I’m of an age that baseball could never be a dream for a girl. Girls played softball and they weren’t taken very seriously. Now there are women coaching baseball in the minor leagues. I was very good at throwing and catching but I never played softball in high school because tennis was also played at the same time and it was expected I’d play tennis. And I did.
Tennis treated me well but I was a bit undisciplined and relied on my power. Strength is good but it doesn’t make for a complete skill set. Secretly I wanted to be playing softball. Never fleet of foot, I excelled at catcher or first baseman. There is something fun about the dirt and grass of a baseball field. You’re responsible for your own position but you’re also part of a team.
I could also throw. In high school I could throw a softball 60 yards on the fly. That was never having received any instruction. I’d grab it and let it fly. In tennis, I had a hard, flat serve and hard, flat groundstrokes. I was a part-time tennis instructor for thirty years. I’ve had each shoulder scoped as a result. I’m no longer able to throw a ball with any force. My arms work just well enough to be able to swim.
I digress as usual. Back to baseball. Baseball is a romanticized sport. It has a long history, most towns had teams by the turn of the 20th century. There were innumerable minor league levels of ball from the 1870s on. On the maternal side of my family, one of our relatives from New Haven, CT, played minor league ball from the mid 1890s until roughly 1910. One of his daughters married a major league player named Johnny Cooney.
There are some great baseball films like Eight Men Out, The Sandlot, Field of Dreams, Bang the Drum Slowly, and A League of Their Own. My favorite is The Natural. I had an eccentric college professor when I took some summer classes. He was an interesting man who painted his car with house paint. He lived in the Bennington, VT area. His weekly poker game included the great writer Bernard Malamud. One of the books we read that summer (1980?ish) was The Natural. A wonderful, if not schmaltzy, plot. And it was loosely based on a real life situation.
In the late 1940s there was a good baseball player named Eddie “Ted” Waitkus. He would play for the Cubs, Phillies, and Orioles. His nickname was “the natural” and he was a two-time National League all-star. Waitkus missed three years in the 1940s because of WWII. In the late 40s, he was shot in the chest by a deranged fan. She’d stalked him. Though she was never tried for the crime, she did spend some time in a mental institution.
As for Eddie, he spent three months in Clearwater, FL to get back in shape. While there he met a young woman from Albany, NY, who was vacationing there with her family. They married the next year. I live outside of Albany so I’ve always enjoyed that connection. Eddie returned to play baseball for another five years.
The book was made into a film in 1984. And what a film it is. The cast, featuring Robert Redford, Glenn Close, and Wilford Brimley, is excellent. It presents viewers with a true Romanticized baseball story, complete with mystery, gambling, and a rags to riches story on many levels. I’ve spent many a sunny, sleepy summer afternoon listening to a game on the radio…baseball in its purest form.
If you’ve never read the book or viewed the film, I recommend both. You don’t even have to be a baseball fan!
Stories Are For Eternity 