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 10^th 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

10^th 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 12^th

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 13^th,

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.

Glamor reserved for other media

In the post-Watergate era, many budding journalists envisioned  themselves as the next Woodward or Bernstein and looked for a scandal  around every corner. But the newspaper business, especially in a small town, is far less glamorous than that. Sometimes it can be downright hard.

In the small North Carolina town where I first worked, I was shooting the breeze with the police chief in his office one day when a call came in on the police scanner about a child being hit by a car. I drove out to the location and was greeted by a horrific scene: A 12-year-old girl lying dead by the side of the road next to her crumpled bicycle, as her grieving mother knelt over her body and wailed. Just thinking about it now puts me on the verge of tears.

I was only 22 or 23 at the time, and this was my first journalistic experience of this nature. My first reaction was to feel as if I had to throw up, but then I remembered I was a newsman and I had my camera. I was in position to get a picture that would capture the raw emotion of the scene and would certainly run on the front page.

Before I could push the shutter, though, a wave of disgust came over me. I felt like an intruder, invading the privacy of this mother and daughter no less than if I had stood outside their home and peered in the window. I took no pictures. I just stood there and watched as authorities covered the girl’s body and drove the mother away in a squad car, as she leaned her head out the window and continued wailing.

When I got back to the office, another reporter asked what had happened. When I told her about the picture I couldn’t take, she was incredulous, and said it would have been a prize-winner. I sincerely doubted she could have taken the picture, either, but that wasn’t the point. I figure that although I may have lost a little of my journalistic credibility, I preserved all of my humanity.

The visibility of a small-town journalist

Shortly after I moved from New Jersey to a small town in northeastern North Carolina in 1976, a native told me, “No matter how long you live here, you’ll always be a Yankee.” Grateful for that warm welcome, I resisted the urge to say, “Well, at least we’re 1-0 in Civil Wars.” With the exception of a six-month stint in Pennsylvania in 1978, I’ve been in the South ever since.

The community newspaper, which came out three times a week then and still does, was the first small-town paper in my career. I later worked for two other North Carolina papers, both weeklies. One advantage of small-town papers: Everyone knows who you are. It’s hard to blend in when you’re the one with a camera, pen and notepad.
But having a high profile can come in handy when news breaks. I got along well with the police chief in one town, and after he turned in his resignation to the mayor one day, I was one of the first people he told.

I then went to the mayor and asked him about it. “How’d you find out?” he asked. Of course, I didn’t answer.

“I’m gonna MAKE you tell me,” he continued. Of course, he couldn’t. Actually, the mayor’s wife previously ran the newspaper, so he was only halfheartedly trying to strongarm me.

The visibility of the small-town journalist can also be a detriment. I remember having someone come to the newsroom and lead me out to their truck, where they wanted me to take a picture of a deer they had killed. Or when I was sitting at home watching TV on a Sunday afternoon and someone knocked on my door and asked me to take a picture of them with a big fish they had just caught or the big watermelon they grew.

In some ways the small-town journalist’s life is similar to everyone else’s; people are friendly until you do something they don’t like (like write something unflattering).

One night I was standing outside City Hall after a City Council meeting when I saw the town’s ambulance go out. I recognized the driver and then saw her toddler son, who was probably about 3, in the front with her. When the next issue of our weekly paper came out, I wrote a column that included a few paragraphs about how rescue squad members shouldn’t put their children in potentially dangerous situations.

For a long time after that, I was thankful I didn’t have a wreck that would require ambulance transport. I could envision having the plug pulled on me, no matter my condition.

Journalism roots run deep

I really had no choice but to go into newspapers. I grew up in Linwood, N.J., next door to the editor of the local weekly paper. The neighbor on the other side owned and operated a service station, so clearly I picked the less lucrative career. Good thing I didn’t grow up next to an ax murderer, I guess.

Perhaps it was through some form of osmosis, but by the time I was in elementary school, I knew I wanted to make newspapers my career. At age 10, I started a neighborhood paper with one of my friends. Gary and I one-finger-typed it on portable typewriters (you know, those things that are all in museums now), using a carbon, and went door-to-door in the neighborhood, selling them for a nickel. I actually did this for a few summers; we were responsible for our own amusement a lot more in the pre-Playstation days.

Our paper contained “news” you wouldn’t find in any other publication (with good reason, I suppose). When my mother had a tooth pulled, it was front-page news in the Crestlea Park Press. When Gary’s dog, Taffy, had an operation, we reported it without the indelicate details. We lifted riddles from a book (c’mon, who would sue a child for copyright infringement?) and included several. Here’s one I remember:

Q. Who is bigger, Mr. Bigger or Mr. Bigger’s baby?

A. The baby is a little Bigger.

People actually paid for this stuff! And a nickel was big money in the mid-’60s.

We included Little League standings, and my team was in capital letters, the same way big-city papers handled standings for their hometown baseball teams.

One time in July 1965, we actually had breaking news in the paper. Gary and I were busily churning out an issue when we heard that Adlai Stevenson had died. Along with the neighborhood news in The Crestlea Park Press was this: “Flash! Adlai Stevenson just died. They will perform an autopsy.”

Context wasn’t important to us at that age; besides, we probably didn’t even know who he was. We heard on TV that he had died, so we figured he must have been important.

I can’t remember if the breaking news helped our sales that week. Our customers were loyal, but they DID have other sources for news.

The blessings are there, if you look for them

Over time, regular readers of this blog will discover that my faith is important to me. Part of the reason I didn’t have much trouble deciding to accept a newspaper buyout was my trust that God has something planned for me. Jeremiah 29:11 says:

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for well-being and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.”

At Thanksgiving, I urge you to find the blessing in any situation. I’m into the 11th week of my post-newspaper life, and there are many blessings surrounding this life change. The first involved timing. I learned about the impending changes at the newspaper through a voice mail on the last day of our California vacation this summer. If I’d heard that news sooner, it might not have ruined our family vacation, but certainly would have lessened our enjoyment. Other blessings: In concrete terms, I’ve saved a lot of money on gas by eliminating my commute (this saving was really noticeable when gas topped $4 a gallon). I’ve been able to spend more time with my wife and two teenage sons. I’ve also been able to reconnect with old friends and made a few trips while attempting to help a friend’s business venture. On the last trip, I was able to visit family in New Jersey as well. I’ve been able to exercise more, which would help me shed some excess pounds if only the refrigerator weren’t so accessible.

There’s a hymn that goes

Count your blessings
Name them one by one
Count your many blessings
See what God has done

Try that and it will open your eyes. Happy Thanksgiving!

On the outside, looking … somewhere