Boys of Spring Evoke Sandlot Memories

Roger Angell had his Boys of Summer, those heroic figures who played their games for the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s. Those were days of baseball’s innocence, and my innocence as well.

Those were the days before expansion and designated hitters and double-knit uniforms and World Series games played at night. More important, those were the days when a threatened strike was a pitch just off the outside corner, and a disabled player was almost always one who had an injury rather than the occasional addiction of today.

My heroes--the big guys in the big leagues--were all glorious figures, much bigger than life. I could never actually reach out and touch any of them, but I could carry their baseball cards everywhere but the shower. And I did.

However, I did have real-life heroes. I had guys I could touch. I could fetch them little cups of water and organize the chaos at their bat rack and, once in awhile, walk away with a battered ball as a reward.

Roger Angell had his Boys of Summer, and these were my Boys of Spring. These were the big kids in the neighborhood, the lucky few with the skills to play for the high school team around the corner and down the street. These were youngsters playing in the spring of their years in the spring of every year.

They still exist. I found my Boys of Spring Friday afternoon at Granite Hills High School, where Patrick Henry and Bonita Vista were playing in a San Diego Section 3-A semifinal game.

I indulged myself 25 (or is it 30?) years later with a return to baseball as I knew it and saw it. They didn’t look like the “big kids” I remembered from way back then, of course. Isn’t it amazing how kids look younger the older you get?

However, this was baseball as I remembered it. Sunny skies, the smell of grass, a chain-link backstop and chain-link fences, the perennially optimistic chatter from both benches and little grandstands filled with fans “helping” the umpires with virtually every call. This was sandlot baseball, innocent yet urgent.

After all, this was a big game. The winners would go to the big ballpark--San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium--to play for the championship of all of the county Thursday. The winners would play where their heroes routed the Cubbies so dramatically, cross the same home plate Steve Garvey crossed, stand on the mound where Goose Gossage stood and patrol the outfield Tony Gwynn patrolled.

And so it was that these Boys of Spring were engaged in a rather serious exercise.

I thought of other men in other years who had watched Mickey Mantle in Commerce, Okla., and Bob Feller in Van Meter, Iowa, and, yes, Ted Williams at Hoover High School.

Maybe some of these Boys of Spring would someday be someone’s Boys of Summer.

But I wanted to enjoy them as they were Friday, as youngsters playing for fun and a chance at a championship and maybe for the approval of youngsters like I used to be.

I found that a few things change, even on the sandlots. These teams both wore double-knits, and it was disconcerting because both teams wore white pants and yellow jerseys. And the designated hitter was employed, a shame, I thought, at the high school level.

And Patrick Henry, in particular, brought my attention to the fact that aluminum bats and high-fives are now a part of the sandlot scene. I say this because Patrick Henry wielded its aluminum bats with such potency that the team might have come close to Magic Johnson’s modern-day record for high-fives.

The Patriots, as they are called, were winners by a score of 16-4. They got home runs by Danny Martinez, Mike Thomas and Scott Middaugh during the course of the first three innings and built up a 10-0 lead against an unbeaten freshman on the mound for Bonita Vista.

This was a game which ultimately became less than an artistic marvel, especially if pitching and defense are truly the heart of baseball. There were 20 runs, 28 hits, eight errors, a wild pitch, two balks and a batter who struck out into a double play because he got hit in the head with a thrown ball.

OK, you want me to skip the routine stuff and explain how a batter can get hit in the ear and end up on the front end of a double play?

Henry’s Middaugh was the batter, and he struck out in the fifth inning with Norm Whitehead on first. Whitehead had taken some liberty off first, and Bonita Vista catcher Ken Guyton whipped the throw toward first. Middaugh, however, stepped into the path and took the throw on the right side of his helmet. Whitehead was out because Middaugh, who was not hurt, had interfered with the throw.

I have seen thousands of baseball games, and I had never before seen that play.

However, these were the sandlots and these were kids, and strange things happen. I didn’t go there looking for perfection. I wasn’t surprised that defense and execution reminded me of the Dodgers.

And I guess I should not have been surprised that Patrick Henry should win and hit the ball so well. The Patriots entered the game with a record of 21-1 and an average of 8.6 runs scored per game.

The middle of Patrick Henry’s batting order--Martinez, Thomas, Eric Karros and Tim Edmonds--looks like a collection of football linebackers.

I ventured over to the Bonita Vista stands, where high hopes and enthusiasm died very slowly, and overheard one fan say to another: “If this is the baseball team, I want to see the football team.”

And this was at about the same time a voice from the bench yelled: “We’re only down by 10. Let’s get ‘em.”

I was delighted. That was how I remembered it. My neighborhood heroes were always down by 10 runs, but couldn’t anything happen?

Once in awhile, the “anything” would happen. But not very often. Not for Bonita Vista on Friday.

Patrick Henry’s kids got the trip to the big ballpark.

“Our kids really wanted to go to the stadium,” said Patrick Henry Coach Bob Imlay, who has been The Man since the school opened in 1968-69. “They’re excited. Heck, I wanted to go to the stadium, too. I was tired of sitting behind Bob Uecker.”

Imlay, in the flush of victory, gathered his players around him and congratulated them for their effort. And he also whimsically recruited volunteers for a construction project.

“We have to put the roof on our dugout,” he said, “and we need laborers. You have to be able to hit a nail. I imagine you can. You’ve hit everything else.”

I smiled. I remembered the big kids in my neighborhood mowing the infield and chalking the baselines. That’s the way it was for the Boys of Spring. And still is.

It was a nice day to be young again, or at least pretending.