I’VE BEEN WEARIN’ A YANKEE CAP

…and I’m still alive to write about it.  Of course it’s off now that they’ve been eliminated from the playoffs. Still, it’s risky business to live in Boston and root for any baseball team other than the Red Sox.

Don’t get me wrong–you’re allowed to hate our home team with unmitigated passion as most of Red Sox Nation did this past season.  But root for another one?  A New York team?  That’s flat out blasphemy.

So be it.  Had the Sox been in the playoffs, I would have rooted for them.  They are my hometown team and I’ve spent my entire life loving the one I’m with.  Problem is, I’ve lived in a number of cities long enough to have genuine affection for teams in those ports.

Before moving to Boston I lived in Chicago and rooted for the White Sox even though I lived near Wrigley.  The White Sox had Ritchie Allen and a manager, Chuck Tanner, I respected.  When given shit by the Chicago press about Allen’s habit of not taking batting practice, he shrugged it off and told reporters to watch the guy hit in games.  Allen eventually went on to win the American League’s Most Valuable Player.  Tanner knew what he was talking about and I had my new hometown team.

But the New York thing is an enduring love that has to do with my roots.  I grew up in Carteret, New Jersey (Exit 12 off the Turnpike) where, as I’ve previously written, it was possible to see the New York skyline on non-factory induced smog days.  New York had three teams–the Dodgers, Giants, and Yankees.  My childhood babysitter, while my parents worked the tavern, (it was a working peoples’ town so the bar was open from early morning until, well, early morning) was a huge Dodger fan so my first infatuation was with Brooklyn.  And my first gut-punching betrayal–when the Dodgers moved to California.

But by then I was allowed to hang at my dad’s bar where my mother’s sister, Aunt Jeanette, was working.  She was a die-hard Yankee fan and I became one too (though I spent many an hour under my covers with a transistor radio listening to Les Keiter recreate Giants games with recordings of crowd noise and sticks he knocked together when the ticker tape said “hit or “foul.”)

The complaints–even back in the days–that the Yankees just bought championships (often using the Kanas City team as an extension of their minor league franchises) didn’t bother me.  I’d already become enamored with my new favorite players: Yogi, Gil McDougald, and especially Moose Skowron since I played first base in Little League.

I traded baseball for politics when I entered The University of Wisconsin.  I hadn’t gone underground; I still knew the stars although I no longer followed any particular team.  It wasn’t until I landed in Chicago that my love for the game reignited and I renewed my vows–forever.

Yes, I’m a Red Sox fan.  But I still have affection and appreciation for all my past teams–other than the Dodgers.  So wearing the New York cap was simply a reflection of that fondness.

But now that they’ve been bounced from the playoffs I have another cap to wear–one that has a fancy D on it. Sue is from Detroit and has a fierce loyalty to her hometown.  Doesn’t care that much about baseball, but can still recite the Tiger line-up in the 1968 World Series.  In 2006 her mom was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer.  Tsiv decided against extreme measures preferring a limited but better quality of life with home hospice.  Sue, Jeff (Sue’s brother who also lives in Boston) Donna, his wife, and I took shifts flying out to be with her during the final six months.  Sometimes each of us went there alone, sometimes together.  The Tigers were in the playoffs that season and I got Tsiv into baseball.  We watched the games in her bedroom and rooted them on.  The night they advanced to the World Series, Sue and I were both there.  She and I danced around Tsiv’s bed as she chanted along with us. “Go Tigers, go Tigers!”  It was a wonderful moment in a sea of sadness.

So I’m happy to don my Tigers’ cap now as they enter the 2012 World Series.  And it comes at a great time since Sue and I, after thirty four years of living together, are getting married next Sunday.

This year I’m looking forward to rooting for Detroit in the midst of celebration rather than sadness.

Rehctaw from Rawrah http://rawrahs.blogspot.com/,  has graciously offered to pinch hit for me next Monday.  I believe you’ll enjoy his writing and I’ll visit with you all again on November 5th.

BITTERSWEET BALLGAMES

This past Monday and Thursday my son Jake and I went to watch Jah Energy play and win its semi-final series.  The team played all around solid softball with few mistakes and a stout defense.  Jah’s pitching was superb.  Batters kept the bases busy during the first game and played long ball the second.  It made both of us happy to see the team we had played for earn the chance to win the championship.

But for me the operant words in that last sentence were “had played.”  Past tense–with little future action other than a symbolic inning next year before I officially retire.

This season was the first in twenty-five years that I hadn’t played, coached, or managed.  The first season when, until last week, I hadn’t attended a game or practice.  I told myself I didn’t go to the games because my shoulder surgery kept me from driving.  Eventually I realized I stayed away because it was too weird and painful to feel there was no real place for me on the field.

Once Jah came in first and started the play-offs, however, I couldn’t resist.  You can bet I’ll cheer them on during the championship series–wholehearted enthusiasm mixed with a really difficult goodbye.

I knew how I was going to feel when I first got to the field and saw all of the team’s new faces.  I immediately remembered the early years when Ruben, Jah’s founder, rebuilt the team damn near from scratch each spring because of the turnover.   We actually recruited folks we met in the park and hoped they knew the game.   Every season worrying about having enough players or too many players, enough women or not enough women.   Going through a ton of team iterations throughout those twenty-five years and enjoying every one of them.

Sitting there, remembering all those years of playing in the cold, dank days of Boston’s April. Coming out early on Sundays before practice to work with people who wanted to improve–myself included.  Staring directly into the sun  during the summer, hoping my glove was in the right position to catch the ball I couldn’t see.  Dealing with the push/pull tension of competitiveness versus just having fun.  Also recalling coming home after play-off games and writing them up and sending the stories to my teammates.   Now that was a pleasure–especially if we won.

Faces from the past kept popping into my mind and Jake and I would talk about them.  How Q. would always manage to piss the other team off with his trash talk.  Hell, some of us would bet on which inning it would be before someone blew up.  How Jonathan used to club the ball farther than anyone we had ever seen, though Rone, who still plays for Jah, is the best athlete the league ever had.

I remember Tom who played shortstop and loved to heave the ball over my head.  (My first base mantra was if you were gonna miss, miss low.  Those I could pick.  But over my head?  Not with about three inches of air under my feet when I was at my best.)

I sat there watching John who created the league and has worked as an umpire every single year from the league’s inception.  Remembering the managers I played for and the lifelong friends I’ve made.

Face after face after face from the league that I’ll carry around with me for the rest of my life.

And of course thinking about being on the field with my older son Matt–then in later years with Jake, my nephew Lee, and niece Julia.  That was probably more satisfying than the set of championships Jah won during my tenure.

So this is gonna be it.  I can’t play anymore (except for that token appearance next season), our manager Sara is a much better manager than I was, and I don’t think coaching third would do it for me.

Truth is, it’s time.  Not merely because of my shoulder either.  I held on too long.  I knew it when I no longer wanted the ball hit to me.  Knew it when I couldn’t cover enough ground to make a routine play.  Knew it when I tried to switch positions and become a left-handed catcher but couldn’t buy a base hit.  But knowing it’s time to go and going ain’t the same.  It took the shoulder blowout to drive it home.

So there we were sitting in our chairs chatting about the past, the great plays we’d seen over the years, and all the people.  It would be nice if a future someone watching a Jah play-off game in a lawn chair had my face pop into mind.

Not About Baseball

In 1968, Robert Coover wrote a novel called The Universal Baseball Association about a character named Henry Waugh, who created his own board game with imaginary teams and seasons that ran in concert with the real deal.  Although the book was published long before sabermetrics, Henry brought a statistical analysis to his game that mirrored real professional baseball.

Year after year he played throughout the regular season, his dice-rolling stats generally falling within his, and baseball’s, norm.  Then, one season the entire system began to crumple, dice roll by dice roll.  Henry couldn’t understand the statistical insanity that was occurring and the rest of his life fell apart in his desperate attempt to “get it.”  Something he was never able to do and for which he paid a dear price.

Well, I’m happy to report that despite Boston’s horrific Wednesday night collapse and Tampa Bay’s incredible extra inning victory, my life isn’t headed toward Henry Waugh’s mental dumpster.

I’ve been a baseball fan for as long as I can remember.  Sitting on a stool at my grandfather’s (then father’s) tavern, waiting for the arguments about which game to show on novelty of all novelties—the bar’s television.  I was a Dodgers’ fan, but when they and the Giants deserted New York for sunnier pastures, I became my Aunt Jeanette’s (who bartended at the tavern) Yankee disciple.  She took the time to introduce me to the game’s subtleties and the different nuances of each Yankee player.  She also had the uncanny ability to foresee when a Yankee batter was “due.”  “He’s due,” she’d announce to customers and the bets would begin to fly.  She won a hell of a lot more of them than she lost.

Jeanette was so entranced with the Yankees, I never had the guts to tell her about my infidelities.  At night, under the covers, I’d huddle up to my transistor radio to listen to the San Francisco Giants games—or, at least, New York-based Les Keiter’s version of it.  Using a ticker tape, a recording of crowd noise, two sticks, and his fluid patter, he made you think you were listening to the real thing rather than his reenactment.

But then baseball at the bar and under the covers came to an abrupt end.  It slid to the back burner as I attended yeshivas where emotional survival became my game, and University of Wisconsin, where we ran the bases of politics and protests.

I quit school, joined Volunteers in Service To America (VISTA) and was assigned to Chicago where the two team city reignited my love for the game.  Although I lived and worked on the North Side, I became a White Sox fan since they had one of my favorite players, Richie Allen.  And, like other two team cities, you either rooted for one or the other.  In Chicago, to this day, The White Sox were and are “the other.”  Despite their historically low status on the rungs of winning, the Cubs are, and always have been, Chicago’s “darlings.”

Now I’ve lived in Boston for close to forty years.  Which means I’ve lived for close to forty more years.  I now have more room in my psyche—I can do “and,” not just “either/or.”  My heart belongs to Sue and I still have affection for past loves.  And my heart belongs to the Red Sox with affection left over for the teams I rooted for in past.  Maybe that’s maturity, or maybe it’s because I just love the damn game.

Hell, sometimes I think it has mystical powers. Sue, her brother Jeff, sister-in-law Donna, and I took shifts caring for Sue’s dying mother, Tsiv, who lived outside of Detroit and was hospicing at home.  Sue and I were there together during the 2006 World Series and danced around Tsiv’s bed, singing, “Go Tigers, go Tigers.”  As sick and weak as she was, Tsiv invariably waved her arms and sang along with gusto.  Gusto which ‘til my dying day I will always believe added to her life and was fueled by baseball.

It’s the game that holds me captive.  I enjoy rooting of course, but it’s baseball itself I find beautiful and fulfilling.  The grass, (even the new turf), the grace of a second baseman leaping, twisting, and throwing the ball to first for a double play, the subtle but real strategies, the individual competitions within the larger struggle, the timelessness both in the game’s history and within any specific contest.  The late George Carlin has a bit where he compares and contrasts football and baseball’s vocabulary and the degree to which the words reflect each game’s values.  I’m not willing to say that any game is a metaphor for life or reflects our cultural ideals, but even cynical me would like to think that the game played between the white lines and within the diamond reflects the best of the American us.  The individuality, the collectivity, the energy, and perhaps most importantly, the hope.

Even this last Bad Day In Mudville when three minutes after the Red Sox blew their lead and Tampa Bay (a team I viscerally dislike) overcame a seven-run deficit to win the last spot in the playoffs, there was a rightness, a justice to it. My team had spent the month sliding down a cliff, Tampa Bay spent that same month climbing a mountain.

Sure I was disappointed.  But my cousin and I, who had been texting throughout night closed shop by writing almost simultaneously, “baseball is sure one amazing game.”

Ex-Commissioner and sadly departed “Bart” Giamatti On Baseball: “It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.”

“Wool Suits With No Underwear”

As I mentioned in my August 18th post, Jah Energy (my community coed softball team) was about to play the Number One team in the league, Ron’s Auto, who had won the past three championships. They are a team chock full of young firemen (who have yet to succumb to firehouse chili), mechanics, and powerfully athletic women.  Jah consists of graphic artists, writers, teachers, clerks, the unemployed, and oldsters.

Still, we had fought hard to win our “one or done” play-in game to face Ron’s in the semi-finals.  And we didn’t plan on quitting before the series started, even though our team knew we only had our best pitcher for the opening game.  He and his family were going on vacation.

The season runs from April to September, so it’s hard to begrudge anyone taking time off.  It’s part of every team’s yearly expectations.

And pitch that opener he did.  Jim’s a southpaw and he chucked a beauty.  It’s not easy to make an arc ball do tricks but he had that softball curving in both directions and floating over the plate.  When Ron’s did manage to get their bat on the ball, it usually flew high into the outfield where our team made dramatic catch after catch.  Our infield played tight and solid on every ball that came their way.  Add to that our first baseman’s picks, and Jah held the schtarkers (“bruisers” in Yiddish) to six runs while we eked out eight with the lower end of our lineup tablesetting for our best hitters.

First game to Jah, 8-5.  An incredibly low scoring game in our league.  It was a happy day in Mudville.

But then there was the next game.  Either we came out flat or they came out lusting for revenge, or both.  The game was over by the third inning. (We play seven.)  Our outfield is surrounded by trees—except in right—and it seemed like every ball went over or in them.  One of our women pitched the first half and did a decent job, but it didn’t matter.  They clocked anything and everything they could reach and they seemed to reach ’em all.  We had no choice but to bring our best player in to pitch the second half, though that left our outfield even more vulnerable than it had been.  It seemed like they spent that entire game running up the slope to get balls hit behind the trees. Ron’s players wheeled around the bases like a merry-go-round on speed.

Second game to Ron’s, 28-8.  Well, we were consistent in our run scoring, but there were some seriously long faces in the bar that night.

We had a day between the second and third game and it helped.

Both teams came to play in that third game, but Ron’s were the home team and jumped out to a quick five run lead by the bottom of the first.  We fought back and tied it up, but only momentarily, since they thumped right back with three more.  And that was the rhythm of the entire game.  We never led, tho we never for a moment quit and made run after run–but still lost.

Third game and series to Ron’s Auto 15-11.

The first game of the championship series (which was the only one I was/am able to attend) ended with Ron’s crushing The Wanderers 28-1.

So I look back at my first season of co-managing with mixed feelings.  The team played hard; interpersonal issues were effectively dealt with; playing time gripes were minimal; and, people enjoyed playing with each other.  Still, we ended up in fourth place–a bummer.  At the bar after losing the series, Sara (co-manager) and I had a long talk about whether we wanted to stay on for next season.  I guess we’re gluttons for punishment or believe in glory,  but we both made a two season commitment to manage the team.  And despite our fourth place finish, I think everyone will be pleased.

A few words on another subject:  This Thursday I’ll be flying out to the Midwest for another trial that begins September 6th.  Once again I will try to report in on the “hey kids, it’s not really like Law and Order” process as the trial moves along and buttress my typically ‘only Monday’ posts whenever I have time to write.  As usual, I’ll send out individual notices to those on my mailing list (if you want to be added, just send your email address to zacharykleinonline@gmail.com) and place my usual notices on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Google Plus.

So keep an eye out for dispatches from the hinterland.

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss
of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

Who Won The Game?

I’ve been a sports junkie for most of my life.  In fact, the only period I can’t remember being glued to the sports pages and tube was during my years in Madison, when the 60s provided their own other world.  But even then I kept my eye on Bob Gibson, the great St. Louis pitcher.

Sports have been a significant topic between me and many of my friends.  Is Big Papi washed up?  Compare Charles Barkley’s lifetime stats to Larry Bird’s, then tell me who was the better player.  What do we think about millionaires playing for teams owned by billionaires?  The list stretches endlessly (at least according to my life-mate Sue).  It’s that guy thing—the substitute or perhaps testosterone version of intimacy.

But today’s post isn’t about professional sports or my obsession with it.

The subject’s up because this year I’m co-managing a community co-ed softball team, Jah Energy (named after the Jamaican god).  I’ve played for Jah nearly twenty-five years, much of which I was a pretty good first baseman (“if you’re gonna throw wild, throw it low. I’m too damn short and fat to leap high, but I can pick ’em out of the dirt”).

Now though, I’m too old to play much anymore (probably close to, if not the oldest person, in the league) so the shift to co-manager makes sense.  Still, it’s super cool to hit the field every once in a while as catcher, watch my son playing first or outfield, my nephew covering third, and the diamond stocked with representations of Jah’s different generations–including some first year newbies.  One of the benefits of catching is you see it all.

But managing a community co-ed softball team is more of a challenge than I ever had as a player.  There’s finding enough women who want to join, for example, and deciding the minimum number of games people must attend to be on the playoff roster.  Collecting dues.  But for me, the most difficult issue is finding a balance between my desire to win and trying to have everyone play—no matter their skill level.  A seriously schizo experience.

When I held down first base, the answer seemed simpler.  Everybody plays.  But truth be told, I was a starter and mostly played  full games.  It was the other positions where people were shuttled in and out.  Kinda made my largess an easy do.

Come a decade or two, (and I was no spring chicken when I first joined Jah) our manager at the time began subbing me out.  I knew my skills were eroding and that the woman who replaced me was the better athlete.  Not only in the field, but at bat.  (A banjo hitter, I never hit a home run during the course of my twenty-five years.)  So for me it was still “everyone plays” in part, because I now was one of those “everyones.”  But another part of the conflict went internal; should the shadow of my former self play at all, or just let others take my spot?  And how much of the “let others” take my “spot” was really for the good of the team, or was I simply embarrassed by my declining ability?

Well, for the past few seasons, whatever the reason, I mostly chose the latter, satisfied to coach third base and enter a game in the late innings every once in a while as a defensive replacement at first or catcher.  This arrangement continued to shield me from the winning/playing time conflict.

Ain’t shielded no more.  Now most of you know I’ve had a pretty turbulent spring, so, much of the weight has fallen on Sara, my co-manager.  She also has difficulty balancing playing time and winning.  We talk about X, we talk about Y, but eventually we end up with a back-and-forth about playing a terrific outfielder the whole game or replacing him halfway through when each fly ball then becomes an adventure?

One might think it’s an easy call. Stay the course, play everyone, and that be it.  But losing regularly, even in a community league, grinds the grit from your spirit.  Not just mine, but the whole team’s–even those who spend a lot of bench time.  Slowly my take on “everybody plays” began to change.  I too was tired of losing and grew closer and closer to playing our best players as much as possible.

Only as manager, I’m forced to see and accept both sides of the issue.  Despite my desire to win another championship (we’ve won two), a season that runs April through August requires a significant time commitment.  From where I now sit, it’s just not fair or okay to keep people with less skill off the field game after game.  To say nothing of the legitimate complaints that would hit the fan if we actually worked it that way.

So Sara and I middle it, which probably pleases no one.  We work hard to find times when substitutions might not affect the outcome—a situation that doesn’t occur during too many games.  We also try to play our best players much of the time, but wewill take ’em out if the need to get someone else into the game is greater.  Much to the chagrin of those who come out and those who really want to win.

And this is just the regular season.  What’s gonna happen during playoffs?

To be honest, this managing gig is a gut buster and man, I miss the days when playing time decisions weren’t mine to make.  But time doesn’t reverse itself (except in Superman comics) and since this team means so much to me that I plan to have my ashes spread over our home field, I expect to be struggling with this shit for years to come.