They Don’t Make Baseball Like That Anymore

From Sea to Shining Sea ^ | 10/21/05 | Purple Mountains

[PurpleMountains]

A recent trip to Idaho awakened some pleasant old memories and some sadness. Growing up and spending most of my life in Massachusetts and Rhode Island provides quite a contrast to a heartland state like Idaho, where kids still love to play baseball – anytime, anywhere.

As a child I used to wear out three sets of playmates every day playing baseball. I also spent most of a summer on my grandfather’s farm pulling mustard weeds from potato fields just to earn my first baseball glove (it was a Marty Marion). As I look around on the jaded east coast, I don’t see many kids playing that sport anymore. If they do play, it is under the auspices of some organized activity, and the parents are there acting like it’s the end of the world if the umpire calls a strike on their kid.

It wasn’t like that for me and my friends. My parents had other, more important things to do – like survive. All our games were pickup games, with no umpire, and the kid with the ball or bat always had a chance to play. My folks never once saw me play baseball, and it never occurred to me that there was anything wrong with that. After all, I was playing. One time my best friend and I walked several miles to stand outside the left field fence where, if we stood on a little hill, we could see the Braves play an exhibition game against the minor league Providence Grays.