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I just finished reading a delightful essay about growing
up in McKenzie during the 1940s and 1950s.
Tom Campbell, who was in town recently for a Bethel
College event, delivered remarks about playing sandlot
ball in his back yard. Thanks to BC baseball coach Glenn
Hayes, a copy of those remarks wound up on my desk.
Unfortunately, the essay is too lengthy to print, but he
brings up points that are lost on most kids today.
For example, Campbell talks about how certain obstacles
littered the field of play. Home plate might be a rock
or a piece of wood, whatever was handy. A fly ball over
a garage in the outfield is out, but if it bounces off
the roof, it was playable, much like a carom off the
Green Monster at Boston's Fenway Park.
A ball hit over the garage might be an out, but a ball
hit over the open door of that garage would be a home
run, since accuracy had to be rewarded.
Campbell talked about using baseballs, softballs, any
kind of ball you could find.
It reminded me of a story Ray King, a southpaw relief
pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, once told me. He
said he got his start playing baseball just by riding
his bike home at Ripley maybe 25 years ago or so. He was
summoned by other kids playing in a sandlot.
King got off his bike and began playing a game that
would eventually make him a living.
He even told me that when the ball got too worn or lost,
King, his friends and brothers would steal the plastic
fruit off of his mother's dining room table and go
outside and use the artificial apples and oranges as
baseballs.
I can recall using a shoe for home plate, aiming for a
wooden fence that ringed a neighbor's house (that was
right field), hitting it out onto the road in deep
center. We wore the cover of a baseball so much that we
used electrical tape over the string windings of the
ball.
Cincinnati Reds' hall-of-fame catcher Johnny Bench said
he and his pals used to flatten out milk cans and play
stickball with that. When one of those cans got so flat,
it broke like crazy and was hard to hit. Bench
attributes his ability to hit the slider to those days
as a child in Oklahoma.
Campbell mentioned games that were made up because of a
lack of numbers and that the back yard used to be the
venue of the sport du jour. "Campbell Stadium," as he
called it, was home to epic baseball, football and
basketball battles. Players there imagined they were
Stan Musial or some other star of the day.
I can remember going back as an adult to the place we
used to hold similar battles and thinking, "wow, this is
a lot smaller than I remember it."
Campbell mentioned the nicknames that were affixed back
in those days. He mentioned "Gopher" Argo, because he'd
go for anything thrown to him. Campbell still calls Argo
"Gopher" 50 years later.
My sister liked to pitch and we used to call her "Vida
Sue," a take off of Vida Blue, who was an all-star
pitcher for Oakland, San Francisco and Kansas City in
the 1970s.
We didn't have travel teams or these fashionable,
trendy, and nonsensical soccer mom-esque "play dates."
Kids went to a friend's back yard or to the sandlot and
played all day. Parents had few worries. Kids learned
how to compete, hone their skills, stand their ground if
they were being slighted and either negotiate or mix it
up.
It's a different world today, sadly. |
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