With the kick off of baseball season last week I would like to repeat a very nice article that should resonate in the heart of any Baby Boomer who ever played sandlot baseball in the 50s and 60s. If you've ever used a brick for first base, a tree for second, or a trash can lid for third, you might just recognize yourself in this article.
With grateful appreciation to the author, Dan Baker, editor of The LaGrange Daily News, LaGrange, GA,
for granting permission.
There's something about the smell of a new baseball glove that takes me back decades, back to my first glove and my introduction to baseball.
When I was 7, I decided I wanted to play baseball, so my folks bought me a glove. It was nothing out of the ordinary, and it never did get a good pocket. But it had that wonderful new-glove smell, it was mine and it was my ticket to baseball.
Every summer in the late 1950s and early '60s, the kids in our neighborhood would play ball at Irwin's field, so called because it was beside Irwin Hattaway's house, although it didn't belong to Irwin or his mother. I don't know who owned it, probably someone who lived out of town. It was just a vacant lot on the corner in a residential section, perfect for a ball field with enough trees around the edges to provide some shade while you were waiting you turn at bat. It even had a backstop of sorts, rigged out of some heavy fence wire and boards. The lot was about four times as long as it was wide, so one player could pretty much cover what was the outfield by standing in center field. But none of that mattered - it was a place to play ball.
And we didn't dare hit the ball across the street beyond third base. The man who lived in the house there was known to be a grump and keep baseballs that wound up in his yard.
Early each spring we'd get lawn mowers out of my dad's dirt-floored garage and cut down the weeds and vines which had threatened to take over our field after winter was over. A hard morning's work was enough to get it into decent shape, although foul territory remained a vine-covered jungle where a ball could be lost forever.
Most summer afternoons would find eight or 10 kids around, enough for a game. We'd ride up on our Columbia bikes with the big balloon tires, gloves hooked to the handlebars. Someone would bring a bat or two, and there was at least one baseball with the seams reasonably intact.
We'd choose up sides, letting the two best players pick. You could always tell how you were rated by your peers. If you were one of the first ones chosen, you were pretty good, at least from the crop of talent available that particular day. If you were picked near the end, you were either young or a girl. Oh, yes, we had girls playing. Not every day, but often enough. And this was years before women's rights were heard of. It's true that when a girl batting got two strikes on her, a boy would take her last strike while she ran the bases. But other than that condition, girls were welcomed to play.
In fact, one girl, Linda Prince, had one of the oddest
hits I've ever seen. Linda was two or three years younger than most of us and was no Babe Ruth at the plate. But one day while she was batting, she swung way too early. The momentum of her swing caused her to pivot completely around, whereupon the bat hit the ball, which by this time had finally arrived. She made it to first safely.
Our parents never had to look far to find us during those hot summer months - we were playing baseball.
We played ball at Irwin's field until we got too big - big enough to hit the ball over the fence fastened to the old chinaberry trees out by the unpaved street beyond the outfield. Our interests changed, and baseball was no longer the consuming passion it once was. The vines and weeds took over the field again, as though we had never played there. I passed by the lot a few years ago. It's still vacant, with no hint of its former use.
Now here I am 50 years later, pushing a buggy filled with motor oil and a filter through the automotive section of a big-box store. I pass the sporting goods section and pause. There before me is a rack of baseball gloves. Gloves signed by Nellie Fox and Luis Aparicio are nowhere to be seen, replaced by models of newer stars. But one thing hasn't changed - the smell of new leather baseball gloves.
I pick one up while no one was looking and slip it on my left hand. The touch of smooth leather against fingers is wonderful, even to one who qualifies for senior citizen discounts. The glove is a bit stiff, perhaps, but much better than the ones I had as a young boy.
Then, without embarrassment, I hold the glove to my nose. That new-glove smell, that smell from 50 summers ago, is there. Suddenly, in my mind, I am a kid back at Irwin's field. At the crack of the bat, I'm racing over the tangle of vines in extreme right field, snaring a streaking ball one-handed, then firing the ball to second base to double off the runner.
It's amazing how the smell of the good baseball glove can make an average player great, at least in his mind.
