Life is Baseball

Hank loved baseball. It was his life. Any size or shape person could play baseball. I am sure that is why Hank loved it so much. You didn’t have to be special to play. It was an ordinary person’s game.

Hank was always in pursuit of the perfect swing. He would tell us that a good swing was like chopping wood. “Swing down on the ball,” Hank would always say. “Shift your weight from the back foot to the front foot as you swing. Keep your eye on the ball. Don’t pull your head. Keep it down on the ball. Don’t step too far with the front foot. Step toward the pitcher, don’t step out. Use your wrists.”

Hank would always look at the size of your wrists. He thought that wrist size translated into the power and speed of your swing. Once, he cut out a full-page spread from a newspaper that showed Willie Horton’s swing in stages from beginning to end. He made it a point to unfold it and show it to me on several occasions. As I said, he liked to study everyone’s swing. He even would watch me close enough to see that I would shut my eyes just as the ball was about to hit the bat.

He was constantly coming up with new gadgets or ideas to help with hitting. Hank would go to the local hardware store and have the center drilled out of a baseball. They would then put a nylon cord through the ball, and knot and burn the ends of the cord. So, Hank would leave the store with a baseball on a cord. He brought me one on at least one occasion. Hank would drive up in his old beaten up kelly-green Ford. Each time I would see him pull into my driveway, a surge of pride would swell through my body. I am sure that same surge did not go through my mom and dad. To think that I, ol’ small wrists, was being visited by Hank. Maybe he did think that I had possibilities. Maybe my dream of playing in the Major Leagues was possible after all.

He would begin my hitting lesson by showing me how to attack the ball. “Chop down just like chopping wood,” Hank would stammer. He would raise his front leg and put it down with authority just as he swung the bat down in a chopping manner. He would say, “Imagine a pitcher pitching you a ball. I’ll tell you one darn thing (he would always say that phrase either when emphasizing or lamenting about something), practice swinging, keep practicing.” Then he would take me outside and he would put his ‘baseball on a cord’ on Mom’s clothesline. He would proceed to show me how to practice with it. He would grit his teeth around that ever- present, unlit cigar, lift his left leg into the air, and take a vicious swing. The ball would twirl around the clothesline. Then he would proceed to untie the cord from the clothesline and tell me where I could get one made. Hank didn’t have much money, so one baseball with a cord through it was like gold to him. He wasn’t about to go around handing them out like candy. Hank wanted us to want one bad enough that we would go out and buy one on our own.

Another idea Hank came up with was swinging an old broom handle. He would have someone throw hickory nuts to him, and he would try to hit them. I guess he figured if you could hit something smaller while swinging an even smaller stick for a bat, then hitting a baseball might prove to be much easier. It always made me think of the stick-ball street games of the big cities.

About the other aspects of baseball, Hank would speak of them but not as much as he would about hitting. He would tell us to be aggressive on the base paths and to stay down on ground balls. He would also tell us to catch the ball with two hands. Hank even came up with an idea on how to break in a new ball glove. I think, if I remember correctly, we would soak our new glove in a bucket of water. To get the proper shape, we would put a ball in the glove and then tie a string around it before dropping it into the bucket. We let the glove soak over night, and the next day we would have a glove with a perfect shape.

I, like many other kids, took great pride in owning a new ball glove, the rawhide smell, the whole newness of the glove. We knew each glove had to go through the break-in phase of hours of pitch and catch. But to soak a brand new glove in a bucket of water, well that seemed to go against the religion of baseball! It did work, though, and eventually the glove would dry out.

Hitting was Hank’s favorite topic, but he also talked of throwing and building the arm up. Most of all, he would talk about throwing with accuracy. He would show us out at the athletic field how to work on our accuracy. He would take a baseball and throw it at the brick field house. Hank would aim for a certain brick and hit it with deadeye accuracy. Of course a brick wall didn’t do much for the cover of a good baseball, so our coach didn’t appreciate this idea very much. And our mothers would probably not want us to throw a ball against the house or any other building at home.