i’m back on this patio. It seems to generate memories for me.

In the past two weeks, while i was writing posts, working on my project, generally messing around, and playing some golf, i ran across three items from the past. My find generated a thorough search for one or two photos that went with one of those items. The search did not yield the photos. i’ll keep looking.

Regardless, the two items i did have gave me reflection on a sport that has lasted literally a lifetime, an eighty-year lifetime…so far. Baseball.

The photo of the “pony” league team in 1954 has generated numerous comments about the boys in the photo. Soon, i will collect all the input and put out a follow-up with a more complete list of those players. Before that league, i had been playing backyard baseball by myself since i had conscious thought, or after about four, with friends until that pony league team assembled on the dirt diamond and coarse grass and dirt of what was primarily the recess playground for McClain students during the school year — There was a maple tree behind the backstop where someone had carved on the front, “D. Boone killed a bar here,” which i believed to be true until at least the sixth grade.

My love for the game at that time is a part of family lore. One afternoon, i was riding my bike down the West Main sidewalk, headed for a game. There was an elm tree limb hanging about a foot or two over the sidewalk from the yard of one of those grand homes that proliferated on West Main during that time all the way out until around the end of the Castle Heights campus. Being ten and a complete idiot with my glove in my bike basket, i reached up with my right hand to grab a low hanging leaf, dreaming of capturing the golden ring on the merry-go-round at the Wilson County Fair out on Coles Ferry Pike in about two months.

The leaf disagreed and stubbornly remained on the limb. My bike slid right and the front wheel caught the small ditch along the sidewalk from the immaculate grooming of the home’s front yard. The bike fell carrying me head first into the sidewalk. It hurt. i felt the blood and my mouth was aching. i began a slightly less than manly cry.

Heading down to the square was Mrs. Thompson, who later would be my seventh grade home room teacher at Lebanon Junior High. Seeing the disaster, she pulled over. She guided me to the passenger seat and placed the crooked bike and my glove in her trunk. i used that glove until my senior year season at Castle Heights when, at third base in the middle innings, it fell off of my hand.

She drove to our home and rang the front door. My mother answered. Mrs. Thompson told her she thought of taking me to McFarland Hospital but decided she should take me home first. She added she thought i must be hurt badly because of the amount of squalling i was emitting.

Estelle Jewell (i imagine she began with “Phsaw”) was unconcerned and explained, “He’s not hurt that bad. He just upset he’s not at the game.”

i suspect she was pretty accurate.

Doc Gallagher put a cap on the broken front tooth. Back then, available caps were not of the caliber they are today. i got a silver front tooth and had to live with it for about six years (another story).

i continued to play baseball and in high school its variant fast pitch softball.

i played Little League and Babe Ruth League. i was a pretty decent ballplayer, a singles and doubles hitter, fielded well except for high fly balls straight at me when i was in the outfield, had a decent arm and was versatile: catcher, third base, shortstop, and outfield, the latter mostly in left field, certainly not major league talent, but decent. Great memories. One of my favorite stories comes from Jim Leftwich, my cousin sort of since we haven’t found the Prichard connection…yet.

On the Babe Ruth League Lea’s Butane Gas and the Castle Heights Military Academy team , i was often Mike Gannaway’s catcher. Jim was at bat when Mike threw a fastball over 90 mph and Jim couldn’t catch up. When Mike had two strikes on him, i called for a curve ball. Jim jumped away to watch the ball break over the plate for strike three. He told me he still remembers looking back to see me laughing.

Then came my really, no kidding baseball softball thaumaturgical years, i was Gannaway’s catcher at Castle Heights again. We had good teams, but my senior year was something special. i played on the “Pigmy infield.” Mack Brown was about six feet at first base. He didn’t count, but the other three infields were not giants. Tommy Vassar played second. Tommy and i at third were 5′ 6.” Jimmy Gamble at short was 5’7″. With Gannaway’s pitching leading the way and a superb outfield, we won the prep school “Mid-South Conference” crown.

Which brings me to the second photo, the one that produced my search for team photos of Lebanon’s American Legion teams. It was the best baseball team on which i played. In a follow-up to this post, i will try to locate and include the photos and provide the complete lineup and will narrate several of the memorable moments of that season. In my first year, i was a sub. We won the Tennessee mid-region tournament in an epic battle with Columbia. Then we went to the state tournament with four teams, and the Memphis team drubbed us and won the state for about the sixth straight time. The Memphis team had won the national title a number of times.

That’s me over there to the right, the singles hitter with my 33″ Nellie Fox Louisville Slugger bat.

During the two summers of American Legion ball, i was in heaven. i also played fast pitch softball in the county league and in county Sunday baseball league. So while i dug graves (and mowed along with other cemetery maintenance) as my summer job (Thanks, Jessie Coe), i played softball on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, Legion Ball on Wednesday and Saturday, and in the Sunday baseball league. i had Friday nights off. What a fabulous summer.

Texas Boot Company had an incredible bunch of players assembled by Danny Evins, the creator of Cracker Barrel. i caught Cheatham Russell. Cheatham was amazing. He threw a 95-mile fast ball with movement, a wicked curve, and a floater that was impossible to hit. As his catcher, i wore a first baseman’s mitt rather than the catcher’s mitt because Cheatham’s pitches moved so much. i put a round kitchen sponge in the palm of my catching hand (left), i would then put a cotton garden glove over that. Then i would put another sponge, this one rectangular cut out roughly in the shape of an hour glass. Then i would put on the large first baseman’s mitt.

When the game was over, i would take off all of those glove hand trappings. My left hand looked about the twice the size of my right due to catching Russell’s fastball.

i kept playing, as i have noted until i was 46. But dreams of being the next Bill Mazeroski, Don Hoak, Rod Carew faded long ago. Still baseball (and softball) is in my blood. i will write more of this worship later.

I would write more now, but i have to stop and watch a Padre game on television with Maureen. She is now a fan…and she is a saint to put up with me.