Cup o’ Joe
by John SRememberances of Little League Past. Part 2 of 2 with Proust batting cleanup.
Here was the brain trust of my Little League Cleveland Indians. The manager was a NYC detective, as was the coach, who was a NYC detective sergeant or Lieutenant. They loved baseball, and coaching kids. We loved them. No exaggeration and no innuendo, they were wonderful “manly men”.
Most of today’s “yout of America” have to be taught basic baseball from scratch since electronic entertainment and soccer or basketball is more the mainstream. As we were a bit more BB educated, our manager taught detail, proper rundown procedure, backing up fielders receiving throws, and how to spit.
The manager would take as many players as wanted to go to the Polo Grounds for the Mets first two seasons (easily dating myself), where the badge would get us in free. He would take smaller groups to Yankee Stadium, where I guess he may have had to pay. We would sit in the top row there and throw our peanut shells out of the louvres of the grates right behind us. But the class was in session. He would teach us positioning, backing up, etc. with the whole field to study, as opposed to out 15″ black and white sets at home, where in some alternate universe the Yanks are still on channel 11.
The manager would take us to the team sponsor’s bar (see last episode) for cokes and chips after many games. He and some of the barflies, who adopted the team, would also play stickball (spaldeens of course) in the concrete neighborhood schoolyard (about 7 houses down from my house). One of the barflies (Earl, no joke) always wore a suit and white (not paticularly clean) shirt, no tie. My guess is a tie might have slowed the gravitational progression of booze down his throat, which was his raison d’etre. I had a good curve, no fastball in stickball. Earl couldn’t hit either pitch.
Good news, we won the championship in a very competitive 4 team league the second of two years we were Indians. No pitching dilution in a 4 team league, as the 2-1 final score in our championship game attests. Bad news, the manager, who I’m guessing was no older than 29 then, lost his wife to cancer the next year. He was not going to coach our second year but his wife convinced him to. And in typing that it all comes back. Proust homers to left.
3 comments May 10 2007 10:40 am | John S | Cup o' Joe |
Was going to post some meaningless info about predictions and trends so far. But I think your Cup deserves a little banner time. Nice post.
Nice post. I like the part where you say” in some alternate universe the Yanks are still on channel 11.” In the late 70’s and 80’s I had a 13 inch B/W t.v. in my room with the old “rabbit ears” and I can still see and hear the sounds of those broadcasts. “Holy Cow White, you’re right, that was a close play.” What a pair – Rizzuto and White.
Great Cup, John. Some people don’t understand why baseball is such a big part of our lives, why it gets under our skin. Those people should read your post. By the way, there was nothing better than a brand new Spaldeen!