BASEBALL and UNCLE KEN

     Perhaps it's just the time of the year for baseball. Perhaps it's because the perennial 'swoon team', the Red Sox,  are currently in first place in their division ( though barely).  Perhaps it's because I would like again to take a swing at 'Junior's' curve or once again make the first-baseman's stretch.

   For whatever the reason, I have been reading 'baseball books' recently  . . .half-dozen or so in recent weeks, a kind of respite from my usual reading fare.

    As a high school athlete, I was smart enough to know that football was not my game.  I did not like to hurt.  I was barely o.k. at basketball.  My game was baseball. 

   I came across some of my 'stats' recently. My batting average in my Senior year was respectable, .300 + in county competition, even managing one home run. It happened like this: playing a cross-county rival, we were having 'batting practice', peppering their pitcher pretty soundly. I went to bat with 'home run' in mind, only to hear the coach call my name. I turned to see him flash the bunt signal...crossing his arms.  ( Crossing his legs meant 'steal' a base. I missed that signal in another game .  To make it up, I ran on the next pitch only to be called 'out' by the base umpire. I was lectured. ). Back to the bunt . . . after a half- hearted attempt went awry, I didn't look at Coach again. I sent the next pitch over the centerfielder's head. When I tagged home plate and sat down, Coach merely said, "Nice bunt, MY NAME !"

    I often speak of 'heroes' in these posts.  'Heroes', role models, 'examples' . . . these can be good, even necessary, persons, especially if chosen with care.  My bias is that very few contemporary professional athletes qualify.  And, it may be a moot point as to whether they ever did.  For example: "Say it ain't so, Joe" the young boy's plaintive plea  to his 'hero', 'Shoeless' Joe Jackson, in the aftermath of the 'Black Sox Scandal' of the early 20 th century.  (Several players on the Chicago White Sox were bribed to 'throw' the World Series.)

    As a child, my baseball 'hero' was my Uncle Ken, though the idea  probably didnot occur to him.  "Pshaaw", he would have said. He was just being himself. He was the main pitcher on the local mill village's baseball team. In the early-mid 20th century such teams were a source of much civic pride in those places.  Sometime in 1949, the Durham (NC) Herald had a lengthy article about the town where he and much of our family lived.  The article's title was What We're Really Proud of Is our Baseball Team.  Ken  was featured prominently in the article and there were two pictures of him, one of his being shaved by his brother, Lewis, in the latter's barbershop.  (The original of that clipping is somewhere in my 'archives'. )

   Uncle Ken's pitches were fast and often, WILD.  He was not the kind of man who would deliberately throw a 'beanball'. But this was the era before batting helmets and it was a brave ...or foolish...batter who would 'dig in' against him.

   He was discovered by professional scouts and played a few seasons of minor league baseball in North Carolina. I was perhaps 10 years old when he took my brother and me to one of his pro games in Raleigh. I was in awe.  He was at a Spring  Training tryout camp for the Pittsburg Pirates in 1951when he received the urgent call to return home . . .his dad had had a fatal heart attack.  He never returned to the tryout camp.  Instead, he turned his attention to business pursuits and became a prominent local businessman.  Still, late in life, he acknowledged that every Spring the 'bug' would bite and he wished he could play again.

    The group picture below (my technological limitations prevent my being able to rotate it) is of a team for which he pitched in the late  1940's.  Although no identification was provided, the man on back row left bears a strong resemblance.

     As a boy in the mill town, he was early known to have

a strong work ethic and financial 'savvy'.  My mom often told of

adults who would borrow money from the 'newspaper boy' and promise to repay him on 'payday'.  He enlisted in the US Navy in   World War II as soon as he was age eligible, following the military death of an older brother.  Somewhere in those same 'artifacts' is a huge coconut that he mailed to me from Guam when deployed there.

Ken (we rarely used 'Uncle') was mom's youngest brother and her sons often teased her that he was her fourth, and perhaps favorite, son.  It was not unusual for him to appear in the Summer with a large supply of cucumbers, asking mom to make him some kosh '-er pickles.  The most upset I ever saw her usually-Stoic demeanor was when he was hospitalized and near death.  (He later recovered and lived several more years.)

        It was after WWII that our Summertime Saturday ritual was for dad, other relatives and me to go wherever the team was playing.  They usually won, due in large measure to Ken's strong right arm.

      Retrospectively, I am sure that my initial affinity for baseball came from seeing him pitch.  So, I also aspired to be a pitcher. Dad bought a catcher's mitt for our games of 'catch'.  My first ever pair of spikes were hand-me-down's from Ken.      

            (  Mid-to-early 1940's )

(The above two pictures are of Uncle Ken and his youngest sister, Rachel.  The top one was made in the early to mid- 1940's.  The second was made in 2007 on the occasion of her 80th birthday.)

A few days from now will be the fifth anniversary of his death.

Increasingly, I am aware of the importance of family, community, heroes, institutions, traditions, values, etc., that provide stability and guidance for youth who are striving to establish their own identity.

       Such roots are steadying, enriching and empowering.  I am grateful for the influence that Uncle Ken provided in my youth and adolescence . . . in baseball and in life.    

           Satchel