V.J.M.J. y CH.

“Baseball” Reminiscences

( Neighborhood Baseball from a Child's Perspective )

Cortesia de Gary Brunner

I am not a fan of baseball until the playoffs begin, but I wanted to share my experiences with the troops.  I thought that they might enjoy the story.   You are free to scroll past the post if you’re not interested.  I have injected humor but swear on my mother’s grave that everything presented here is absolutely true. Besides, as I type I keep flinching and looking back over my shoulder to see if my mom’s hand is on the way to the side of my head.  That's why I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I am being truthful.  It's just reflexive habit.  Well, 99.9% is true, anyway.  Other children in other cities or regions may have another name for this “sport.”

In our pre-teen years we used to play what we called “Bottle-cap baseball.”  Yes, guys, there was a time when there were no canned sodas.  Also, there were no “twist-off caps.”  You removed the bottle from the vending machine and there was a bottle opener on the front of the machine.  As well, there was a little metal box below the opener to catch the bottle cap.

We played “bottle-cap baseball” with the bottle caps.  We would go to the local grocery stores, ( There was no such thing as a “convenience store” back then.  They were real grocery stores. ) in about a 6-block radius and ask the grocers if we could have the bottle caps out of their machines.  They would always agree to let us have their bottle caps.  We would remove the bottle-cap box and take the bottle caps.  Of course, we would also have to agree to wash out the bottle cap box which would get filled with coke syrup and sugar over time.....no such thing as “sweetener” or “sugar-free” humbug.  But having to wash out the box was a good deal.  We got the bottle caps and the grocers got clean boxes.  Both of us won.  Capitalism!  The American Way!  It works!.....even between adult grocers and intolerable, little street rats.

Yeah, we were called street rats back then.  Well, except for one of the kids.  His dad called him “Urchin.”  That name stuck with him for as long as I knew him.  He later became a lifer in the Navy as an Aviation Photographer’s Mate.  Even after his retirement he stayed on with the Navy at Alvin Callendar Field in Belle Chasse, Louisiana.  Well into his retirement I saw him and  instinctively called him “Urch” out of habit.  We both laughed uproariously.  We were in our early-40s at the time.

There was only one girl in our “gang.”  Rosie.  She lived directly behind our house.  Nobody fooled with Rosie.  Not even any guys in our “gang” fooled with Rosie.  Her brother was about 5 years older than us.  He was a jock.  He made her be tough.  She was “one of us.”  The rest of the girls in the neighborhood were prissy-missy-touch-me-nots who thought that Rosie was just disgusting.  Rosie thought that all of the prissy-missy-touch-me-nots were equally or maybe even more disgusting and needed their butts kicked just on general principle or just for having made the most grievous mistake of having been born.  We all thought that Rosie was just the coolest.

Whenever some rat in a rival, adjoining-neighborhood “gang” had to have his butt kicked for some invented transgression like, “He looked at me cross-eyed so we have to ‘get’ him.".....We would always send Rosie to do the deed.  Send Rosie?  Nah, that's not right.  She always volunteered!  She’d come back all scratched up but with a defiant, arrogant, victorious look on her face and say, “He ain’t gonna give us no more trouble.”

Additionally, to show you just how young we were, Rosie ran around with us in short pants and no top.  Her mom would yell out of the back door, "ROSIE, GET IN HERE AND PUT ON A TOP!"  Rosie would reply, "Aw, mom.  I don't want to."  Her mother was the mathematically-inclined-type, sneaky parent.  You know the ones I'm talking about.

Rosie's mother at the back door:

"ONE, TWO, THREE," etc......

Rosie’s dad worked for the local Mogen David distributor.  Sometimes we had wine in our "cache."  ( Our “cache” will be visited later. )  We would sniff it and take small tastes but never actually drank it.  It was horrible, nasty stuff.  We made faces but tried to hide the fact that it was horrible, nasty, God-awful, nasty-tasting stuff.

I have another story about Rosie and a neighborhood football game that was played when we were both in our twenties but I’ll have to save that story for another time.

Anyway, the bottle cap baseball game was played by throwing the bottle cap so that the “batter” ( Maybe we should call him the “broomsticker” rather than “batter” because a broomstick was used as a “bat.” ) would try to hit the bottle cap with his "bat."

Hmmm…..where did we get those broomsticks?  Oh yeah!  I just remembered that the neighbors would “donate” their brooms and mops to us.....at night.  Back then, people just hung their brooms and mops on the fence.  We would reconnoiter the neighborhood at night and “confiscate” the brooms and mops that were of questionable age.  Well, in truth, the age didn’t matter to us one bit but we would justify our actions by claiming, "Well, it's time for them to get a new broom anyway."  We couldn’t see the age of the things at night.

Mops were of particular concern because of those pesky strings getting caught on the chain-link fences.  We sometimes had to yank on the mop real hard.  Of course, when the mop would finally break free the fence would “KA-CHING” which would reverberate throughout the neighborhood.  Then the pathological, psychotic, paranoid, neighborhood dogs would announce our presence.  Those beasts!  We could have never been stealthy spies.  Geesh!  Why we weren’t ever caught, then beaten half-to-death by our sneaky parents, still confounds me.

Yes, guys.  That was the approved “therapy” for misdeeds.  There was no other “therapy” except the lecturing by the sneaky parents.  Sometimes the “therapy” would be followed by a lecture and sometimes vice versa but most times the lecture and the “therapy” were doled out at the very same time ( I guess this was for the sake of efficiency. ) with the lecture being done in cadence with the “therapy":

You get the idea.  We knew we were in really big trouble when they had a lot to say.

BTW, here I have to ask, "Why do you think that so many of us were really good when marching in the military?"  We had that cadence thing down-pat, that's why!

How in the world did we deal with those pesky bristles and mop strings?  Ah!  I remember that one, too.  A friend of mine, who shall remain totally nameless to protect his identity, “confiscated” a hacksaw from somewhere.  He would never tell us where he got that hacksaw.  However, it was voted on, and the conclusion was that the hacksaw would be hidden behind my dad’s garage.....much to my dismay.  Here was a man who used to beat me as soon as I woke up and got out of bed in the morning then say, “THAT’s just for NUthin!  Wait'll ya see what’s gonna happen to ya if ya actually DO sumthin’!”

Anyway, the decision was reached that the hacksaw would be “stored” behind my dad’s garage along with various and sundry items.  Ah, those other items, you ask?  Here is a list that isn’t necessarily all inclusive.  There may have been other things that I have forgotten.  The normal stuff we had like the most beautiful marbles that we would not even let our sneaky parents see, lest they get confiscated as contraband.  They simply LOOKED too pretty for a sneaky parent to understand.

squirt guns

firecrackers

pea shooters

pop guns

sling shots

firecracker guns

small containers of BBs.....

Normal stuff like that, some of which, kids were not supposed to have.  

“donated” cigarettes

“donated” cigarette papers

We would scavenge the bus stops within, say, a four block radius.  We would collect the cigarette butts that were thrown on the ground.  Ashtrays?.....at BUS STOPS???  Surely, you jest!  There were no pesky filters on cigarettes back in those days.  We used to get an awful lot of tobacco.  In those days just about everyone smoked.  We would peel the old paper off and gather our “booty” into an old cookie tin or metal band-aid box depending upon how much "booty" we had at any one time.  We used to bury the old cigarette paper so as not to have the evidence seen by the sneaky parents.

A few years later, when filter cigarettes came out we then stepped up in class.  No more bus stop tobacco for us.  We became high class, man.  We hit the big time!  We demanded “donated” Viceroy.  One of my older sisters used to smoke Kent cigarettes.  God!  Those things were more awful-tasting than the wine!  My dad just doesn't know how lucky he was.  He smoked non-filter Philip Morris or he would have gotten raided, for sure.

Did we actually smoke?  I don’t know.  There were many watery eyes and much hacking and coughing going on.  On more than one occasion there was the breakfast/lunch of more than one street rat deposited behind the garage.

However, here was our greatest dilemma:  Should we weigh the newspaper down with the hacksaw or “hide” the hacksaw under the newspaper and have the newspaper blow all over the place and expose our “cache?”

Back to the bottle cap baseball story.  Sorry I got side-tracked but all of it is inter-related.

So, here we were with “donated” brooms and mops behind my dad’s garage with a “confiscated” hacksaw with a metal-cutting blade.  I’m telling you, cutting those pesky bristles and strings with a hacksaw was a true joy!  I guess we could have gone into the garage and used my dad’s table saw but that wouldn’t have been any fun, would it?

Ah, there you go thinking like a sneaky parent.  You have to start thinking like a STREET RAT to follow and understand this story.

Anyway, bottle cap baseball was played just like a normal baseball game.  There were pitchers, catchers, fielders, etc.  Some of the “pitchers” were pretty good.  The bottle caps were thrown so that they would “sail” much like a “Frisbee.”  I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the inventor of the Frisbee got his idea from our bottle cap idea.  Should we sue?

If the cork in the cap was torn or if a piece was missing then the cap's aerodynamics was destroyed.  Additionally, the cap would make a buzzing sound as it approached the batter, further confusing him.  Some pitchers would deliberately damage the cork.  Some caps would get damaged when removed due to careless people opening their bottles.  Didn’t they realize that the bottle caps were to be used for our baseball games?  The NERVE of some people!  They're just SO uncaring of others.

The better pitchers would dig through the ball box that was kept on the “mound” to find those caps that were bent or had cork damage.  Both teams used the same ball box.  Those rascals!  Just like major league pitchers with their scratches, spit or whatever will make the ball do crazy things.  There were many “discussions” about this under-handed tactic.

Anyway, the object was to hit the cap with the broomstick just as far as you could and run to first base.  Wait a minute.  First base?  Where did we get those “bases?”  OH!  “Donated” garbage can covers, of course.....at night.  Sometimes our “home plate” was very stubborn and refused to get ripped off of the garbage can.  We would either accidentally knock the garbage can over, or sometimes on purpose, to get our “bases.”  Then those aforementioned, psychopathic, psychotic, paranoid, neighborhood dogs would get into the act.  I'm telling you, man, life was really tough back then.  Still, we never got caught.

However, I still believe to this day that the neighborhood cats loved us from afar because of those over-turned garbage cans.  The neighborhood cats had better sense than to get anywhere near us so they HAD to love us from afar.  ( My older sisters’ cats avoided me like the plague and I have never understood why. )

So here we were, playing bottle cap baseball with “donated” brooms, and mops that had been “modified” with a “confiscated” hacksaw and garbage can covers, in varying stages of newness, out in the middle of the street, in broad daylight, for all of the world to see and none of the sneaky parents recognized any of their own utilities.  Unbelievable!  Well, maybe they did recognize their brooms, mops and garbage can covers but feared us so much because they knew how "deadly" we could be.  We sure were smart to pull that off, weren't we!?

Those kinds of neighbors got hit hard and often.

The "protected" houses may have been old people or others who perhaps didn't have children but otherwise didn't bother us and "respected" our "territory."  Of course, our "territory" was anywhere we decided was our "territory."  In fact, a few people came out to watch us shred their front lawns and thought we were a "joy" to be around.  They would offer us coke or at the very least, water.  Ya just gotta love old people.  I read somewhere that you know you are old when the kids in the neighborhood start treating you as a peer.

It is also interesting to note that if any "member" decided to take off on his own and raid one of the "protected" houses then he was dealt with very severely.  He was summarily "arrested," "jailed," "tried," "convicted," "sentenced" and "punished"  all doled out all within a very few, short minutes.  I won't go into the "punishment" phase.  A few would get "banished" forever until the next day or the next week.  See?  There IS, in fact, honor among thieves!

Please keep in mind that we didn't go on to other people's lawns with the express purpose of shredding them.  That was just one of the by-products of our activities.  For example, our back yard would never grow grass out in the middle.  It would grow only around the edges.  My dad would fertilize and water the bare mud on a regular basis then shake his head and wonder why no grass would ever grow there.  All he would have had to do is to ask me why.

Anyway, we had to keep replacing items like bottle caps, bats and bases.  In other words, ALL of our "equipment."  Why?

Some bottle caps would get hit out of the solar system never to be seen again.

One street rat, whose mother was absolutely paranoid about the polio thing, used to make him wear all of those items everyday.  He would take them all off and hide them in the bushes, lest he be called a “sissy” forever.  She thought that he was the model child because he would get home with a spotless shirt and shoes.  On more than one occasion she was heard to say, “Well, my goodness, Don!  That shirt doesn’t even look like it has been worn.  You're such a good boy.”  See?  That sneaky parent should have smelled the shirt to see if it still smelled like detergent instead of goat.  Ah, those sneaky parents ain’t so smart, after all.....just sneaky.

Bats had to be replaced because the sharp edges on those bottle caps would tear up the end of a broomstick.  After several games the end of a bat would look like a pom-pom.  We knew it was time to replace the bat when the ball would start sticking in the bat.

The bases would get flattened in just one game.....even the handles.  Can you imagine kids completely destroying a metal, galvanized garbage can cover in  just a couple of hours?

We called the bottle caps, bats and bases, “Expendable, Replaceable Items” well before corporate America ever heard of such terminology.  See?  More capitalism at work.  It’s in everyone’s blood.

Were there arguments and fights?  Of course!  Haven’t you ever watched a major league baseball game?  Those guys are just kids in men’s bodies.

The arguments were usually started with the “tags” of the base runners, ground balls and what I shall call "indeterminate circumstances."

"Tags" of base runners:

"YOU'RE OUT!"

“NO, I’M SAFE!”

“NO!  YOU’RE OUT!  I TAGGED YOU!”

“NO, YOU MISSED ME!”

“OH, YEAH!  THEN WHAT IS THAT SCRATCH ON YOUR ARM?”

“THAT SCRATCH IS FROM THIS MORNING’S GAME!”.....

( Or yesterday’s game, or last week’s game, or last month’s game, or last year’s game, or last decade’s game, or last century’s game, or last eon’s game…..That scratch came from ANY game other than the current

game. )

Ground balls:

“That was foul!”

“No, it was fair!”

Indeterminate Circumstances:

There would be individual scuffles that would end up in bench-clearing brawls.....just like the big leagues.  I wonder why none of us ever got hurt during these brawls that would once and for all settle the matter for all time?  Further, why could we then be good buddies immediately after the game?  I mean, it was like, “Well, we really kicked your butts in that fight today so you better not fool with us anymore or we'll have to do it again!  What time are we going to the movies tonight?”  I swear, I’ll never figure that out.  We should have hated each other forever based upon our conduct during the games.

None of our "gang" ever wound up in prison or even ever arrested.  Amazing!.....considering our conduct and ill-advised indiscretions as adolescents, isn't it?  What would have happened to us in today's world?

Well, there was one of us many years later.  The much detested but feared law told his parents, "Jail or the military."  He wound up a very respected and well-liked Sgt. in the U. S. Army.

Anyway, if you think that hitting a bottle cap with a broomstick while the fluttering, humming bottle cap is approaching the sound barrier is easy, try it some time.

I swear on my computers, car, house, wife and all other worldly possessions except the boat and dog, that all of the above is true and accurate, well, 99.9% anyway.  I get to keep the boat and dog no matter what.

That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.