Yesterday, my son Sid and I had two outings playing catch. The first time he was waiting for his guitar lesson. The second was at our favorite park, Aldine Park.
Today, his throws, at his stage of development, are starting to pop in my glove like the big kids. As we threw, some smaller kids where getting what might be their first instruction in tee-ball. Looking at them, he asked me if it brought back fond memories. I told him no. My fondest memories, these days, are of the most recent throws and catches he makes.
I was not sure if he was talking about his tee-ball days. I think he was talking about mine. It was more than 40 years ago. I remember a few vivid images. Nostalgia. True fun.
I remember hitting a lot of triples--never daring to make the turn to home plate for a home run, even though it was unlikely that our opponents would make the throw and catch and tag to get me out. Heads-up baserunning is a good skill, totally lost on tee-ball.
I remember the day dad took off from work to come see me play.
I was eager to show him what I could do. I remember the disappointments that came with each at bat. A double each time. I was trying so hard. Too hard.
I was competing against myself. The concept of competitiveness was as lost as the skill of mindful base running--somewhere in the hapless play of primary schoolers. That day, I know I could and had done better. And dad did not see. But he knew.
I do not think anyone kept score. We all won, running on and off the field in our 7-Up shirts, the back of which I had inked with my last name, just like some of the professional players. Likely, I had a Twins hat slightly askew on my head and the black glove given to me by my Uncle Alvin--the same glove that my son and I, along with some friends and family, took with us to a park near grandma and grandpa's to play catch and hot box.
The year after tee-ball, I would take the same glove to little league where I would play first base most of the time. I was assigned first base because I was one of the few kids who could catch with confidence--my own confidence and that of the coach and team mates.
Maybe I am a little nostalgic. Or maybe that's just baseball.
I think of those summer days. I think of my son, who has a different relationship with baseball that is marked by things like the day, as an eight-year-old, when a pop up dropped intentionally, so it seemed, untouched in the infield. He turned to the "umpire" asking, with dismay, "What about the infield fly rule?" Of course I hoped he would catch the ball. Instead, I had a very good laugh--a laugh that reverberates when I see Major Leaguers who forget the concept.
I am waiting for Sid to give me the complete definition of a balk, and a lot of other things that have to do with baseball and things that have to do with life, love and the pieces of each of those that are truly important.
How good of a learner am I?
How much do I long for the tee-ball days? Maybe you should ask me the next time Sid's Second baseman's arm zings a shot into my waiting glove.
Maybe Sid is nostalgic, the summer before he leaves grade school to jump fully into the ranks of the junior highers with whom he is already taking math class. He and I know that being a kid is hard. Some days, nostagia makes us forget. Or we can escape the memories or the present day, lost inside a game of catch.
On an early October afternoon in 1951, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ great Jackie Robinson stood alone in the infield, hands on hips as New York Giants slugger Bobby Thompson circled the bases. Most interpreted this as dejection, maybe a sign of his competitive nature, unsettled with the idea of loss. Dejected, maybe. Competitive, yes. Competing to win, and competing for one of many spots in sports and American history.
That year, the New York Giants (yes, the same Giants who are now in San Francisco—or really the same business entity) won the National League Pennant. This may mean little to many of the readers who are not connoisseurs of baseball history. Apart from the drama of the season being decided on its last pitch with a home run and that it was the first baseball moment to be dubbed “The Shot Heard 'Round the World,” there is enough American history buried in that moment to describe more about us as Americans than the celebration of a home run.
If you know baseball history—or are even a 1950s nostalgia buff, you may be familiar with sports broadcaster Russ Hodges' famous call, “The Giants won the pennant! The Giants won the pennant! The Giants won the pennant!” heralding baseball's first “shot” the call that told baseball fan's around the globe of Bobby Thompson's home run that won the game and the National League pennant for the Giants.
What Thompson did is the ultimate in game-ending drama. This event particularly marks baseball history because that season, the Giants trailed the Brooklyn Dodgers (yes, the same Dodgers who would sneak out of town to Los Angeles) by 13½ games going into the last month of the season. They tied the Dodgers in the standings on the last day of the season, winning their last 16 games. But this is little more than a prologue for the story.
A field day could be had by anyone student of statistics and probability. Unfortunately, attention to statistics was not particularly de rigueur in sports at that time, and came a little late for the Dodgers.
The Dodger's Charlie Dressen managed by the seat of his pants, more so than most in this era without number crunching. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Dressen brought in Ralph Branca to pitch to Bobby Thompson with two runners on base and the Dodgers leading by two runs.
If Dressen had paid attention to statistics, he would have known this; Branca had given up few home runs that season, a plus. He also would have known that even though he had given up few home runs, most of the home runs he gave up were to the Giants, and none more than to Bobby Thompson.
But Bobby hit a looping fly that, in any other stadium than the Polo Grounds of New York City, would have fallen harmlessly into the left fielder's glove for an out, or would have curved into the seats as a foul, leaving another chance for either a hit or an out. Instead, it was history and the crowd went wild.
I said, though, that this was an event of SOCIAL significance, that brought a single joy to some New Yorkers and a hefty playoff bonus to the guys in black and orange instead of instead of the Dodger Blue.
Jackie Robinson, who a few years before, broke the color line in modern baseball was just one of a host of baseball greats on each team.
The Giant's team included great players like Monte Irvin, among the first of the African American players in the major leagues. Ray Dandridge was not playing for the Giants. He was playing for the Minneapolis Millers, a Giants farm club at the time. He was playing in the minor leagues even though he was widley recognized as the best third baseman in the Giants organization, and maybe in all of North American baseball.
Why did the Giants not have Ray Dandridge with them with the big club?
The Giants ownership said that they never gave Dandridge a shot at the big leagues because they did not want to deprive the good fans of Minneapolis of such a great talent. Was it better to deprive the world? Was it better to deprive the greatest compilation of baseball players in the world of one of its finest talents? Was it better to deprive a great player of the ultimate dream of playing in the Major Leagues?
Dandridge was a star of not only the American Association, with which the Minneapolis Millers were associated. He was also a star in the Negro Leagues and the Mexican League. While the color barrier was broken years earlier by Jackie Robinson, the wall was not totally broken. The National League of Major League baseball was more aggressive than the American League in enlisting the talents of Black players. This included the Giants and, of course, the trend-setting Dodgers. What tends not to be spoken of is the reason Dandridge was not with the Giants in New York; at the time, the Giants had five Black players with the Major League club, an unspoke "gentlemen's agreement betwen owners and executivesof the quota allowed, and five was all they would have.
Dandridge would not be called up.
What if...
What would the season look like if the Giants had the best third baseman with the squad for the entire season? It likely would have saved the baseball world from the last-pitch-of-the-season dramatics. Maybe. A different relief pitcher. A “normally” configured ball park. Maybe.
As Russ Hodges called out "The Giants won the pennant! The Giants won the pennant! The Giants won the pennant! The Giants won the pennant!" as the crowd went crazy, as hundreds of thousands erupted in pandemonium in the streets, homes, schools and bars of New York City—everywhere except Brooklyn and the pockets of fans devoted to the Blue (like little Doris Kearns [Goodwin] and her dear father), Jackie Robinson stood as an island of quiet and composure.
The photos are famous. Jackie Robinson, standing in the infield, hands on hips, somehow sensing that in the middle of the pandemonium, the story was not over.
Some fans jumped out of the stands and onto the field in celebration. Most of the Dodgers ran off of the field to avoid the assault of celebration. Ralph Branca walked slowly, trying not to get run over by the gleeful Giant traffic. In the tornadic frenzy, Robinson stood at his post, watching to be sure Thompson touched each base.
Inside baseball fans and players know the drill. If Thompson misses a base, the home run is nullified. If he touches all the bases, the game is over and the Giants win. What Robinson realizes is that even if he does not touch all the bases, and if all the Dodgers leave the field, effectively conceding the game, it is also over and the Giants win.
Thompson is mobbed as he touches home plate. Russ Hodges' voice rings out from the broadcast booth and over the airwaves. Robinson waits, watches, attends to the last hope for the Dodgers and leaves the field only after the last punctuation at home plate.
Moments of quiet dignity: something required of most Black players of the era. It is why Henry Aaron will always command a kind of respect that Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds will never achieve. It should remind us that Babe Ruth , (Pittsburgh Steelers' quarterback) Ben Rothlesberger, and Ty Cobb continue to receive relatively big passes for their behavior and Barry Bonds, (NFL quarterback) Michael Vick and Manny Ramirez will not.
But no one was thinking of the social significance, the fate against probabilities or the disappointment of little Doris Kearns and her father in the Brooklyn borough as Bobby Thompson rounded the bases to beat the Dodgers, 5-4, and ignited Russ Hodges' famous call. The Yankees would go on to win the World Series in six games, the other of the three New York teams, to much less fanfare and hoopla. It would be their third in a row, another notch in their entitlement of purchased sense of superiority.
Today, we do not talk about the 1951 World Champion Yankees. We talk about that October day in 1951 and Bobby Thompson and “The Shot.” And we should. We should also remember all the heroes of that day and those who toiled conspicuously and in obscurity and dignity—and who made history as surely as the stars of the show.
*For more historically and socially significant information about this event, see Past Time: Baseball As History, “The Shot Heard 'Round the World,” by Jules Tygiel, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Special thanks to David Unowsky and Mel Duncan for helping me (and countless others) form the thoughts around this event.
I am currently involved in a residency working with 1st and 2nd graders at L’Etoile du Nord French Immersion school in St. Paul and Scandia Elementary. They have enthusiastic minds and show it in their writing. This project is one sponsored by the East Metro Integration District (EMID). EMID creates classroom partnerships between schools in St. Paul and east suburban and exurban districts “to address the educational issues resulting from dramatic demographic changes and inequities among school age children.” This office has been doing important work during its history, work that is currently the target of legislative cuts. Hopefully, this valuable tool will continue into the future.
What I share below is a poem generated by the work of these kids, facilitated by poet Julia Klatt Singer.
It is National Poetry Month, and I have begun work with 1st and 2nd graders at schools in Scandia, Minnesota and St. Paul. Or I should say that I get to follow these young students on their poetry exploration.
Poet Julia Klatt Singer (http://oeuvremagazine.org/words/poetry/julia-klatt-singer/?3991b560) led the children in a discussion about what poetry is. Even as a “responsible adult” in this residency, I am still unsure of how I would add to this discussion. I am at least humbled relative to what my input could be compared to the thoughts these kids from St. Paul's French immersion school, L'Etoile du Nord,and Scandia Elementary.
This is a chance for kids to learn from esteemed artists like Julia. It is a chance for the kids from St. Paul and Scandia to learn from each other. It is a chance for me and my colleagues to learn from these kids.
I am trying hard to not come to a clear and definite definition of poetry, but, as one 1st grader from L'Etoile du Nord put in—in a usage of English that is definitely influenced by the language constructions of French convention, “(Poems) can create you to have different emotions.”
She is right. They are also good if they are easy to dance to, but she has it right.
I had a deja vu moment this morning as I bit into a piece of chicken that was left over from last night's dinner.
The bite of chicken was a memory flash as brilliant as the memories invoked by our sense of smell. It was a memory from childhood and like so many, it was fond, but the realities behind it are less pleasant.
At first taste, I was brought back to a two-lane highway, somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon line on a very hot summer day when all of us, the whole family of six, were glad to be out of the confined quarters of the station wagon, even to be baked by the sun at the picnic table of a wayside rest.
Years ago, I had the opportunity to spend some time in my son's fourth grade class. One day, I pulled read-out-loud-to-the-class duty. The book was The Watsons go to Birmingham—1963 (Bantam, Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers, 1995) by Christopher Paul Curtis. I read the scene of the Watsons' trip south to visit grandparents. As I read, I felt as if I were reading the story of the trips that our family took most summers of my childhood to New Orleans.
The Watsons took cold fried chicken with them. They ate out of their cooler. Not in restaurants.
Most African Americans of a certain age whose families traveled know this drill. Cold fried chicken, because it will keep for the long haul. It is cheaper than most other things that could be packed and much cheaper than buying meals on the road. On a hot summer day, with a can of soda to chase it down, it is delightful passing the lips. We didn't know—or care that other people were stopping into a local diner to be served their bite to eat.
As kids, we didn't really know that those road-side diners existed because my father was not going to bring his family into one, especially one south the the Mason-Dixon.
When we, or most other African American families, traveled, we packed provisions because there was no guarantee that we would be welcome in any establishment; that basket of chicken was vital. So were the wayside rests where we knew we could stop. Regardless of whether other people were happy we were there, they had little authority to tell us to leave.
Even today—especially today, people take for granted public accommodations. (Certain political ideologies are not keep on paying for them, those most associated with dispositions that will have little trouble being welcome at every place to eat.) Some of us know that there are just places we cannot go, are not allowed or where we must at least endure the hot glares on the backs of our necks in order to do things as simple as use a restroom or eat at a restaurant. There are places in this country that are tacitly declared off limits. Those places are closer and far more numerous than most of us, even I, are willing to admit.
Our trips to New Orleans were to visit grandma and grandpa. On most of our trips to the south, we stopped in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. It was close to the midway on the two-day trip to the Mississippi delta. There was a more important reason for stopping there for the night. Past this point, we were entering the American South, where we could not be sure which establishments would “have a vacancy” for US. Would mother and father be able to find a place that would welcome our patronage?
We were kids. We looked forward to the hotel stay. We looked forward to Cape Girardeau, where we knew we would get our treat, a motel stay almost as wonderful as the two or three weeks we would spend at grandma and grandpa's. The stories of danger and trepidation that lie just off the thoroughfare were just stories that were tucked neatly in a package of lore that we should not forget, cautionary tales to be heeded by little black children, but that we should not fret about, because we were just children and we were on vacation to grandma and grandpa's.
Meanwhile, my father worried, only slightly as a wise and brave protector. My mother worried, because that is the job of mothers. We set worry aside, opened the cooler and pulled out the cold fried chicken and maybe potato salad. We jumped from bed to bed until mother said, “You kids are driving me crazy,” and “Get in the tub,” and wondered when the motel staff would bring the folding bed for the younger siblings.
Soon, we would be in New Orleans. We would eat well and mostly forget how wonderful the cold chicken seemed. We would have a mountain of red soda (or cold drink, as they called it) that grandma tried to make as big as her of love that could more than fill the Gulf of Mexico. We ran around in the sweltering heat of the city, again only slightly aware of the dangers that lurked in the craziness of that place and which mother and father tucked away in their own childhood memories.
