33 Summers Chapter Three

1978 started off with a bang with one of the biggest blizzards that Rhode Island had ever seen. On February 7 and February 8, a nor'easter blasted us with over two feet of snow. The storm took the state by surprise with what looked like just a few flurries on the morning of February 7, turned the state on its ear by mid afternoon. Snow was falling at a rate of three inches an hour at times. Over 3,000 cars were stuck on the highway and the surrounding area in Providence, with many people spending the night in their cars. Others just decided to abandon their cars altogether. Winds reached over 50 miles per hour and caused many to lose power. Over 25 deaths were blamed on the storm and over 30 people were arrested for looting. The storm brought almost all of Rhode Island to a standstill for about a week.

Because of the storm we missed an entire week of school, which I enjoyed. I did start to think that spring was never going to come and the snow would be here until sometime in May. It was about this time that baseball really became my life, and would remain that way for many years. I couldn't wait for spring to come so that I could start throwing the baseball around. Thankfully the rest of the winter went by without much snow.

I played in my first midget league game in 1978. This was the first time that I had anybody besides my father try to coach me. Midget league was the step below Little League that was for kids 7 and 8 years old. In midget league the coaches pitch instead of one of the kids, nowadays the kids would probably hit from a tee. During the games nobody kept score and we played three innings, with each child batting once in each inning, no matter how many outs were made. I still swung like Reggie Jackson, only from the right side, taking big cuts and trying to drive it as far as I could. Just like Jackson I struck out in bunches, especially this year. My coach, Mr. Thomas, tried to get me to change my swing, but as with most of my coaches I wouldn't listen, I just followed my father's advice. I played for the Red Sox that year, which for most kids in Rhode Island would have been great but for a Yankee fan was a cruel twist of fate. I wore the red jersey with Red Sox splashed across the front in cheap blue letters, but I imagined one day I would wear the pinstripes and have a candy bar named after me like Jackson had the Reggie Bar.

My father came to most of my games that year, as he would until around high school when he was asked to stay away. He didn't cheer like the other parents would, but he would let me know if he didn't think I was concentrating hard enough. Many of the kids ran around without much direction, a controlled kind of chaos. In my mind I wondered why these kids didn't take this more seriously. How would they ever hope to play in the majors when they didn't even seem to care? It also bothered me that we didn't keep score, how would you know who won and who lost? Midget league wasn't baseball like my father had taught me, it was baseball light.

My father would drive me home after the games and tell me what I did right, and then in more detail tell me what I did wrong. I would sit there beside him in our Chevy Nova and try to absorb what he was saying, making adjustments in my next game. I wanted to make him happy because it meant less yelling, and if I had a good game it meant ice cream, a small chocolate chip cone at Fred's Ice Cream Shack to be exact.

Baseball seemed to be the only thing my father and I had in common. When we talked it was usually about baseball, but at least we talked about that a lot. I remember one point late in the baseball season when my father told me about California Angel, Lyman Bostock. Bostock was murdered in Gary, Indiana after a game against the White Sox. My father said Bostock was on the verge of being a superstar in baseball, but instead died at the age of 27, with a lifetime batting average of .311. I always wondered what he would have done had a crazy man with a gun not taken his life. It was an early lesson in being careful who you surrounded yourself with and where you hung out.

Just a short time later that season the Yankees won the World Series. They beat the Dodgers again in six games, this time rallying from two games down, to take four straight. Rallying back from a deficit was old hat by now for these Yankees. The Red Sox held a 14 game lead over the Yankees on July 17. In the next ten weeks the Yankees would wind up tying the Red Sox for the division lead. Since they were tied after 162 games they needed a one game playoff to determine the winner. The game would be played at Fenway Park on October 2. The Yankees would battle back from two runs down in the seventh with four runs of their own. Bucky Dent was the hero that day hitting a three run home run that barely cleared the Green Monster, the 37 foot wall in left field at Fenway Park. The Yankees would hold on to win the game 5-4. From that day on, Dent's name would be a curse word in New England.

The Yankees were led by Ron Guidry in 1978. The lefty pitcher nicknamed Louisiana Lightning, had a record 25-3 and got the win in the playoff game against the Red Sox. Guidry won the American League Cy Young Award that year, and finished second to Jim Rice, of the Red Sox, in the American League Most Valuable Player Award voting. My father and I would talk for years about Guidry's 1978 season; my father believed it just may have been the best pitching season of all time. Even though I was a hitter at heart, my father would teach me to respect the art of pitching.

I relied on school and my mother to teach me about everything else in life. My mom and I talked a little about the Jonestown tragedy when it happened. Jonestown was built as an isolated religious community by Jim Jones and his followers in Guyana, South America. They were on the run from the United States government for tax evasion. People who escaped from the community later told of beatings, murders, and a planned mass suicide. United States Congressman Leo Ryan led a fact finding mission down to Guyana. As Ryan was leaving he was murdered by members of Jonestown. Later that day Jim Jones started the mass murder-suicide that claimed the lives of over 900 members, that included people drinking cyanide laced Flavor-Ade. My mother did the best job she could explaining the events that took place to me, though I'm not sure anyone could ever really explain Jim Jones. My mother rarely sugar-coated things, but rather gave me the facts and answered the questions I might have as straightforwardly as possible. I started to realize that some people's actions just didn't make any sense and that some people are just plain evil, yet even at an early age I wanted to figure people out.

My mother had a pretty quiet year, my father doing a pretty good job keeping his anger in check. We listened to the radio together quite a bit in 1978, and the airwaves belonged to the Bee Gees. The soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever, which prominently featured the Bee Gees, was all the rage. "Stayin' Alive," "Night Fever," and "How Deep is Your Love," were all chart toppers for the Bee Gees. Disco was in full swing and so were the ugly clothes that went along with it. I was dressed in flared pants and button down shirts with huge collars, what was my mother thinking. In later years when I heard a Bee Gees song I would think of these times and feel a tiny smile creep across my face.

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