On Roger Maris, baseball, and heroes

(There are lots of memories associated with this baseball card.)

I was absolutely consumed by baseball until I was about 13.  I played on a Little League team, I practiced pitching in front of a full-length mirror in my home, I watched games on tv incessantly, and I collected baseball cards.  At the end, I had 3,333 baseball cards, mostly from the 1950s, which my mother overlooked in the basement when she moved from my childhood house.  I never saw them again.  Oh Mom!  Because of this addiction and the data on the back of the baseball cards I had memorized, I knew nearly every stat about every player on nearly every team.  In 1958, one set of stats I committed to memory was the following: right fielder, batted left, threw right, born in Hibbing, MN, rookie year with Cleveland Indians.

Roger Maris only played for the Indians during 1957-58, the first year of his famous career.  He was traded to Kansas City in 1958, and then to the Yankees in 1960, where he played with Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra.  But even in his first year as a pro, there were high hopes for Maris, who later hit 61 homers in the 1961 season, breaking Babe Ruth's record that had stood for 34 years.  So Maris was already one of our heroes among my baseball-loving comrades on the northwest side of Lima, Ohio.  His Rookie Year baseball card of 1958 was hot within trading circles, one of those prizes where you instantly threw away the gum inside the package as soon as you saw the "Roger" and the Indians' uniform.

In those days, it was a common field trip for boys' groups at school to go to a professional baseball game.  Given where I lived, the trips usually went north to an Indians' game in Cleveland; on occasion, we got to travel south to a Redlegs' game in Cincinnati.  The cost of a ticket was about $2, and the stands were never even a third full back then.  (Many years later, I thought I would take my family to a Blue Jays game when we were visiting Toronto.  We walked up to the stadium at game time and were promptly told they had been sold out for weeks.  And if they had tickets, it would probably cost our family of five about $150.  I was in disbelief.  I don't remember reading that stat on the back of a baseball card.  I guess I had been out of touch with my childhood game for a long time.) 

So it was sometime in 1957 when the group of boys (it was always only boys) with which I was traveling headed to Cleveland for a game.  I can no longer remember who the Indians played that day or who won the game.  Our excitement was focused on the habit of congregating around the outside door on the back of the stadium where the players emerged after the game and their showers.  If you were lucky, and the players were in an accommodating mood, they would stand there for a few minutes and sign autographs.  After one of those games, I remember an angry Mike Garcia emerging into the light and the throngs of baseball-loving boys only to shove us aside and to stomp his way to his car, signing nothing.  He had pitched badly that game, and he was bringing his work home with him that day.

But the highlight of my baseball celebrity memories was the day that Roger Maris and Al Smith walked out among their faithful disciples.  We rushed to get their signatures.  I got Al Smith's right away, and he had hit a home run that day.  Then I jumped over to the Maris crowd, and eventually worked my way to a position right in front of the guy.  He signed my baseball program.  But the immense pressure of all those young male bodies was incredible, pushing me forward well within the personal space of the soon-to-be famous ball player.  It reminded me of the feeling I had at the Pussycat Dolls' concert I attended at Cornell last year outside on the lawn.  Students pressed so hard toward the stage that I had to get out of there.  I staggered toward the edge of the crowd as best I could, inadvertently groping students of both sexes.  I was embarrassed at the looks I got, but it was not my fault.  I wanted to scream that I have been married to the same woman for 41 years, and I'm the father of three grown children, and I have peripheral neuropathy so my balance is not so good, and I am not a pervert.  But no one would have believed me.

So to extricate myself from the crowd of autograph seekers around Roger Maris, I had to get down on my hands and knees and crawl out of there.  I swear to whomever you believe, I crawled right between his legs to escape!  It did not seem that weird to me at the time.  I was desperate, I couldn't move, and I was not big enough or strong enough to push my way out of that mess.  So I saw daylight about 18 inches above the ground and I went for it.  I was successful.  I escaped intact with the guy's autograph, which was worth significant bragging rights for many months after.

Men like Maris and Mantle were a big deal to boys like me.  We had little chance of becoming famous or of mingling with the famous, so our brief moments of encounter with them were worth a lot.  Those brief moments gave us something to talk about back home, and made watching them on tv even more magical than it would have been otherwise.  They were heroes to us in every sense of the word.  Maris' autograph, for which I was so proud, was written in pencil.  That signature later faded badly on the glossy paper of that baseball program, which disappeared along with my baseball cards.  But the memory of that day is still very fresh in my mind.

Those men informed our dreams and kindled our imaginations, in spite of any personal problems or improprieties they might have suffered off the field.  I think Bob Costas, the sports commentator par excellence, said it best.  Although he was referring to Mantle, I hope his sentiment still applies to many stars who young people emulate today:  "In the last year of his life, Mickey Mantle, always so hard on himself, finally came to accept and appreciate the distinction between a role model and a hero. The first, he often was not. The second, he always will be. And, in the end, people got it."

The 60s, and other memories of the way it used to be

(They were radicals, but they were correct.)

Another year, another birthday.  What the heck?  I'm now 63 years old, but I don't feel a day over 62 1/2.  I attribute this amazing youthfulness to eating properly and exercise.  And, of course, a scotch and a cigar a day probably contribute as well.  I will go so far as to say that if you smoked one cigar a day and drank one scotch per day, you would also not feel a day over 62 1/2, even if you are 30 years old.  That combination of alcohol and nicotine has amazing restorative properties, and I am living proof of that.

Having lived this long, I have witnessed some interesting changes in practices and attitudes in many aspects of American life.  For example, I started school at age 5 in the first grade.  We lived in a somewhat rural area about a mile from the school.  To get to school, we walked.  But to do so, we walked along a country road, crossed a busy highway, and a set of railroad tracks.  Years later, the fathers of two of my friends were killed driving across those same tracks, so it was no joke.  After a couple of weeks of my mother walking with me, I was free to make the walk alone both to and from school.  There were some other kids making the same walk, but can you imagine parents letting any kid even twice that age do this today? 

I loved baseball when I was 9-12 years old, so I wanted to play on the local Little League team.  I tried out for 3 years and was cut from the team each year.  It was done like this.  The day finally came to announce who made the team.  The coach read the list and those of us who did not make the team, turned our backs and walked home while the coach started passing out the team shirts and caps to those who made it.  I distinctly remember the cheers of joy from those guys who had made the team, as they tried on their new gear.  I was devastated each time.  Our parents were not there.  We always faced these events on our own.  However, after the third turn down, one man started an additional team with those of us who did not make the Apaches team.  Our Sioux team then actually beat the Apaches during the regular season, which was one of the sweetest days of my life.  In those days, we always knew that success was not guaranteed, and that you had to prepare extremely well in a competitive world.

When I was in junior high school, I got paddled by the teacher in front of the class at least once each year for some infraction of some rule.  Usually this involved talking in class when we were not supposed to be doing that.  I was not alone.  Today, that kind of corporal punishment would be definite grounds for a law suit.

Then, there was the decade of the 60s, which was amazing in so many ways.  When we were first married, my wife worked full-time as a nurse and I was a student.  She could not get a credit card issued in her name in those days; it had to be issued in the husband's name.  Crazy, since she was making the money and I wasn't. Of course, now, we don't open the mailbox without there being an offer for her to accept a new card.

I mostly remember worrying about the military draft during the 60s.  It was all any male thought about.  Would I be called?  Could I escape it somehow?  If we stayed in university, we were safe until we graduated.  Maybe the Vietnam War would be over by then.  I remember a couple of guys when I was attending Ohio State whose grade point average (gpa) was right on the cusp of flunking out of school.  (In those days, universities actually flunked students out and they went home.  Seems much less common today.)  I distinctly remember these particular guys taking an exam in a course we had together.  If they got a D on the exam, their gpa would dip below the minimum needed and they would flunk out.  In the mid to late 1960s, that would almost certainly mean you would be drafted into the army within months, probably sent to Vietnam, and possibly killed or injured.  Talk about pressure when taking a math or biology final exam.

I was lucky.  I graduated Ohio State, got drafted, and ended up in Korea.  All in all, that was a valuable and interesting experience, and not dangerous.  In Korea, I was in military intelligence and lived undercover as a civilian, but I mostly spent my time playing ping pong, bridge, and third base on the softball team.  I had been sent to language school for a solid year before deploying to Korea, so I was nearly fluent in the language at that time.  My wife and young daughter joined me there, we lived with a Korean family in the village, and we learned a lot.  The army did not want my wife to come, but there was no law against a U.S. citizen going to Korea, and my wife would not take "no" for an answer.  This was pretty much SOP for my wife during our military years.

So times have changed for the better in some ways, and probably not for the better in other ways.  I often wonder, and even predict, if the last half of the 20th century may have been as good as it ever was in human history and perhaps as good as it will ever be, all things considered.  In time, I will build this argument and present it for your critical analysis.  But several centuries will have to pass before this idea can be tested fully, so you will have to let me know how it comes out.  Just send me a text message.