up a good old fashioned fist fight from time to time between them. I stopped playing baseball after little league and never picked it up again. I did however become obsessed with softball from the age of sixteen into my late twenties.