Posted on 08/05/2002 7:08:54 PM PDT by Timmy
One of the Boys of Summer: Remembering when baseball was innocent.
STARHILL, LA — On the far side of a low hill, half a mile from Thompson Creek and down a gravel road few people ever have cause to drive, lies the grave of a phenomenal baseball player, a bona fide natural. His name was Roy Dale Craven. He died in the summer of 1974. He was nine years old.
I've been thinking about Roy Dale a lot lately, and I'm not sure why. Maybe it was the disedifying spectacle of the millionaire ballplayers refusing to play at the All-Star Game. When I was a kid playing on Roy Dale's team, going to the supermarket to pick up my Gillette All-Star ballot and choose my line-up was a highlight of the summer. I agonized over the selection for days. Davey Lopes, Steve Garvey, Johnny Bench — all those guys were heroes to me. Perhaps Roy Dale represents in my mind a time when baseball was noble, or at least when I thought it was.
The real reasons, I suspect, are rather inchoate, having to do with the fact that it's summertime, I have a little boy of my own now who's big enough to hold a bat, and who won't leave the house without his Yankees cap. Little boys and baseball: For me, that inevitably calls up memories of Roy Dale, the kid who loved the game like nobody else I've ever known.
Last night I called up Pat Rettig, who, along with my dad, coached our team that summer. Mr. Pat leapt at Roy Dale's name. "I think about that little boy from time to time myself, Rod. For somebody that lived such a short life, and who had such spark, to have it end that soon...," Mr. Pat's voice trails off. "He was a kid who loved life and loved baseball. It was a damn shame."
Roy Dale was born into a raw deal. His mother and father divorced when he was very young. His mama lived in a little brick house on the side of Highway 61, four miles south of town. She had to raise five or six children (all but one of them boys) on her own, and on precious little money.
Roy Dale was the youngest. He had dirty blond hair that dipped over his brow and hung in his eyes, and a million-dollar Huck Finn smile. He showed up to the ballpark with his cousins Allen Ray and Tomcat Dedon on the spring day when the coaches pick the new summer teams. Roy Dale and I ended up on the same team.
"We were getting this little team together," Mr. Pat recalls. "We didn't know, and I don't guess any of the kids knew, what they could do. He said he wanted to pitch. We said 'Okay, get on the mound and pitch.' I was just amazed that this nine-year-old kid could pitch the baseball so hard, and throw strikes. He was a real phenom."
My dad remembers Roy Dale showing up to practice with a raggedy old glove. When the season began, the kid invited his father up from Baton Rouge to watch him play.
"His daddy must have seen what a bad glove that was, because he bought him a brand-new one," my father told me. "Roy Dale showed up at the next game with his new glove, and he wouldn't let it go. I remember it was the last game of the week. The next time we saw him, a few days later, that glove was well-seasoned, as floppy and dirty as if he'd used it all season long. All weekend, that little fellow had done nothing but throw the ball."
It's a cliché to say baseball was his life, but it truly was. One day, my dad was driving home for lunch and saw Roy Dale and his brothers walking across a bottom towards Grant's Bayou, each one carrying a fishing pole. But Roy Dale also had his glove. There was no one else to play with, but the kid couldn't bear to leave his glove behind.
He became the top pitcher on our team. Whenever Roy Dale took the mound, the game was as good as over. Says my dad, "Roy Dale was a star because he was so interested in what he was being taught. So many of you boys were out there because your mamas and daddies had stuck you out there. But this kid was grasping at every straw that was offered him, because he was eager to learn."
No one had his dedication, either. After the second inning of one game, the coaches broke Roy Dale's heart by refusing to let him return to the mound. He was vomiting up his supper in the dugout. All he'd had to eat before the game was pickles. No one could be sure whether he'd eaten so badly because he had chosen to, or because that was all the food his family had in the house that day. No one wanted to ask.
On the afternoon of July 15, 1974, well into the season, Roy Dale was crossing Highway 61, hoping to catch a ride with Allen Ray to the ballpark. He never made it. The driver who hit and killed him was not charged. I found out about the tragedy sitting in the back of my dad's pickup, headed to the game, when we got stuck in traffic backed up from the accident scene. It was just like Roy Dale, my dad said later, to be so excited about a ballgame that he couldn't pay attention to anything else.
The star pitcher for the John Fudge Auto Parts Angels was buried with his glove in his hand and his uniform on his back. This may have been the nicest set of clothes the child owned. That funeral was the first time most of us kids had seen death so close. At some point, someone on the team stepped into the aisle and went forward to pay respects to our fallen pitcher, lying in his open casket. Then we all followed, a dozen or so six-to-nine-year-old boys, telling Roy Dale goodbye. "When that happened, there wasn't a dry eye in the place," Mr. Pat says.
That night, I remember hearing my dad and Mr. Pat out on the back porch, talking. I stood by the screen door to listen, and realized these grown men were weeping in the dark. Startled and embarrassed, I went away. Yesterday was the first time in the 28 years since Roy Dale's death that my father has been able to talk to me about the events of that summer without breaking into tears.
We talked about that summer last week as we drove to the small private cemetery where Roy Dale's grave is. This was the first time I'd been to this place since the day he was buried. It didn't take long to find his grave. Affixed to the tombstone is his third-grade school picture, taken the spring before he died. Roy Dale's smile was exactly as I remembered it.
We didn't linger long. It was hot, and there wasn't a lot to say. In truth, I can't say Roy Dale was a close friend, because he was older than me, and we went to different schools. But I've thought about him throughout my life, wondering where he'd be now if he'd lived. Would he have made it out of our town, and his humble circumstances? Would he have made it to the pros? Would he have been an All-Star? Would you know his name?
I think you should know his name. For 28 summers, Roy Dale Craven, a poor little country boy who loved baseball madly, and who didn't get the chance he deserved in this life, has laid under the rye grass behind a hill you can't even see from the road. Thousands of people drive past his grave every day, not knowing how close they come to something so tender, so worthy, and so pure.
I was the same way when I was a boy. To hear these idiot players talk about how the game was over and they didn't need to play because of some reason, laziness, and how no one cares which league wins was really disappointing. And if I was an owner or Selig, I'd be pissed off.
I used to LOVE the All Star game and would care a lot which league won. Johnny Bench was my hero...before Pops Stargell and the We are Family Buccos, of course...
I had to try explaining to my own son my rationale for considering the use of steroids to be cheating, and why baseball still allows the use of this crap when most every other sport has outlawed it. He didn't understand, Mr. Selig, and neither do I.
"Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you..."
I hope you are right, cause there's a bunch of idiots doing a bang up job driving into the grave.
It's the seventh game of the 2002 World Series between the New York Yankees and the Atlanta Braves. The Braves tied up the series 3-3 in a memorable Game 6; one for the ages.
Now, it's late in Game 7 at Yankee Stadium. The score is tied 7 to 7, and it's now the top of the 16th inning. The game has dragged on for hours. Joe Torre has used up all his pitchers, and so has Bobby Cox. Their relievers they have in are not used to working so many innings. It's past midnight. This is the scene:
Between the top half and and bottom half of the 16th inning both Torre and Cox approached the box where the enormously beloved Commissioner of all Baseball, Bud "We all love him" Selig is ensconced. The two managers, and the home plate umpire talk things over with the beloved Selig for what seems like an eternity.
Fox TV doesn't know whether to keep cutting away to commercials of the Sprint PCS guy telling people "it's the static," or to keep the camera focused on this unexpected set of events. Sensing history in the making, a Fox executive keeps the camera on the field. The Sprint PCS guy in the black overcoat will have to wait.
The game resumes, with the Yankees coming to bat. As it does, the Public Address announcer notifies the public, both in the stands and around the world on world-wide TV: "The game will end at the bottom of the 16th inning, no matter what happens."
The fans in the stands go crazy! They start shouting epithats, and hurling objects onto the field. Presumably, these are signs of their deep love and respect for Bud Selig. At home, countless fans are on the verge of throwing their empty bottles of Budweiser at the TV set.
The game continues. The first Yankee strikes out. The second Yankee flies out to center. The third Yankee is called out on strikes. Game over. Tied at 7-7. Series tied at 3-3. No World Champion.
Now, I know what you're thinking: This could never happen. No, not in a million years could it happen. And even if it did, the beloved Commissioner would take strong action, and never, ever let the World Series end this way. It could never happen. Uh-huh.
And there wouldn't be any riot at Yankee stadium, either. Yepper, everything would be calm and peaceful there. Yeah, right.
thank you.
Thank you. Sparky's right.
Not true - I entrust your son and thousands like him.
MLB, while enjoyable - is not "The Game".
The game is "The Game"
IMHO.
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