Dear Reader:
While I have been “under the weather” as we southerners like to say…I have done a lot of reading and watching some television. Still, there has been long bouts of time remaining that have allowed me to return to the past and suddenly remember an isolated childhood incident I thought was long forgotten.
It started with watching clips from the Ken Burns documentary on Jackie Robinson… which was provocative, fascinating and sad all at the same time….then I drifted off to sleep (mainly to stop my hacking…sick of hearing myself cough…I am at the point where I hate to cough because all my stomach muscles are so sore I cough and yell “ouch” simultaneously!)
When I woke up, pretty disoriented, pieces and scraps of an old memory were tugging away at my memory box…..baseball, ball, bat….that was it! I knew instantly what I had remembered.
When I was about eight, several kids from different neighborhoods started meeting on empty lots (wherever we could find one before being asked to leave) about the same time each day after school. Sometimes we would play kick ball or dodge ball (Did I ever hate that game….remember I was still wearing dresses every day and my poor legs were just one big bruise.) But in the spring the game of play had to be, unequivocably, baseball.
Some envied kid always lucked up and got a baseball for Easter and then all it took was a couple of available bats (for me they came into two sizes… heavy and heavier) and the game was on. Obviously being eight, a girl, a tiny little girl and no redeeming athletic abilities… I was chosen last.
In other words…I was the wildflower picker out in left field with nothing but ground moles to keep me company.
One afternoon, however, hardly anyone showed up….apparently the infamous stomach virus had hit the neighborhood so I was going to actually get to bat and move up right behind third base for my field placement. I had been promoted to gopher batter and chaser of balls that got past the third baseman.
Because there were no light (aluminum) bats in our childhood games the bats felt like they weighed half of my body weight. When I would try to hit balls at home I always threw the bat (in my excitement upon actually making contact with the ball) in those rare moments of childhood.
The catcher (Freddie Jones) warned me in quite expletive language what he would do to me if I swung that bat back and hit him….So when the ball came my way I was more worried about throwing the bat than hitting the ball. Somehow the combo worked.
I hit it and a God’s Wink (even back then) the ball started rolling right to first but at the last second it hit a root or perhaps a mole hill and bounced up right past the first baseman’s glove. All the kids started yelling for me to run to first.
So terrified of hitting Freddie…I ran…taking my bat with me. When I got close to first I simply tapped the “base” with my bat and kept on running….I did the same thing for second …at first I heard protests and then shouts of “Out” but the farther I went (huffing and puffing pulling that big old bat behind me) I now heard cheering and phrases like “Run “Bat Girl!” “Go Bat Girl” (Bat Man had just emerged in the late fifties and was the “Hot” super hero.)
By the time I tapped third with my bat…”Bat Girl” had pretty much had it…I was running out of energy fast and home plate looked a mile away. If it hadn’t been for the cheering…I would have just dropped to the ground. But with all my waning strength… I leaned forward and tapped home plate before collapsing.
Everyone was laughing and patting me on the back…apparently I had added some unexpected spirit to a lackluster game and from that time on…I was “Becky…Bat Girl!”
(You know you have made it when you get a nickname from the kids you hang out with….and it is funny…I never improved much…even when I grew into the bat a little more…but it didn’t seem to matter…I was “Bat Girl” and that was that. In the hierarchy of childhood acceptance I had made it to the top!)
I do remember Freddie taking my bat from me, still tightly clutched in my hands, and throwing it against the surrounding fence where it lodged until the next game. I didn’t have a number put on it or my name or anything….after all it was Freddie’s bat. And back then cameras were non-existent in my childhood…at least for children.
But every now and then, while flipping channels, I will come to a baseball game and see bats hanging from the fences and smile…”Way to go Bat Girl.”
So until tomorrow…Let us give thanks for precious memories that reassure that we have never been alone.
“Today is my favorite day” Winnie the Pooh
I was delighted to see a picture that my “old” neighbor Debi Sullivan Gray discovered of the children around Tommy’s age that played together growing up…..The two Charlottes, Ashley, Courtney, and Tommy
ichaseferalcats
John Turner
Legally Ohm
Becky Dingle