The Game, the Way He Played It

I don’t usually pay any attention to political speeches. All those “going forwards” get on my nerves. I guess you could say my interest in the 1988 Presidential election is minimal, anyway. In the immortal words of Bugs Baer at the 1945 World Series, “I don’t see how either one of them can win it.” Looks like a game between the old St. Louis Browns and Washington Senators in September. What’s the difference?

All I really require of a President is that he doesn’t boycott the Olympics.

I mean, I look at it this way: Jesse Jackson has his problems and I have mine. If he wants to be President, that’s all right with me. Personally, I’d rather be a Dominican playboy, but that’s horse racing.

But something Jackson said in an address before the NAACP struck a chord with me. He was talking about how hard he had it as a kid, and one of the things he called attention to was the fact he didn’t have a real football when he was growing up. He had to make do with a bunch of rags tied together.

Big deal. Who didn’t? You think we all got a new football and a pump and a Washington Redskins uniform under the Christmas tree, Jesse? Hah.

I mean, I wasn’t born in a log cabin, but I was born into the Great Depression, which was the next-best thing.

Jesse, you had to play with a bunch of rags tied with string? Well, what we had was a burlap bag tied up in a bunch of thick rubber bands so it could make a cylindrical shape. You could spiral it, all right, and hand it off. You couldn’t kick it, but we didn’t kick anyway. That was for sissies. Fourth and long separated the men from the boys.

We played in the streets in front of our houses. We had to break occasionally for the traffic, but that wasn’t a big problem. Not too many people had cars in those years, either.

We played from telephone pole to telephone pole. Mostly, we played touch, but occasionally we played tackle. I have to laugh when I think of those players today complaining about artificial turf when they have helmets and shoulder pads and knee pads and special shoes. We had none of those things and, when you talk of artificial turf--asphalt, now that was artificial turf. Astroturf would have seemed like a feather bed.

Out of bounds were sidewalks. We played the first night games, under street lights till the quarterback’s mother made him come in.

We not only didn’t have footballs with air in them, we didn’t have baseballs with real yarn in them either. What we had were called “dime rockets” and about their only resemblance to real baseballs was that they were round.

At first, that is. The first time you hit one of them, it got out of round in a hurry and got as lopsided as Popeye’s face. Also, it leaked. It seemed to be filled mostly with sawdust. So, what we would do was, we would wrap this sphere with heavy rubberized tape. This would give the ball the density and consistency--to say nothing of the weight--of, oh, say, a Civil War cannonball. You couldn’t really throw it, you had to shotput it.

I was a catcher in those days and, when a foul tip from this missile would crash into your nose, your face would look like an aurora borealis. We didn’t have masks in those days. Or chest protectors or shin guards or any of those la-dee-dah refinements.

The bats were pieces of art, too. You usually got them--broken--from the pro or semi-pro teams in town. You took them home, put a screw through the splintered part and then wrapped the handle in the same way you did the ball--with heavy rubber tape. You know how they talk about Babe Ruth swinging a 52-ounce bat? Well, we swung a bat that was just lighter than a sledgehammer.

Sometimes we couldn’t even afford the dime for the dime rocket. What we’d do then is get some tennis balls from the public park courts. When they’d knocked all the fuzz off them, that is, and threw them away. Now, a tennis ball would go farther than the taped bowling ball we usually played with. So, to equalize matters, we would make the batter swing from the opposite side of the plate. If he was right-handed, he had to bat lefty and vice versa. The nice thing about tennis balls was, they usually didn’t break any windows. The taped balls would not only go through windows, they went through roofs.

The bases were rocks. Big rocks. This meant a lot of broken toes, to say nothing of ankles, when you were trying to beat out a throw and the weeds had grown up around the “base.” They were hard to identify anyway, because, more often than not, the whole infield was a rock pile.

We played hockey with a puck that was actually a tuna can into which you poured water and let it freeze overnight. No goalie wore a face mask. He just hoped the can opener wasn’t too jagged. There was no net, just a hunk of plywood we had stolen from the woodwork shop.

Tennis? Tennis was played over a piece of clothesline stretched between two poles. There was no net. Who had a net? What do you need it for, anyway? You can’t tell when a ball goes under a clothesline?

Basketball, of course, we had real baskets. We just took the peaches out of them. We didn’t have a real basketball, however. We used any outsized ball we could steal from our sisters. There were no layups, no foul shots. No backboard. The basket was just nailed to the pole. There was no such thing as a foul anyway. And every shot was from three-point range, now that I look back on it. We thought that was the whole idea.

If not having a real ball to play with qualifies you for the White House, I guess the cliche is true--any kid can become President.

I can see how a guy could never forget the deprivations of his childhood, though. You remember I said I always wanted to be a catcher? Well, I never had a real mitt. Well, almost never. I had one for a few hours once.

You see, they had this great big gorgeous golden catcher’s mitt in the window of Cleveland’s variety store. I mean, for months. And I lusted for it. But it cost $2.98. You could buy a railroad for that in those days.

So, I saved and saved--and somebody gave me a $2 bill for Christmas. I went in and bought the glove.

Well, the family was horrified. You have to understand bread was a nickel in those days. A can of salmon was 9 cents.

So, my uncle, my favorite uncle, made me take the glove back, where he bawled out the storekeeper for taking advantage of a dumb kid and we got the money back.

Well. I drifted out of catching after that. Gabby Hartnett was safe. But I can see why you’d still remember a time you didn’t have that football even when you were running for the highest office in the land. A person’s youth is evergreen. I can still see that catcher’s mitt in the window. I should’ve hid it under the bed. I’ve bought some things over the years I wish my uncle had made me take back. But not that gold glove.