By Jess Zielinski

Baseball, heroes, love and Dad

OCTOBER IS THE CRUELEST MONTH. It brings both the apogee and the end of baseball, ushering in winter’s shrinking days, closed-in spaces, puffy coats with collars you can barely see over and the realization that you will get snow stuck in that space between your wrist and your gloves.

In our house October was a mixed celebration that depended on one’s beliefs. My mother and older sister, who believed that football was divine inspiration, stood firmly on one side. In the opposing camp, my dad and I thought such heathens could not appreciate the elegant holiness of baseball.

While the matriarch and her first daughter settled into the comfort of succeeding Sundays on warm corners of the couch, with snack foods and first downs, my father and I mourned the loss of extra innings, double plays and days of catch in the green green grass.

Baseball isn’t a normal sport. If it were, then it wouldn’t be strange that grown men cry at movies depicting it. Sure, men cry at other films, but it’s different. Baseball movies often elicit the incomplete emotions that sons have for fathers in ways other films do not. If you’re a man and you’ve seen Field of Dreams, you understand. The scene where Kevin Costner’s character and his dad get another chance to play catch signifies all of those times you played catch and all of those chances you and he missed saying what you wanted to say.

For me, the scene means finally understanding what my dad meant by teaching me about baseball. To misquote Tolstoy, every father-child relationship is strange in its own way. But fathers and daughters negotiate unmarked territory: There isn’t the bond that naturally develops between genders, but there is sometimes that awkward attempt to understand each other.

I started to love baseball because of the 1986 World Series between the Mets and Red Sox. I continued to like it because it offered me an excuse to be close to my dad. On summer nights we would sit on the couch, and I would lamely and he would eloquently debate the merits of present and past players. On summer vacations we would spend hours outside playing catch until I finally understood how not to think when throwing and catching the ball.

Then the summer before my senior year in college, we went to Cooperstown. I was feeling down because I had just been dumped by the greatest guy in the world, my mother was annoying me with her advice on my wardrobe, and I had just discovered that my sister was the biggest obstacle I would ever have toward inner peace. Stuff everyone feels at one time or another.

My dad and I drove three days to get to Cooperstown from our home in Washington, D.C. Along the way we listened to Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces and associated mythology and baseball and heroes who need to fail to value success. In the quiet times, I lamented my seemingly unhappy life while my father occasionally pointed out oddities in the Pennsylvania landscape.

When we got to Cooperstown, my dad confessed that he hadn’t been there since he was about 10, when his father took the trip with him. As we wandered through the exhibits, I watched my father’s smile expand and extend, and I noticed the way he would shake his head just a bit at some statistic. I wondered all the time if he felt like he did when he was 10 years old.

I realize now that that trip and all those games of catch — all of it was my dad’s way of trying to tell me in code what he didn’t know how to say with everyday vocabulary. “Throw the ball, catch the ball” meant not worrying about the outcome of things. “Bear down” meant think less and feel more. Admiring players for individual plays meant try your best without fearing failure. Throwing me combinations meant take a risk on missing something or getting it right. Giving me a glove to hold meant asking me to make him a part of my life. Going to Cooperstown was his way of helping me take my mistakes less seriously by firmly placing me in the midst of so many people whose successes were never outmatched by their failures. And striking out three out of ten at-bats meant love is worth losing most of the time because the point is just trying to find it.

Every winter my dad finds ways not to miss baseball. He’ll read player biographies or go to memorabilia auctions. He’ll go to expositions to meet past players. He’ll rearrange yet again his vintage baseball collection. He’ll spend hours looking through catalogues for antique bats. I have a different strategy. I choose to remember all the ways he used the game to tell me what he thought I should know, always risking that he would say the wrong thing, always knowing it was worth the unknowable outcome.

This article first appeared in the November 17th, 1999 issue of Panic Magazine and is re-printed by permission.

(originally published in Baseball Ink Vol. 1, No. 4 – March 2001)

Young man fulfilled his dream of meeting the Sultan of Swat

It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for many people, and most will never get to experience it. If it does happen, you will definitely remember it the rest of your life. I am talking about meeting one’s idol. What most of us wouldn’t give to be able to talk to our idol — if only for a few seconds — or to shake their hand. Well, that’s exactly what happened to one of my friends 66 years ago at Yankee Stadium.

Tyrus Cobb “Tat” Bailey was born in 1913 and named after a popular baseball legend of that era — Ty Cobb. Bailey even has a baseball and baseball bat permanently mounted on the front door of his home to honor the Georgia Peach. But as a youngster growing up on an Alabama farm, Bailey’s attention would be drawn to another baseball great — a player by the name of Babe Ruth. (more…)

By Karl Jacobsen

Opening Day! Just saying those two words creates a glimmer of hope that one of my two teams will wind up playing in Yankee Stadium come October. Why Yankee Stadium? Because everyone who knows the current state of baseball realizes that the World Series is an annual New York event — or so it seems. Am I upset about recent, and past, Yankee championships? Not in the least. Remember, New York fostered the beginnings of the game over a hundred and fifty years ago, and much of traditional baseball history has revolved around New York teams. Don’t get me wrong, if Hell had a baseball team, I’d root for Hell against the Yankees, but for an old traditionalist like me, there is something right about seeing the American League pennant waving over Yankee Stadium. (more…)

By Jason Patzfahl

The sun was hiding somewhere far behind the clouds of winter as layers of gray pillowed the air overhead. Fresh snow, two or three inches thick where the drift carried it, covered the grass which had been dead since last November. Our star pitcher stood in front of me, talking to his brother about something juvenile. With every immature utterance from his mouth, a puff of white breath formed in front of him. His nose ran uncontrollably, making him sniff between every word.

The infield dirt was pale, frozen, and cracked where not covered by snow. Icicles hung, suspended in mid-drip on the chain link fence behind home plate. Our coach leaned up against the fence on his left side, staring into the whitewashed outfield, blowing hot air into his hands as he cuffed them over his mouth. His eyes were tearing from the relentless wind, or from the look of the day. Either way, practice would have to wait at least another week.

The temperature hadn’t broken 30 degrees in the last three weeks, and the snow had been piling up with each storm that rumbled through. The look in his eyes told me that it was going to be another long season, one in which the games started a couple of weeks late and ended with doubleheaders to make up for the freeze-out games. I was the catcher, bound for a great senior season and a possible run for a couple of defensive records. I could see them disappear in front of me though as I knew I would miss catching almost half the games because of the hard doubleheaders and the impact they had on my knees.

We weren’t so much as surprised by the foul weather as we were disappointed by it. Every year around New Year’s time the team held a meeting after school on a Friday to talk about the upcoming season and what we planned to accomplish. Even though the temperature outside was probably about six degrees, we talked and talked for hours inside our tiny warm locker room about how great it would be if we could start the practice season on time or even early that year. We talked about what we could get accomplished outside on an actual baseball field instead of inside the small gym that we shared with the girl’s softball team. Our eyes would be full of hope and anticipation all the way up until that first Monday morning at 6:30 AM when we would wake up, look out our bedroom windows, and see nothing but frost covering the glass.

As you already know, the first day of practice for my senior season was no different, but like true warriors, we turned around from the field, trudged into the sleeping school, and filled the gym, throwing, hitting, and running right along with the softball team. A game of catch consisted of being no more than 20 feet from your partner. If your partner overthrew the ball, you would have to fight your natural instinct to turn around for it, because if you did, you would get plunked in the face with the ball after it bounced off the gym wall. Batting practice consisted of hitting into a net while being soft-tossed balls from a kneeling partner only feet away. Ground balls took quick mean little skips on the wood-tiled floor, usually leaving welts and gashes in your shins.

We survived that year, as we did every other year, and we ended up capturing the conference title with a win of the second game of a doubleheader on the last day of the season. I played first base the first game so I could save my knees for the second. I threw out two runners trying to steal second and took a pounding in my temple from some guy’s right shoulder during a collision at home plate. In the playoffs, we lost our regional game against the defending state champs in an 11-inning fight in the blistering 75-degree heat. If it had been freezing and cloudy, we might have stood a chance. We lived, however, and some of us cried on the final bus trip home, wondering what it must be like to be able to play baseball any season of the year like they do in Florida and Arizona. Our star pitcher and a couple of other guys made it to college and they all picked a warm location in which the climate seemed invented for baseball. As for me, I think that the game of baseball can defy climate if you love it enough.

Jason Patzfahl is a die-hard Brewers fan who likes to throw peanut shells at the opposing batters in the on-deck circle at home games, and sends pictures of his dog’s butt to Marge Schott and jail cell pics to Daryl Strawberry. Anyone know a good defense lawyer?

(originally published in Baseball Ink Vol. 1, No. 4 – March 2001)

By Leo Gillis

My mother brought it home for me one day when I was seven years old. That was thirty-two years ago. It has done serious time in several cardboard boxes, but since about the middle of last baseball season, it has been on a shelf above the television. When I’m watching baseball on TV, I sometimes take the glove and it’s companion — a souvenir ball bought at Nat Bailey Stadium-down from the shelf to enhance my game-watching experience. You can throw the ball into the glove to produce a satisfying “WHUP,” or you can simulate a two- or four-seamer in slow-mo. And, after thirty-two years, the glove still smells the way only a baseball glove can smell.

It could be called a left-handed fielder’s mitt, but I would call it an all-purpose kid’s glove. It has seen action in all positions through elementary and high school, and it has been to several of my wife’s family reunions when we lived in Ontario, but its last good workout was during a softball game two summers ago. Several friends offered to lend me their full-sized gloves, but that just wouldn’t seem right. It is a bit small and frayed, but so what? It is made of “TOP GRAIN COWHIDE” and is a “CUSTOM PRO STYLE” with a “DEEP BALL POCKET.” The original price of $3.47 — marked in black ink in the pocket — is still discernible and so is my name and childhood address written in green ink on the outside of the thumb. Now, that’s gotta be special. Right?

I was thrilled the first time I read W. P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe — not only because it was a great read, but because the main character, Ray, had a left-handed fielder’s glove with green ink on it. When I had read that, I put the book down and searched the house for my glove and was very pleased that I had written on it in green ink. Ray mentioned the glove in reference to Salinger’s Allie Caulfield — Holden’s younger brother — who had written poems in green ink all over his left-handed mitt. Ray felt a connection with Salinger, and I, not having yet read The Catcher In The Rye, felt a connection with W. P. Kinsella. It was an entertaining fantasy which evaporated after I had finished reading Shoeless Joe. Aside from the ‘glove,’ I had nothing at all in common with W. P. Kinsella except that he also lived in the Vancouver area — along with two million other people. When I had read The Catcher last year for the first time, it took me back to when I was a teenager, but I didn’t feel it was ‘speaking’ to me like it probably would have had I read it in my youth. I do, however, find Salinger’s apparent mystical experiences interesting and would like to talk with him about them, but not enough that I would harass him with letters or hang around the end of his driveway.

So what of left-handed gloves and green ink? I go online and search for a few baseball glove manufacturers, but their Web sites have none of the frivolous information I’m looking for, such as the total number of left-handed gloves they’ve ever made. Hmm. What percentage of the population is left-handed? I type “left-handedness” into the Google search engine and soon discover that the figure is around 10 percent, but even after I lookup some population figures (over 30 million for Canada and over 272 million for the USA), I’ll still need an idea of how many people play baseball. My next search is for “amateur baseball” and one site tells me that, of those Canadians over 15-years-old, 900,000 males and 300,000 females participate in baseball. We can’t forget about the under 15′s, but for simplicity let’s say that 1 million baseball gloves see action every year in Canada. If the lefties in amateur baseball represent the general population (unlike professional baseball), then we’re looking at 100,000.

My next online adventure is into the world of ink and pens. You can spend days here and even download your own ink-making recipes. Green ink has been around a lot longer than baseball, and ballpoint pens became commercially available in 1945. Allie Caulfield could’ve used a fountain pen to write on his glove, but The Catcher was published in 1951, so perhaps Salinger had a ballpoint in mind. Assuming that most kids (big or little) would at least write their name on their baseball glove, we have to wonder about the number of kids who would choose a green pen (not taking into account those who would do so because they’ve read The Catcher). For some reason, I’ve retained an image of that moment on that sunny summer day in 1968 when I chose the green pen from the pen, string, and tape drawer in the kitchen. I don’t remember my motivations, if any, but I probably thought that the blue or black pens were boring because I had to use those in school. Now, if we add the number of left-handed gloves in the USA, Caribbean, Mexico, Japan, and, well…you get the picture.

Kinsella himself probably thinks having a lefty’s mitt with green writing on it is no big deal. After all, the obsessed Ray Kinsella was a fictional character, and when I recently asked W. P. to autograph my glove “just above the green ink” when he was at the Vancouver Library to read from his new book of stories, he didn’t flinch or look surprised. He likely signs a fair number of left-handed mitts with green ink on them. So, in the big scheme of things, my glove may not be unique but it’s special to me, and now it’s autographed — in black permanent marker — by my favorite baseball writer, “Bill Kinsella.” But I’ll have to take my mitt outside more often. That’s what it was made for.

Leo Gillis and his wife, Mary, live within strolling distance of Nat Bailey Stadium where the Class A Vancouver Canadians play. He often watches hockey during the winter, but usually finds himself daydreaming about baseball.

(originally published in Baseball Ink Vol. 1, No. 4 – March 2001)