Playing softball again this year has got me thinking about the arc of my ball-playing life. It began as a toddler trying to hit a plastic ball tossed by my dad and has morphed into the 60-something trudger that I’ve become.
As a kid, I learned the rules and how to play the game. “Meet the ball” and “Don’t step in the bucket” Dad said repeatedly as I learned to hit, or at least a close proximity thereof. Once my future-Indians-shortstop ambitions emerged at about age 9, Dad usually got us seats down the third base line at Municipal Stadium so I could watch Cleveland’s Larry Brown and Boston’s Rico Petrocelli play the position.
With practice, I became a good fielder with a strong and sometimes erratic arm and a hitter with Uecker-like stats, peppered with occasional flashes of success.
I had some good teen years in Pony League and “E-League,” as the Cleveland Heights-University Heights system called its upper echelon summer league. College studies followed, and I played a bit of intramural softball.
An internship at The Milwaukee Journal got me into the staff summer softball games in the “Synethic Conflict League,” a joking reference to Mayor Henry Meier, who accused the paper of making up conflicts with him and in city government.
I’d return to Milwaukee and SCL play when I began work at The Associated Press bureau there, but in between was a year in my first regular job, at The Daily Times of Ottawa, Illinois. From that formative time in my career, one of my favorite memories was of playing third base in a staff picnic softball game.
I took a grounder and fired the ball across the diamond to our classified ads manager playing first base. The throw was a rocket that made a resounding crack when it hit his mitt. Everyone seemed to stop for a second for a “Wow, what was THAT?” reaction. I grinned and likely raised my arm to say, “Two out!.”
Returning to the Milwaukee games, I remember the last play I made. From center field, I ran in for a sinking fly ball and made a tumbling catch for the third out of the inning. AP transferred me to Omaha, and I played shortstop on a beer league team before wrenching my back, the beginning of a long hiatus in playing, which gave way to watching my kids starting play in the pools, fields and music halls of their young lives.
Looking back, that play I made in my early 20s in Illinois one summer evening was in a sense the peak of my ball-playing abilities, when my knowledge of the game and my physical abilities were most in sync.
In my early years, my skills developed faster than my mental grasp of the game. I know so much more today about how the game should be played, but my physical skills are limited. I’m slower and less limber.
In a first-round playoff game last evening, I couldn’t get over and down for a hot smash down the third-base line that I would have handled in my teens years. In my previous game, I tried to barehand a grounder while playing second base and missed it. Yet later in short center, I made a good catch of a liner sailing to my left.
No one knows better than I how much my skills have diminished, but I still hold my head high. I take great pleasure in playing with my work colleagues, contributing a single here, a putout there. Our team wants to win, but moreover we enjoy the competition and the camaraderie.
I am at peace with that. 🧢
is the runner’s target, to prevent colliding with the first baseman.)
The Ball Caps Blog 
“No one knows better than I how much my skills have diminished…” No truer words have been spoken for us age 50+ athletes. At least you’re still getting out there to do it! A couple of summers ago, at a batting cage around New Bedford, Mass. (it was truly from the ’60s…balls came down a metal carousel and then got “pitched” to you. Not only did you have to time the pitch, but prior, you had to had watch the carousel come around to then get to the pitch point. All metal and creaky but it worked.) Anyway, my son took video of me swinging…and while I connected, my swing is NOT a thing of beauty. Which is why I actually now find it hard to work with my son on hitting. What do I know?? I tell him all the time, even when he struggles at the plate, he’s now a much better hitter than I ever was, even in my Little League prime.
Generation to generation, baseball is the best! Keep swinging, both of you. 🙂
I’m totally inspired now to do something with my life in terms of exercise and the community part of sports is also something great or it used to be for me. I kinda lost that too. man you were in Milwaukee at a great time.
All that and the birth of two little cheeseheads!
I had no idea. Congratulations on that. So your kids birth certificates say “Place of birth-Milwaukee?”
Yep. St. Francis Hospital. 🧀