Boy(s) of Summer(?)

I was 6, give or take. I was in my backyard. The girl from the end of the block was there. She was a few years older. Her brother was there too, and he was older yet, probably in high school. I don’t remember their names.

She called me Ralph.

My name is not, and has never been, Ralph.

Anyway, we were in my backyard, with a plastic bat, and a plastic ball. It was about softball-sized, hollow, but no holes in it like a Wiffle ball.

I remember the scene vividly, because he hit the ball into the air, and I caught it, with my bare hands. It stung my fingertips. It was the first time I’d ever caught a batted ball.

I think a lot about memory. Part of it is wondering what my kindergartner will remember. But a lot of it is just, you know, remembering. I have a pretty good memory dating back to a fairly young age. I can envision a lot of composite scenes from specific locations, like playing Munch Man in my grandmother’s office, but I don’t remember a single specific instance of that.

Baseball, though, that’s different. I can picture a lot of composite moments, but also an incredible number of very specific moments. Some of them were crazy, like when I got hit in the eye in center field on a bad hop, or when a kid from the other team struck out and managed to score on the same play. But some of them were almost mundane. I remember specific pitches. Sure, I have a lot of other photographic recollections. But there was something about baseball. Every little piece was important.

It wasn’t just that I liked baseball. I think, in my mind, baseball was kind of like school. It was a thing that was done. You played it, you watched it, you talked about it, and inbetween, you even collected it, in the form of cards. And the details were important, because baseball is a game of details.

I had rooting interests in teams, of course. Growing up in Rockford, we were somehow allowed to consider multiple teams to be our home teams, and there was this interesting little run in the early ‘80s where all of those teams did something special. The Brewers went to the World Series in 1982, the White Sox went to the playoffs in 1983, the Cubs went to the playoffs in 1984. Even the Cardinals were somehow local. And so we followed them all. It was always easiest to see the Cubs but we could also see a lot of White Sox and Brewers games on Channel 39. I know most people just gravitated one way or another, but because I was so into baseball, and not just any one team, I simply had multiple favorite teams, and also multiple favorite players from all over the league. I cheered for teams. But mostly I cheered for baseball.

That level of interest only increased over time. I collected more and more cards. I had a subscription to Baseball Weekly when I was in grade school. Rockford got a minor league team - an Expos affiliate - and we want to a lot of games.

By “we” I especially mean my cousin and I. He was into baseball as much as I was. We’d play in my grandparents’ backyard, usually with a Wiffle ball. (That’s where I would not only bat lefty, but in particular like Cecil Cooper. And that’s also where we learned how to throw a slider - the way the Wiffle ball box told us to.) He was 3 years behind me but we both played out at Roy Gayle, so he was at my games, and I was at his games. I even wound up being an assistant coach on his team. (I also wrote a program in Turbo Pascal to keep track of statistics for his team. That sentence is true.) I can’t tell you how many games of Baseball Stars we played. (If you were way into Baseball Stars too… take a look at my avatar, and see if it rings a bell.)

Alas, eventually, my level of interest waned. When I was 12, I was in Bronco ball, and I was good. I should have been on the All-Star team. A year later, I was in Pony ball, and I’d managed to get dumpy instead of growing like other guys. My coach that year was pretty well checked out. I was given a uniform without a number on the back. I kept track, and I had 33 plate appearances that year. I got all of one hit. But I walked 23 times. It was a bizarre year.

The next year was my last. It always took me half a season to really get in a groove, and at the Pony level, you’re just not given that much time. I wasn’t quite so overmatched overall, but… one example will suffice. A guy I knew was on another team. He could, at age 13, throw the baseball 83 miles an hour. How the hell was I supposed to hit that? (He did pretty well for himself, by the way. As in, World Series ring good.)

By 14, I was already in high school, and had a lot of other interests I hadn’t had before. Football has actually displaced baseball as the #1 sport I followed. Basketball - thanks to the Jordan-era Bulls - might have been #2. Baseball was still strong for a while, but it had lost its place on the pedestal. And then, as it so happened, the year I graduated high school and went off to college was 1994, the year of the baseball strike. By the time I turned 18, baseball was just not all that present in my life.

Over the course of the next 20 years, I still watched the Series, I still followed mostly passively, but not remotely like when I was young. A couple of times I wound up at Wrigley as part of some kind of work function, but… “work function” kind of sums that up. I cut the cable cord in 2005. That still let me watch most football games, but almost no baseball games until playoff time. That’s just how it was.

Slowly, though, the tide has turned back. A few years ago, I latched onto a 16 inch softball team. Just being on a field and swinging a bat - even at a monstrosity of a ball - brought me back closer to baseball. I started getting sick of football - for a lot of reasons - and now it is at the point where I don’t watch it at all. The Cubs went to the World Series, so everybody was talking baseball again. And I decided, what the hell, it was time to embrace a team, because a man in his 40s simply needs to wear a hat outside sometimes, okay? (I decided to go White Sox. Maybe some other day I’ll go into the White Sox decision.)

I admit that it feels strange, maybe even counterproductive, at a time when our country is such a dumpster fire, when the planet is in such dire straits, to be re-embracing baseball.

But I don’t feel like baseball is something which is pushing aside loftier concerns. I feel like it’s something that gives me some peace, and something which helps keeps me connected with people. I also feel like it’s something my son and I can share, and that’s a pretty big deal to me.

In a couple of years, is he going to be telling me what’s going on with the Sox? Will he actually listen to me telling him about Tony Gwynn or Jose Canseco or Thad Bosley or god knows what else?

Will baseball be for him similar to what it was for me - not just a game but something more? (Or, maybe, will soccer be his baseball? Ahh but there’s a separate discussion in here, one I’ll save when I start having more stories about being an assistant soccer coach for 5 year olds.)

I admit to some surprise at coming back around to baseball like this. There are so many articles all the time about what’s wrong with the game. The games are too long. There are too many home runs. You name it. But the game itself still retains its allure. Even playing 16” softball - and even doing so rather poorly - retains allure.

Have I become a boy of summer again? Can my son be a boy of summer too? Is this something we can choose to do? Or does baseball somehow choose us?

I’m not really sure. But look for me around town with a Sox hat on. (Or - sometimes - an Expos hat, because it’s awesome.) Ask me what I think is up with the playoffs, I’ll have answers. And I’ll tell you stories from the old days, if you badly want to hear them. Hopefully you’ll have stories of your own.

Just please: don’t call me Ralph.