AMERICA'S PASTIME

"How's the kid today?" Andy asked.
"He's really hot!" Dad answered.
"I believe I'll put him in." Andy drawled.
Andy was the coach of the Oklahoma Gas &Electric Company team in Oklahoma City's Twilight League in the days when baseball was really America's pastime. I don't mean to minimize the modern devotion to baseball. Many people still know and love the intricacy of the game. But in those days baseball was America's pastime because nearly everybody played. Every town had a team. Every big town had a league or several leagues. I'm not talking about Little League baseball. And I don't mean softball. I am talking about grown men practicing nearly every afternoon in ball fields and back lots all over the country. They played games several nights a week. On weekends the pro and semipro teams often played what they called twi-night doubleheaders that started before sundown and lasted well into the night. Of course, there were big league cities and most people followed their teams in the newspapers. But real baseball was played in every neighborhood across America. As far as Andy was concerned they played hardball.
My dad was not yet 20 when he left the engineering school at Oklahoma A&M to go to work for Southwestern Bell in Oklahoma City. His younger brother Neal could not have been more than 16.
Of course the telephone company where Dad worked had a team, but the Twilight League was semipro, and teams could hire players from anywhere. Andy had a friend who had lived in my grandmother's boarding house in Stillwater, where A&M, (now OSU) was. He told Andy that my dad and his younger brother were pretty salty ball players. And though Neal was still a little young for semipro ball, Andy went out of his way to get to know them.

Before the season began Andy had scheduled an exhibition game at Bethany College (now Southern Nazarene University). And he invited Dad and Neal to come with him. There really wasn't much chance of their playing at that time. Besides Neal's age, Dad had a torn ligament in his knee. And the doctor had put him in a cast from ankle to hip, as they sometimes did in those days.
In the very first inning the college boys started hiting the OG&E pitcher. They had loaded the bases, and runner after runner crossed the plate as they knocked the pitcher out of the park. They had already scored 5 runs when Andy strode over to where Neal and Dad were playing catch on the sideline.
Neal could be pretty high-strung or at least highly motivated; a fact, that along with considerable intelligence, made him very successful at nearly everything he did all his life. It also made him nervous on that Saturday afternoon. Andy was putting him into the game with no outs, the bases loaded and the score 5 to nothing.
"Crack!" His first warm up pitch sounded like a rifle shot as it hit the center-pole of the backstop about ten feet up. Neal had the attention of everyone in the park. His second pitch was high as well. And the catcher threw his mitt up air as the ball went over his head.
"I quit!" he growled as he waddled away from home plate unbuckling his shin guards. Andy didn't pay any attention to the crusty old catcher who thought he was too good to catch for a kid not old enough to shave.
"I'll put in a cripple, if you'll let me have a runner for him," Andy yelled to the college coach loud enough for everyone in the stands to hear. Not liking being put into a corner by Andy's showmanship, the coach stoically shook his head, No. And probably to the coach's surprise the crowd, mostly students, booed their own coach.
"I'm going to put him in anyway." Andy broadcast to the grandstands. The crowd cheered.
The umpire gave Neal another couple of warm up pitches since Dad had come in to catch for him. His first throw was high again, but Dad managed to catch it talking to Neal the whole time. "That's it, Neal. Settle down and pitch to me. The second pitch was closer in as Dad continued to encourage.
My dad is no longer living. But I can still hear his deep bass voice coaxing and encouraging as only he could do. He often spoke like that to both my brothers and me as he did to his brother that day. It sometimes seems as if he is still speaking to me telling me to calm down and focus on what I am doing.
Neal had a fastball that hopped as it passed over the plate. That was his natural pitch. In fact, first basemen often complained that the ball would hop when Neal was trying to throw out a runner. His fastball with the hop was terribly hard to hit. But on that day he needed Dad's encouragement to get it over the plate.
"Play ball!" the ump bellowed, and the game was again in play.
Dad kept talking to Neal, encouraging, "Pitch to me, Neal; one pitch at a time. This college boy won't even see your fastball."
Neal threw several hot strikes before finally walking the first batter. That brought the runner on third in, and made the score 6 to 0 with the bases still loaded. But Dad kept on talking to Neal in his quiet voice.
The next batter went down swinging, and the next. Neal struck out the third batter as well, retiring the side with the bases still loaded. No one was able to hit Neal's fastball that day, once he got it under control. He threw a few more wide or high pitches, some in every inning, but he did not walk another batter. The college boys couldn't hit him at all. They hit a lot of foul tips, but no clean hits. They mostly whipped their bats in the air where the ball had been. It was like the line from Tom Paxton's song, "His fastball was nothin' but smoke." Three up and three down, inning after inning, Neal struck out 27 batters in a row.
When OG&E came to bat that first inning Andy put Neal up first. It was not unusual in a pre-season game to bat the base order, pitcher, catcher, first, second, etc. But Andy often led off with Neal in the years to come. He would boast to the crowd. "We've got the game in a bag. I'm gonna lead off with my pitcher!"
In that first exhibition game Neal hit a Texas-leaguer and made it easily to first base ahead of the outfielder's throw. Then Dad drug his cast up into the batter's box and stood there grinning at the infield. The pitcher thought Neal was taking too big a lead off from first base, and he made several attempts to catch him out. Neal dived back safely every time.
Dad let the first pitch go by. "Stee-rike one!" the umpire sang out.
The second pitch was wide and in the dirt. The catcher managed it all right, but his throw wasn't quick enough to keep Neal from stealing second standing up.
Dad connected with the next pitch and hit what should have been a triple into left-center. He managed to hobble safely to first base while the outfielder tried unsuccessfully to throw Neal out at home.
At that point the College coach relented and allowed a runner for Dad. It didn't matter. His runner was stranded when the college team retired the side. And they still won the game. The score at the end was 6 to 1, Bethany College.
But when Dad's cast came off later that Spring, Neal and Dad became the number one battery for OG&E in Oklahoma City's Twilight League where they played for more than fifteen years.
Neal didn't have to play in the majors to be a big part of America's pastime. He was a fastball pitcher in the Twilight League with a fastball that you couldn't see. Now that was real baseball.