My grandson made a terrific play in center field last night; a diving catch!
I remember my first great play. It was a game saver.
I was 5 or 6 years old. I know I wasn't yet 7, because I was using a tattered, flimsy glove,
not the Willie Mays model that is now prominently displayed in my bedroom. (Other gloves
from my childhood are less prominently displayed in the garage, but I digress.)
The game was played in a wide alley behind a series of connected 2 family houses. I could see said houses, somewhat enviously, from the back window of our fourth floor apartment.
It was a game of punch ball; Donald, Eddie, Bartley, and me.
I was playing first base, which was a corner of a fence that protected a small garden, owned
by an elderly man with a reputation of being mean and nasty.
We were using a Spaldeen; this was back in the ol' days, before Pensy Pinky, before
tennis balls.
Eddie, I think it was Eddie, punched a shot in my direction. I leaped; I had to leap because
the fence was over 2 feet tall!
The ball was snared in the webbing of my glove, a game saving catch!
Literally. I mean, if the ball had gone into the garden, the game would have been over.
We didn't have another Spaldeen.
Truth, be told, it might have been a life saving catch. If the ball had gone into the garden,
and I tried to retrieve, that mean old man might have.................
But, I caught the ball, it didn't go in the garden, and I didn't have to retrieve it.
The rest is history, a blessed history.
P.S. He probably wasn't mean, he was probably just lonely.
