LJ Idol-Week 13
Inside Baseball...
I hit my first baseball when I was five years old. I remember it was on a stick thingy and I was told to swing at it and I did. The ball flew and I ran around the bases for a homerun. I hit home run after home run when I played Tee-Ball. My Dad was so proud.
We moved. We always moved. Dad was in the military and that’s what military people do, move. I didn’t play baseball in the next town, but I did swing a bat.
Dad tells this story about me coming in the house and looking around for something. He says I left with a spatula and came back about 10 minutes later. I did another search and left with the broom then came back about 10 minutes later. The third time I came back I traded in for a baseball bat. I didn’t come back for a long time. When I did, I walked in plopped down and watched cartoons.
An hour later my Dad answered the door. There was an angry father on the other side. He was screaming at my Dad about how horrible my Dad’s kid was for hitting his kid. My Dad asked to see that kid, it was a ten year old boy. My Dad asked me to come to the door. I was a tiny five year old at the time. The other man’s 10 year old towered over me. So my Dad says “You really want to tell your CO that your 10 year old son picked on my 5 year old daughter and got his ass kicked?” That was the end of the conversation. I wasn’t allowed to take baseball bats out of the house without permission.
We moved again and this time no baseball for me. I played normal games with the kids and started hanging out with the older kids. I always did. I was seven hanging out with junior high kids. I was some kind of prodigy mascot. My baseball time was just Dad and his baseball cards. He had this game him made up that involved statistics. I’d look at his notebooks and compare them to the cards he collected. It was then I realized that baseball was more than just hitting a ball around a diamond. It took some kind of skill. I hadn’t realized because to me it’d been so easy.
The next town was supposed to be our last town, but that never really happens. We spent time there though and I found myself enrolled in little league. I played hardball. I wouldn’t play softball because that was for the girls and not for me. I was a hard core tomboy and didn’t want anything to do with girls. Ick.
Plus, I never understood why they gave the bigger ball to the girls; their hands were smaller than the boys. It made it hard to throw and what’s up with a underhand pitch? There’s no power in that…
I was always chosen last because no one wanted the girl. However, I was always the star pitcher. I was always the secret weapon. I had a mean fast ball. I could catch anything. I knew exactly where to throw the ball and I hit so hard and far that I was a clean-up batter, number four in line. I might have been on a great team, but …I was moved to a new league the following year.
The same thing happened there, I was on the worst team because I was the only girl. I had no idea that back then it was unusual. I had no idea that this women’s lib thing had taken into effect and the only reason I was playing was because the law said I could. I had no clue that when I was stepping on the mound and playing with the boys that it was something really special. I had no clue because it was too easy.
My coach that year measured my fast ball. I was throwing at 72 miles per hour from a professional size diamond. I wasn’t even 12 years old yet. I remember him telling me that he wanted me to go to the senior league the next year. He said I could be a star. But things happen, people move and things like baseball get forgotten. I forgot about it because I was tired of so much else happening in our lives.
Mom and Dad were divorced that year. We moved again. I lost hold of anything stable one more time. My Dad’s promise that we wouldn’t move again was a lie to me. I understand now that there was no choice, but back then I couldn’t tell the difference.
Baseball became a thing of the past. It’d become too hard. I was tired of it. I didn’t care. I didn’t need it. I decided I wanted to be a different kind of girl and all that women’s lib stuff meant nothing because in the end I wanted to be what I wanted to be. Later, I understood that was the point, choice. I could choose what I wanted my life to be.
I dropped sports all together and put my mind into art and writing. I had always done these things, but now they had become a necessity. My mind needed to be exercised more than my body and that’s what I did.
Time went on. Dad wasn’t around much because he was military and he was often in other countries. Most of my connection with him was through his family. I saw them every summer and spent time being a surrogate piece of him.
The next time baseball came up between Dad and I was in my later teens. We went on a family visit together and Dad told me his story about his baseball cards. He told me how he used to own Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth and some other great, great cards. I remembered the story. I recalled how he’d gotten into trouble and Grandma burned those cards as punishment. Dad would always bring it up, resenting that Grandma had burned away a fortune. That year I got tired of hearing that story. I was tired of baseball and what it meant. Baseball was Dad and both were too far away for me to really connect.
“Dad, get over it and stop bitching over spilled milk.”
He didn’t like that comment. He hated it. He told me to keep my mouth shut for the rest of the day. Yep, that was me and my Dad. I never held my tongue with him. We fought like cats and dogs. I was in ways, too much like him, too strong, too mouthy, too opinionated, too easily annoyed with others frustration.
That conversation ended and we went to visit my Uncle. I still hadn’t spoken accept to say hello and good bye. I remember Dad and me getting into the car and watching the mirror as we backed up. I saw that he was about to hit my Uncle’s car. I didn’t say a word because Dad had told me to shut up.
When the cars collided he slammed on the brakes and his first words were “You knew I was going to hit that car and you didn’t say a word!!!!” I just looked at him. He looked at me and smirked. “God damn it, I don’t know why I raised such a smart ass.” I smiled back as my Uncle came running out of the house. Dad told the story from Mickey Mantle on to the head on collision. My Uncle laughed and said not to worry about it.
I still hadn’t said a word as I waved goodbye to my Uncle. Dad finally gave in and told me that I could talk. I laughed because now I had nothing to say. I just nodded and drifted off into memories of my first home run which I made not two blocks away.
Life circles, I saw that there in that moment. I saw that you can’t really run away from who you are. You can hide it, you can hide from it, but it finds its way into you. That first home run taught me I could do something. I had control over something outside of me and I was good at it. That first swing of that bat, that first run around the diamond in triumph, that will always be with me. That will always be a part of me. Dad will always be a part of me…