You Gotta Believe: Playing Catch
Blitz Weekly Story of Interest
Sept. 28, 2011 - By Larry Mayfield - approachthedrum@yahoo.com
Baseball has long been a part of my family life—the way it bonds one human being to another. Some of my earliest recollections are of baseball. Sitting at the dinner table, Dad had exclaimed his excitement about the home run race between Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle back in 1961. Those were the first two professional players' names I can remember. To hear Dad talk, baseball was important. Baseball cards became my most important possession as a youngster, as I learned the players, the stats, and the game.
Baseball pictures and memorabilia decorate my living room, and at a glance a memory can be relived. A picture of my dad on a team in the 1940's reminds me of those days when there were area hardball and semi-pro teams scattered about the state. He played shortstop and second baseman. When I was a kid, Dad taught me to catch the ball properly. When playing catch, he would throw the ball very hard, and my body would wince every time the ball hit the glove. "It will stop hurting when you learn to catch the ball right," and he was right—within a couple of days the sting in the mitt lessened from making adjustments on catching the ball. His old 1940's style baseball mitt is still within eye's distance from my writing desk, and once in a while I put it on my hand, pound my fist with an audible smack into the pocket, then place the glove to my face to smell the old leather to remind me of those days when we played catch.
Another picture on the wall reminds me of a time farther back in my family's past. My granddad is in that photograph—taken in 1906 in a barren field near Johnsville, Texas. "That team was hard to beat," he had said when handing me the picture. Just a bunch of country boys, they didn't have uniforms or baseball shoes—only gloves and a couple of bats.
One branch of my family tree built a baseball field—out in the "middle of nowhere" in rural Texas surrounded by pastures with a juniper-covered mountain as a backdrop to centerfield. There is no field like it, excepting maybe the baseball diamond in the movie Field of Dreams. Our family field has a backstop and a surrounding fence. There is a scoreboard and an announcer's booth. There is a flag, and we sing the national anthem before our yearly family-reunion softball game between the Slammers and Bombers. In this family—baseball is important.
As time went forward from the days of playing catch with my dad, I became a player. But first my dues had to be paid by playing neighborhood ball. As a kid there were two yards we used when playing ball, and even though they only look like a front yard to today's passersby, I can still see them as baseball fields—complete with last year's license plates as bases and rules like "automatic outs" and "ghost runners" made up by kids. Those ghost runners are still out there somewhere in time—running those bases with imaginary crowds cheering and witnessing some of the greatest games ever played—games that only ended because of darkness or the call of "suppertime" by Mom. As time passed, my dad continued to prepare me for Little League try-outs by playing catch daily and teaching me how to hit. He made me a special ball for batting practice by drilling a hole in the middle, attaching a long string and swinging the baseball-attached string around his head like a lasso. I would stand nearby and wait for the ball to come around…and swing! With his help, I made the team, and just like anyone who has ever played the game, the memories are permanent. Reflecting on those days, I can still remember standing in the on-deck circle, waiting to become—a hitter.
My love for the game was the initiative needed to raise my hand and volunteer to be a coach when my two sons were ready to be "ballplayers" back when they were kids. We shared that bond for over ten years, as I watched them grow in stature and ability. After those formative years were gone, I found myself helping my oldest son coach a team—a continued realization of the strong bonding effects baseball can have when a person takes a "time out" from life for a game of catch. Upon meeting a close friend's grandson for the first time, he approached with a ball in his hand and threw it to me. It was his way of saying "Hi," and when I asked if he had a bat and glove—excitedly off he went to retrieve both items. Our game of catch created an instant friendship, as he sat next to me later that evening, and we talked about playing catch the next visit.
There is one baseball game from the past that often comes to mind. It was the last game I would coach my oldest son. I wanted to refresh the event time and again to remember the last time he came to bat.
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