Ballplayin' days

In my parents’ neighborhood, when I was growing up, we were always playing whatever sport was in season.

In my Father’s Day post, I wrote about our rotating basketball games, for example.

In terms of other sports, there were three large vacant lots that usually served as our host ‘field’ for football games in the fall and baseball in the summer.

Honestly, we had enough guys roughly my age to field two full baseball teams if everyone showed up for a game. And of our three sandlot choices, our favorite, by far, was the corner lot just up the street from where I lived.

The field was perfectly shaped for a baseball field (with some adaptation, it worked well for football too). In terms of baseball, there was a perfect spot for a home plate near one edge of the lot. You can see the layout of the field (albeit with lots of mature trees now) in this photo my sister recently snapped. Home plate was located at the spot where the little tree is situated in the middle of the frame.

Down the right field line, there was a slope, which was designated as 'foul territory.’ (That’s in the shaded area at the right of the frame).

Down the third base side of the field, extending down the left field line, was a street (you can see the edge of that road in the left part of the frame, and, as an aside it came into play in another sport. Once, during football season, I was tackled into that foul territory and let’s just say that play was one argument against playing tackle football without pads!).

At the edge of the street, there was a stop sign that served as our left field foul pole. I remember we all cheered the day one of our guys actually nailed the foul pole between the 'o’ and the 'p.’ Players from both teams ooh’d and ahh’d as the stop sign (er foul pole) vibrated back and forth.

The stop sign indicated an intersection between streets, of course, and if you made a right turn at the corner, you were traveling along the edge of home run territory (you can see it off in the distance). Any ball that hit the street, on the fly, was considered to be a home run; a ball that rolled into the street, naturally, was a 'ground rule double.’

When we first started playing some more serious sandlot baseball in this corner lot, it was rare that anyone hit a home run. I guess we were about 10 at the time. But by age 11 and 12, we started hitting home runs with regularity.

I remember trotting around the bases with pride after some of my more prodigious jacks. Many of my fellow ballplayers were also hitting homers from time to time.

Then, came the summer most of us turned 13. By that summer, we weren’t just hitting home runs into the street, we were hitting them over the street.

One night, my good friend Steve Martin - not the comedian - stepped to the plate and he really got a hold of one. His home run kept carrying and kept carrying. At first we all admired the big fly but after a while, admiration transformed into apprehension.

The ball kept carrying and kept carrying. The 'oh no’ moment happened when the home run landed on the front porch of the house across the street and announced its arrival with a bumpity crash as it one-hopped the front door.

(You can see that door - the little white rectangle in the distance toward the left - in my sister’s pic.)

Fortunately, no windows were shadowed. But we all held our breath for the inexorable consequences.

Remember the dad I mentioned with the 'click click click’ of the shoes when he arrived home from work? Not only was he the owner of the best basketball court in the land, but he was also the owner of the vacant lot baseball field. 

He heard the 'bam’ coming from across the street and he began to make his way out to the pitcher’s mound, like a manager who had seen one hard hit ball too many and was therefore ready to make a pitching change.

The change he would make, of course, wasn’t just about pitchers.

“Boys,” he said, in his usual dry cadence, “your ballplayin’ days are over.”

I guess it was common sense that our near miss on Steve’s prodigious shot should’ve signalled the need for us to move our baseball games to more formal fields. And, really, he made the right call.

But, still, it was the end of an era.

No more bat tossing to choose teams. No more ghost runners or banning hits to right field when there weren’t enough players to run the bases or play the field. No more line drives off the foul pole.

And for us kids, it signaled a transition of another sort. Pretty soon, sandlot baseball was just kids’ stuff and we were all ready for the more important aspects of life: part-time jobs, cars and girls.

Naturally.

JG

Originally posted 7/10/2013