Baseball Dreams

“Hey Dad, wanna have a catch?” I have a Pavlovian response to these words. I can’t say no and I don’t think my boys have realized this yet. Not only do I hear their simple plea but through the decades I hear my own. I think of all the times, and all the ways I accosted my dad. Usually he was just returning from a hard day of banging nails and squaring boards. Physically spent, Jim Spinner Sr. would park the family wagon on East 4th Street and slouch toward the front porch, drained by another work day. I can’t imagine what his thoughts were as he was greeted by me, the Energizer Bunny of children…“Hey Dad, wanna have a catch?” “Not right now Butch, maybe later.”

I am a glass is half full kind of guy but the times my dad said yes, the times that we smacked that leather back and forth are so vivid in my mind I know it’s not as many times as I would have liked. Of course, if I was anything like my boys, maybe I was insatiable? Maybe my timing was off? Too eager, I probably should have waited until he actually got out of the car? Maybe during his after dinner cigarette on the porch would have had better results? What I think now, as a father, is how can you say no? This I am sure is connected to the fatalist in me. My father passed when I was in college and that peppers all the things I do, or don’t do, with my boys.

Now don’t get me wrong he was a great father, he coached my teams, he took me to ball games, he taught me things, about our national pastime. Taught me how to keep score. Taught me how to “bribe the ush” if we bought upper deck seats and we wanted to move down. Taught me that a pitcher will waste a pitch if he’s ahead in the count. Now when I watch the game with my boys I pass on the same knowledge to them. “No way Lester throws Guerrero a strike here. He’s a bad ball hitter, you really gotta waste one here. He’ll throw him a nasty curve low and away and Guerrero’ll whiff.” And when it happens my boys give that wide-eyed, Dad how did you know look. My dad taught me, that’s how I know.

I have an old cassette tape of my dad and I on the phone. It’s a one sided conversation. I was in 407 Fargo Quad, SUNY Buffalo, futzing around with a tape recorder. I was working on a class project when I made my Sunday night call home. For some odd reason, I never turned the tape recorder off; so I captured my end of the conversation…“Hey Padre, what’s up?” Many of you would recognize the conversation because as soon as we run out of things to say there’s a pause and I say, “Mets look good.” It must be 1984 because we are talking about Darling, Gooden and Fernandez as young pitchers. But the rhythm of the conversation is what strikes me. At first listen you might hear a desire for closeness but an unwillingness to delve into anything of substance. Dad and I seem to stay on the surface, with, baseball. But those of you trained in guyspeak would hear something different. The perceptive ear would recognize that’s not surface, that’s us, that’s tribal. I know Woody Allen or Billy Crystal has done this conversation in a movie with subtitles below it but...”Mets look good.” Really means, I miss you Dad, it would be nice to sit on the porch and watch the game with a few Schaefers. “Yeh, if the pitching holds up.” Means, I hear you and it would be really nice to grab a pair of tickets and head over to Shea.

"American Heritage" magazine deals with American history and a few years ago they conducted a poll. “If you could travel back in time to any moment in American history, where would you go?” Number one on the list was to travel with the Lewis Clark expedition. There were a lot of cool answers like Walk on the Moon with Neil Armstrong or On the dunes at Kitty Hawk with the Wright Brothers. The history teacher in me might say Philadelphia for the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. On a more personal level…

It would be my own Field of Dreams, one of the greatest baseball movies of all time by the way. One of the few movies guys will admit makes them cry. As I am traveling back in time, I can hear James Earl Jones’s deep voice as I enter Prospect Park at Park Circle, walking across the park towards the Eastern Parkway side…”The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.” I travel back through the years, past Three Devils Hill, past the band shell, as I travel the trees are changing, people's fashions change, the automobiles are getting bigger, shinier...

When I emerge on the other side of Prospect Park, it’s 1955 and the Dodgers are still in Brooklyn. I walk along Eastern Parkway and head east toward Ebbett’s Field. Closer to the ballpark, I follow the crowd, all in Dodger blue. I smell stale beer and peanuts. Engulfed in the pre-game bustle I am struck when the ballpark emerges organically, like Fenway, from the surrounding neighborhood. Trying to buy a ticket for the game I meet a 17 year old with a James Dean haircut; a wiry kid with blue jeans, a white t-shirt and a pack of smokes rolled in the sleeve. He spies me, “Wanna catch the game?” “You bet I do!” “Follow me.” His movements are familiar to me, the hair, the slouchy gait, the gray eyes. He’s only 17 years old, but I recognize my dad, Jim Spinner Sr. before life beat him down.

We sneak into the game, and root for Dem Bums, Brooklyn’s beloved team. It’s a game for the ages and I know the details from the stories my dad told me…Pee Wee Reese at short, Jackie Robinson at second, Carl Furillo (could throw a strike to home plate with his back against the right field fence)  in right, Duke Snider in center, Johnny Podres on the mound. I smile at the Abe Stark sign in right field, “Hit this sign Win a Suit." In the end, the Dodgers beat the hated Yankees. Brooklyn goes crazy. Leaving the ballpark cars are honking, people are hanging out of apartment house windows banging pots and pans, strangers are dancing in the streets, dad and I are caught up in the mayhem. Together we cross Prospect Park. And as we near Bartel Pritchard Square prepared to go to our respective boyhood homes, my Dad turns to me and says, “Hey kid, see you in a couple of years and we’ll have a catch.”

I know it’s a bit hokey but it’s my Field of Dreams and on the opening night of the World Series I thought it would be appropriate. I'm going to have a catch with my boys. Play Ball!

A Time to Reap, a Time for Reunions

Recent evidence suggests that my friends and I are at the age (46) for reunions. Not sure if it’s a product of age or these new internet social networks like Facebook. Over the past few months I’ve gotten invitations to all manner of reunions. Like many of you, I have a decided ambivalence to these get-togethers. I know that I'd love to see some of the people I have lost touch with over the years. There’s also a part of me that thinks maybe there’s a reason why I’ve lost touch with many of the people I will see. I think I keep in touch with the people I want to keep in touch with. Why do I want to go?

This past weekend, my wife and I headed off to our camp reunion. Kira and I were counselors together at this amazing place, Silver Lake, a YMCA camp in Sussex, County NJ. Our jobs at Silver Lake were formative to both of us, ending with our marriage I suppose. Many of my best friends are people I met at Silver Lake. Saturday morning, I grab my duffel bag and head towards the door and Kira says to me, “That’s what you are wearing to the reunion?” Befuddled I look down at my “outfit” and say, “Yeh, why? Gutlerner (our camp director) said we are going to play basketball.” Kira just shakes her head and heads to the car.

North on Route 206 the conversation is flowing, Who do you think we’ll see? I hope so and so is there….We stop for a bite at the Chester Diner. Walking up the steps to the diner, Kira broaches the subject of my dress again. “Are you sure this is what you want to wear to the camp reunion?” Chuckling I say, “Yeh, I don’t feel like putting on long pants and then having to change when I get there.” To which Kira shakes her head and says, “You’re not normal.” Enjoying the fact that she’s flustered I say, “What? Should I change? What should I wear?” She huffs, “Jim you are going to see people you have not seen in 25 years and you are wearing a pair of stretched out Champion shorts and your “Ride for Rick” give-away t-shirt. That’s not normal.” She walks into the diner. I glance at my reflection in the diner window before walking in. I wish I could say I just didn’t care what people would think. Or maybe it would be better if it was a carefully calculated insouciance, but I can’t take credit for any of these things. Truth is, my outfit was dictated by comfort and convenience.

By comfort I mean comfort in the people we were going to see. My camp friends know me, they know the real me. What am I going to hide behind a new JCrew sweater, a pair of jeans and some shiny cordovan oxfords? I might not be this comfortable with other reunions but a camp reunion is a no-brainer. In Connecticut I am a suburban Dad in a town Kira and I moved to about 6 years ago. And we’ve made some really good friends, mostly people who moved there recently too. At times I can’t shake the feeling, as I stand on the side of a soccer field on any Saturday morning, that I am a caricature. That the people I know only know what I show them. But as a counselor, you live with your coworkers, and the campers, 24 hours a day 7 days a week for two months.

An example might help...I knew at the Silver Lake reunion I would see Craig Calzaretta. My first year as a counselor, (1980) Craig was a camper in my bunk. I was a 17 year old wise-ass from Brooklyn, leading trail rides for our ranch camp. I knew less about horses than most of the campers. Craig was a fairly accomplished 13 year old equestrian, from Wayne, NJ. I can still picture him with his 70’s afro and his aw-shucks manner. He was the best camper I ever had, him and Randy Giles. What he and Randy shared was a zest for life, an engaging sense of humor yet the maturity to be responsible when the need arose. A counselor’s dream.

Starting with my first summer, Craig and I shared many adventures, created many inside jokes. All I have to say to Craig is, “Stupid American fish” and he’ll laugh. I know that even though I’ve only seen Craig a few times in the last 10 years, Craig and I are tighter than many of the guys I see every day. When you share a cabin or a tent with someone for two months straight, during high school and college, a bond develops. At camp we all shared a bathroom that was more like an amphitheater, so there was no privacy. That seems a fitting metaphor for the fact that we had no secrets. Sleeping in a platform tent, talking ourselves to sleep at night, you really get to know the guys you bunk with.

The first day of a new session at camp, you get your bunk together and you head down the dirt road to "flagpole" for a camp orientation. On the way down the camp road we come into contact with other bunks heading down for this all-camp meeting. I can see Craig and I observing our campers getting to know one another as we walk. We smile at the familiarity of the routine. Invariably some wannabe-tough guy from Anytown, NJ announces, “I know Karate.” Every session some kid thinks he has a clean slate, he figures that nobody knows him at camp and decides to create a new persona. Craig and I will smirk. The smart kids in the bunk will be skeptical and a few of the rubes in the bunk might actually buy it. “Really?” And here’s the thing you learn about living at camp, You can’t tell people you know Karate if it isn’t true. Eventually, who you really are shines through.

That’s why, this past Saturday, I didn’t care that I had on a pair of stretched out Champion shorts. Because I know my camp friends, guys like Craig and Steve Swierczek and Mike Parker and Glen Gruder already know me. People like Julie Anzel. In an email exchange in the wake of the reunion, Julie mentioned that she is a single Mom and that at the reunion it felt like she was with family. She mentioned that for her and her son Jackson to be around Silver Lakers was a feeling they don’t get often enough. That’s what I am talking about, comfort. It’s so funny that Julie would say that because I was looking at her photo albums this past Saturday night in the dining hall. Julie was at Silver Lake every summer I was there. And Julie and I always seemed to have a love/hate thing going. We flirted with each other, we teased each other, and we comforted each other. In looking at Julie’s photo album this weekend we came upon photos of Julie as a 5th grader, and she said, “Oh, those aren’t camp photos, you don’t want to see them.” But I did want to see them. To see Julie, someone I feel I really know, as a wee 5th grader was pretty cool. Kind of like family.

Now I really don’t consider myself a “reunion guy.” I prefer to remember everything as it was. It’s nice to have this image of everyone as young and full of promise. Yet I have never gone to a reunion and regretted it. Although Time the Avenger is taking his toll on us all, underneath our graying temples and thickening bodies those twenty-somethings are still there, just below the surface. You could see it as many of us took on familiar roles: standing around the campfire trying valiantly to come up with the next one-liner that will make everyone laugh, Glen Gruder taking charge on the basketball court and telling us what the teams are, the camp stoners disappearing occasionally to alter their state of consciousness. There’s a comfort in this predictability. I smiled when I matched up with Larry Gutlerner, knowing without even thinking about it, after almost three decades, that I have to defend him differently because he’s lefty. For that moment, on that b-ball court, and around the campfire we were 40 something and 20 something at the same time.

As the Silver Lake alumni were leaving the dining hall Sunday morning after our final meal together, I so wanted to turn to Calzaretta and say “Did you know I know Karate?” But the moment passed and I didn’t get a chance to float that one-liner out there. I am sure he would have gotten the joke, he knows me so well.