Batter up!

The foul ball left the bat with a deter­mined route elud­ing a tall net and posts of var­i­ous needs, and flew beyond the ball­park with a bee­line to my parked car driver’s side wind­shield. The wind­shield imploded into a mil­lion ker­nels and flecks of glass into every nook and cranny of the inte­rior. I had just left it at 6 o’clock; when I needed to drive the car at 7 o’clock — it was now “a mis­sion impossible”.

I recall my base­ball expe­ri­ences — girl grow­ing up in the 40’s and 50’s. Hardly any girls owned a ball glove or a bat. I was no excep­tion. Hard ball was not an option even for the boys — soft­ball was the medium.

My first meet­ing with ball, bat and boys will­ing to play with girls were my best friend’s cousins. A visit to their aunt and uncle’s house and small yard needed some­thing. We had a pas­ture to end any bore­dom they might have had, and it was pas­sage into a game of work-up. Now we girls (add my sis­ter) had no notion of what it was all about. We were sent to the raw edges of the “ball field” to await our turn. Some­how we never “worked up.”

Obvi­ously, the field peo­ple even­tu­ally became base­men, pitch­ers and catch­ers — but not us. I protested. They had good-sounding excuses, ”You have to catch a ball first, to move up.” We tried. Glove­less was not a help even for a “soft” ball. It stung and we let loose — not a catch.

Deter­mined to learn, we watched the boys play ball at school recesses. As girls there was not oppor­tu­nity — not even in gym class where we asked, “Rover, Rover,come over.” Two teams pre­vent the opponent’s mem­ber to run through braced arms and take one back with them if they suc­ceeded. Even­tu­ally, in our school (grades 1 through 8) we had a woman coach­ing us in bas­ket­ball, but we never found our­selves on the ball field until high school.

We never played base­ball beyond intra­mural teams at lunch, other than in phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion classes. Our sev­eral teams would even­tu­ally be an after-school sport; most of us became Girls Ath­letic Asso­ci­a­tion mem­bers. We did get let­tered at awards ban­quets. I let­tered three out of four years, and was proud of them. How­ever, to wear let­tered high school sweaters at col­lege was con­sid­ered not to be totally college-spirited. So short-lived was our glory for effort.

My hus­band and I man­aged a girls’ base­ball sum­mer league. That was a trip! I can’t tell you how often we had to calm the moth­ers down and remind them of sportsman-like atti­tudes, “Please?”” Nev­er­the­less, it was great to see girls with team tees, ball gloves and favorite wooden bats tak­ing the field to pitch and catch as well as the boys’ teams.

My car’s attack would never have been by a girl bat­ter. They still play in a lesser field with­out much spec­ta­tor seat­ing — far from my apart­ment house park­ing lot.

Posted by Gary Henery on Jun 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.