In those years, summers seemed
endless. There was enough time to do—or not do—everything in those summers. September and the end of summer vacation was
so far away, it was just a meaningless abstraction. We’d walk or ride our bikes to the nearby
park and see if there were enough kids around to play a game or just
work-up. The problem in summer was that
kids would go away on vacation with their folks, and often there weren’t enough
kids for an actual game. If we did get
as many of three, we could play in Neal’s back yard; one to pitch, one to
catch, and one to swing the bat. (We weren’t allowed to use a real hardball in
the back yard; the dimensions were too small and the risk too great of breaking
a neighbor’s window. We’d use a
rubberized softball or a wiffle ball. [11]
 |
| Marvel of 1950s plastics engineering |
Lots of times it was just Neal and
me; we’d play catch for hours in his front yard; that was best, for if a ball
went wide or high, it would roll into the street rather than over the back
fence or through a window. Even now,
I have dreams of chasing balls rolling down the slight incline of 74th
St.
That’s where we learned to throw and
catch, the two most important skills in the game. We would imitate our favorite pitchers’
delivery styles: Overhand, sidearm,
submarine. [13]
This seems the appropriate time to
bring up my mitt. My dad got it for me
when I was about seven, as soon as he could see I was really interested in the
game. It was cowhide, must have cost six
or seven bucks, and looked something like this:
Ugly thing, isn’t it? I wish I could say I loved that glove, that
it was my version of Rosebud. But I soon
grew dissatisfied with it. [10 ] It had plenty of
padding for the thumb and heel of the hand, as shown, but the “pocket” and web
areas were small. By the late fifties,
that kind of mitt was being superseded by ones with better pockets, as shown
below. Gloves were evolving
quickly.
I wasn't ungrateful, exactly I loved my father, and I was as grateful as a
7 year-old kid could be that he took me to games and taught me so much. I used the glove—I had no choice—and at this
far remove I should be grateful again that it improved my catching skills; I
had to catch the ball accurately in
the small pocket. But I missed a lot of
balls that bounced off the needlessly padded thumb and heel. What was I to do? Complain to my dad, saying I needed a better
mitt just a year after he gave me the first one?
That glove was the handicap—one of
the handicaps—I carried into my first year of organized baseball: Little League. I was a tall, skinny kid with some athletic
ability, but I was just eight years old that summer of 1959. The age requirement was 9-12 years old, but at
that time, no one seemed to care if a big 8-year-old came to try out. (Dad:
“Just tell ‘em you’re nine. No one’s gonna check your age.” (This was from a man who enlisted in the Navy
in 1942 at age 17. “So I wouldn’t get drafted.”
Jim Mellon was an only child, and his mom Gert wanted him as far out of
harm’s way as possible without shirking.)
My dad took me to the try-out at
Montavilla Park. [12] I got on a team,
and pretty quickly realized I was outclassed by some of the older boys. At a practice once, because I was big, the
coach tried me as catcher, giving me the standard protective gear and an
outsized, unwieldy catcher’s mitt. I
remember squatting behind the plate and trying to catch the pitches of an older
towheaded kid who, though smaller than me, could throw the ball really hard. I mean harder than
anything had ever been thrown in my general direction, let alone directly at
me. I caught only a couple of the fastballs he threw. The best I could do was protect myself with
the clumsy mitt. (Like my own fielder’s glove, it had plenty of padding for the
thumb and heel, but precious little pocket to actually catch the ball.) To make things worse, the kid was smirking at me;
he had malign intent; he wanted to show me up. (This was one of the first
instances in my childhood when I was challenged by older, smaller kids who
wanted to see what I was “made of.”) [14]
The ordeal didn’t last long, thank
God. The coach asked me, “Do you have a
cup?” I just looked at him with big
eyes. I didn’t know what a “cup’ was or
what it was for. He realized I wasn’t
going to be his catcher. I remember it
as my first failure in organized sports.
To my credit, though, I stuck with
the team. Though I cannot remember, the
coach must have taken me aside, patted my shoulder, and said something like,
“That’s OK, son, we’ll find a place for you.”
Our team were the Hawks. We didn’t have full uniforms, just maroon and
white jerseys. Blue jeans and Red Ball
Jets sneakers completed the outfit.
The Hawks played maybe six or eight
games that summer. I didn’t get to play
a lot. When I did, I was relegated to
right field, the position where I’d be least likely to commit an error.
Part IV of this remembrance will end
on a high note. Though I didn’t play
much with the Hawks that summer, I did get one hit—and it was a home run. We were playing on the grassy playground at
Vestal School, near Montavilla Park. It
was the school where I’d gone to kindergarten. [2] Neither team had bags to use as bases, so one
of the coaches paced off the distances and placed pieces of cardboard where the
bases should be. I was put in the
game—right field of course—and got a chance to hit--probably late in the game,
with one team leading by a lot. I hit
the ball squarely and it shot through the infield and kept on rolling. I’d like to remember that I hit the ball so
hard that the centerfielder couldn’t get to it, but what probably happened was
that he misplayed it and it rolled past him.
And rolled and rolled. I kept on
running. As I rounded third—I remember
this vividly—the third baseman kicked the cardboard away before I could touch
it, as f to say, “That was a cheap hit, kid, you don’t deserve a homer!” But my own coach waved me home. I touched home and was congratulated by him
and my teammates. I have no idea who won
the game.
When I got home, of course I crowed
about it to my family: “I hit a home run!”
But even then, I knew the truth, how it would be designated by an
official scorer: Single and a three-base
error.
Rainier Beer transferred my dad to
Eugene in the summer of 1960. We moved
and everything changed. It’s a college
town, so I became a fan of the Oregon Ducks.
Dad took me to football games, basketball games and track meets. Quite suddenly, I lost interest
in baseball. Eugene had a single A minor league team, the
Emeralds, but I couldn’t get interested.
I remember dad took me to one game.
Compared to Multnomah Stadium, the ballpark was so small—bush league—a term I already knew. He could tell right way I wasn’t
interested. None of my new friends, at
school or in the neighborhood, cared much about baseball, either. During summers, we’d play and practice
football, basketball and various track and field skills.
Not until six years later would I
try to play baseball again, and it would be more than twenty years before I
again became a fan of the Major Leagues.
NOTES:
10. Dissatisfaction
was a recurrent theme of my childhood and youth, and it contributed at least
partially to my later “adult” problems.
11. Wiffle Ball.
History: https://americanprofile.com/articles/wiffle-ball-inventor-david-mullany/ These came out as one of the fad toys of the
fifties, all made of plastic: Hula
hoops, frisbees. Say what you will of
the 50s, but…
12.
Montavilla Park: Another
Portland locale that I still dream of. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Montavilla+Park/@45.5280463,-122.5802541,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x5495a111e03e50c3:0x71431ae2c53e10ae!8m2!3d45.5280463!4d-122.5780654
14.
Until about 7th grade, I was always the tallest kid in my
class. I was taught by parents and
teachers not to pester or bully smaller kids, and to discourage other big kids
from doing so. The operative axiom was
“Pick on someone yer own size!” However,
this did not prevent smaller, older, tougher kids from picking on me! The rationale being, I suppose, “It’s OK to
pick on someone yer own size or bigger.”
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