The 47-year rain delay
When I spied the black-and-white
notebook with COMPOSITIONS on the
cover, I immediately knew what it was. A
quick look through the pages of box scores
told the story of part of the Summer of
1962, at least as it looked from a backyard
in Linwood, N.J.
But the page that caught my eye was
the lineup for a game that was never
played: sort of a Wiffle Ball version of
Beethoven’s Unfinished Symphony
.
That summer, my brother Bob and I
waged a Wiffle Ball Home Run Derby
battle that pitted the Yankees (Bob’s
team) against the Phillies (my team). Our
Home Run Derby was patterned after the
TV version featuring major leaguers, which
meant it was all or nothing. If the ball
didn’t clear the string we had connected to
trees across the perimeter of the outfield,
it was an out.
Because my brother is 6½ years older –
at the time, I was 8 and he was 14 or
15 – it’s not surprising that the Yanks
won all nine games of the series, by an
aggregate score of 58-35.
The 10th game was to be a matchup of
aces (OK, one ace vs. one journeyman):
the Yankees’ Whitey Ford (now in the Hall
of Fame) vs. the Phils’ Cal McLish. We
kept a box score and statistics on the
games, and in checking them I discovered
that Ford already had three wins and
racked up 40 strikeouts in the process. My
brother always threw a little harder when
Ford was pitching, but I did manage to get
back-to-back HRs in one game against
him (Frank Torre and Bob Oldis, of all
people).
For the never-played game, my level of
desperation was apparent in the lineup I
had cobbled together: Tony Taylor, Ted
Savage, Roy Sievers, Johnny Callison,
Bobby Wine, Tony Gonzalez, Jim Coker,
Ruben Amaro, McLish. Wine hitting fifth?
Coker? Amaro? I must have been going
with lefty-righty percentages. But why had
I benched Don Demeter, a righty who had
power, and used both Wine AND Amaro,
two guys who predated the Mendoza Line?
I must have been desperate to sit out
lefty swinger Wes Covington, who had my
all-time favorite batting stance to copy –
hunched over, bat parallel to the ground,
right elbow pointing straight toward the
pitcher. Bob and I were both switch-
hitters, so we emulated each player’s
stance (short of Taylor crossing
himself before he batted). When my sons
were younger and I played ball with them,
I frequently used the Covington stance.
They, of course, looked at me as if I were
nuts.
The only lefties I had in the lineup were
Callison and Gonzalez, “Little Dynamite,”
whose bat waggle also was fun to copy.
Callison had five homers in nine games to
lead the Phils in our series, but still had
only half as many as Mickey Mantle and
Clete Boyer.
I’ve been trying to remember why the
10th game was never played, and I’ve
come up with some theories:
The loss in the ninth game was
especially heartbreaking: 7-5 in 13
innings. The Phils had fought back to tie it
in the bottom of the ninth on a two-out
homer by Roy Sievers.
They tied it again in the bottom of the 12th
on a blast by Covington (my man!). But
Art Mahaffey, who was apparently the
Phillies pitching staff’s sacrificial lamb,
surrendered gopher balls to Hector Lopez
and Bill Skowron in the top of the 13th,
and that was it.
I can remember running inside crying
after some defeats, but we usually ended
up back outside for another game.
Perhaps this time Mahaffey’s lackluster
performance had pushed me over the edge.
Another theory involves the string that
marked the home run line. I can recall one
night about dusk that my father was
returning from a visit with the neighbors
and he clotheslined himself on said home
run boundary. I think we put the string
back up, but maybe I saw his mishap as
my opportunity to bow out gracefully.
It could have been that Bob realized it
wasn’t cool for a teenager to be playing
Wiffle Ball with his kid brother, or else he
just tired of the lack of a challenge.
Looking back now, I realize it was
pretty remarkable for him to spend that
much time with me at all during his
teenage years.
Whatever the reason, when I found
the notebook I thought that playing the
game would be a good idea. But there
were a few obstacles, the biggest of which
is that the vacant lot where we played is
no longer vacant. That means no matter
where we played, it’d be impossible to
duplicate the conditions.
Another obstacle is distance. Bob still
lives in South Jersey, about 15 minutes
from where we grew up. But I now live
outside Atlanta. I usually make it to New
Jersey only one or two times a year.
To be honest, though,age may be the
biggest reason I haven’t continued
pursuing the idea. I’m now 55 and Bob is
61. Clearly, our best Wiffle Ball days are
behind us.
I found out several years ago that I have
arthritis in both my shoulders. My right
(non-throwing) arm is even worse than my
left. I can still throw sidearm with some
accuracy, but little velocity. But overhand
deliveries are out of the question. These
days, my pitches aren’t just fat; they’re
morbidly obese.
Besides, I hate to burst my older
brother’s bubble. I can remember how
much joy I got when I got taller than him
and was finally able to defeat him at
basketball. I thought that suffering a
Home Run Derby loss after a winning
streak that had spanned 40-plus
years would be too much for him.
The notebook didn’t have any dates
listed, but I turned to The Baseball
Encyclopedia to figure out the games were
played in 1962. That was the only year
that the two teams had some of these
players on their rosters.
In real life that year, the Yanks went
109-53 and won the World Series over the
Giants. The Phils went 81-80 and finished
in seventh place. Mahaffey did much
better than in our back yard, leading the
real-life Phillies staff with 19 victories.
I guess it was better we played our
series in 1962 than 1964. If I had been the
Phils that season, the end – just as in real
life, when the Phillies collapsed down the
backstretch and lost the National League
pennant to the St. Louis Cardinals —
would have been even more painful, I’m sure.