There's No Crying In Baseball

I grew up during the 60’s and 70’s, well before the computer age, when children actually went outside - or were forcibly thrown outside by exasperated mothers - to play.  It’s not that I minded going outside, in fact I love being outdoors, but the neighborhood in which I grew up had been blessed with an overabundance of boys. The only toys and instruments of outdoor fun and good times were male oriented.  Nothing but baseballs, footballs, basketballs, volleyballs and, well……..balls, as far as the eye could see.   I was, in fact, the only female on the circle for a very long time.

If I wanted companions at all, I had to learn to put aside my dolls along with my girly-girl nature, and act, think, and play like a boy. This wasn’t a real stretch for me, as my mother was not much of a girl herself, having been raised in similar circumstances. She was ill-equipped but mostly unwilling to teach me how to be female and my only sister was 17 years older and married with children of her own. My sister-in-law, Melvina, was the most girly influence I had and I loved it when she came to visit because that’s when my true girly-ness could really shine. She was just a teenager learning to be a woman herself, and she would dress me up in pretty clothes like a doll and polish my nails.  She would even attempt to tame my hair into something that resembled a cute, feminine, pixie-do instead of the no-fuss, no-muss, masculine bowl cut that my inept mother kept it in.  I shudder to think what I’d be like now without her influence; probably swinging a hammer on a construction crew somewhere, with a wardrobe consisting entirely of denim and flannel.

My father wasn’t much help either, having been a basketball coach.  Because of him, my short little self can still execute a near perfect lay-up and, before I nearly lost an eye in an unfortunate baseball accident at the age of eight, my free-throw record was stellar.  Daddy is also responsible for the passion I have for cars. I adored him and wanted to be near him as much as I could, so anytime he was out working on the cars, I was right there with him handing him tools and peering intently into the belly of the mechanical beast, learning its secrets.  We worked together like a surgeon and scrub nurse; “Screwdriver” – Slap! “Wrench” – Slap! “Hold that light steady”; he called me his tool monkey. If my aunts had not intervened when I was a blossoming pre-teen, I would likely be a master mechanic by now. But they convinced him, and me, that it was simply not proper for a young lady to be covered in grease so I was no longer permitted to be his assistant. It broke my heart and for years I sought to un-learn everything he’d taught me because it was so painful.

I did everything with Daddy, whether it was household repairs or yard work, I was right there carrying his tool belt like a squire carrying the king’s sword. Much to daddy’s chagrin, my older brother was more interested in running wild and getting high than he was in learning anything daddy had to teach, so I took his place. Daddy’s calm presence was always comforting to me and, if given the choice, I would rather be working with him than mother any day.  I would rather be working with him than playing with the rough-necks in the neighborhood too.  I’d become convinced those boys were out to kill me.

 None of the boys on the block had sisters at the time, so none of them had been taught that girls were different. They took no caution with me, never treated me like the delicate, gentle creature I was designed to be. They never made allowances for my small stature or lack of natural strength either.  If I didn’t want to get left behind, I had to learn to endure – run faster, pedal harder, climb higher; keep up or go home. Home – with my crazy, abusive, schizophrenic mother - was simply not an option. So I learned to keep up. What I couldn’t do physically, I made up for in wit. 

I was also a source of great amusement for them, and not in a good way.  I was the butt of many jokes and the target of some elaborate, psychologically damaging and physically harmful pranks. They knocked me off tree-limbs and stuck a leg out to make me wreck my bike. They held me underwater in the pool to see how long it took for me to stop struggling. They put worms and rolly-pollys in my Easy Bake Oven cake mixes and made me eat them. They put tadpoles in my Kool-Aid. They took the luminescent bodies off lightening bugs and told me it was candy. They used me as a target for William Tell inspired archery contests. It’s a miracle that, I not only survived, but came away with only a few scars and no broken bones. I didn’t mind the physical trauma as much as I minded the pranks. In that realm, these little boys were pretty twisted. Stephen King could learn a thing or two from them.

 One Halloween, my brother and I were making the rounds of the neighbor’s homes, gathering our annual sugar-infused tribute. I should have realized something was amiss when Jeffrey insisted on escorting me alone. Normally, he made every effort to escape my presence. As we went from house to house, the throng of boys behind us grew. I was still blissfully unaware of the fate that awaited me when we came to the house at the bottom of the hill.  It was one of the nicest houses in the neighborhood with a huge picture window that you passed under on the way to the elegantly framed front door.  It was also the home of the first boy I probably ever had a little crush on.  At the time he was about thirteen or fourteen and had grown from playing with the smaller boys to tormenting them. This time, however, I was the target of his evil scheme and the other boys were all in on it.

I scampered happily up the driveway in my Tweety-Bird costume, excited because Glenn’s mother had a reputation for always having the best treats on the block. This was back when you got real treats for Halloween. Gooey, wonderful, homemade treats like popcorn balls, fudge, brownies or fried fruit tarts.

There was a huge, gruesome looking jack-o-lantern sitting in the big picture window and they had hung a black light over it so it really shone against the stark-white curtains. I shiver a little even now thinking about it. As I passed underneath the window, dreaming about the heavenly confection that would soon be mine, the jack-o-lantern rose up and the ghostly white sheet underneath it grew gnarled hands that blindly grasped for me. I screamed in absolute terror, kicking and clawing wildly, as those awful hands found me and lifted me up. I hate to admit it, but I was so scared that I wet my pants and nearly fainted. I was screaming for my brother to save me from the terrible monster but he was doubled over in laughter, rolling on the lawn.  Seeing the puddle spreading underneath my dangling feet, Glenn realized the prank had gone too far and he gently set me down and took the pumpkin off his head, showing me it was just a costume. Every inch of my little 50 pound, seven year old, body shook with rage and shame and I ran home and threw myself, sobbing, into my father’s arms.

 Daddy let me cry a few minutes, as mother screamed and ranted about the nervous breakdown those “awful hooligans” were going to give her with their shenanigans – she was always so helpful that way. He then took me to the bathroom to clean me up. As he was washing my tear-stained face he told me, rather sternly, “You’ve got to toughen up little girl. If you’re going to play with the big boys, you can’t act like a baby. Never let them see you cry” My dad was the eighth child in a family of 10 siblings and was the runt of the litter to boot.  He knew a thing or two about the abuses siblings and peers can inflict.  After that fateful night, I determined that was the last time the boys would see me cry. I did as my father suggested and toughened up. And I began to retaliate.

We had a pine tree in our yard that was so tall you needed a ladder to reach the lowest branches.  We loved to climb that tree and sit, twenty or so feet off the ground, in the swaying upper branches. Jeffrey liked to sit up there and smoke pot because he thought no one could smell it up there. One day he and his friend Jimmy got out the ladder and climbed up into the branches for an afternoon of getting high, on high.  I dutifully followed like the annoying little sister I was. ( It’s in the job description, look it up.) I got halfway up the ladder, when the boys started shouting for me to get lost and pummeled me with pine cones.  I sat at the base of the tree sulking and hurling insults at them for a few minutes when a plan began forming in my brain. I’d teach them a thing or two.

 I grabbed the rope attached to the top rung of the ladder and yanked hard. The ladder pulled away from the tree trunk as I had expected and fell to the ground with a crash.  Not having a good working knowledge of physics at the time, I didn’t correctly calculate the distance I needed to be away from the tree against the rate of velocity with which the ladder fell, and so the upper foot of the ladder caught me square in the skull and bounced off as it came down.  Blood poured from the open gash and I ran screaming into the house, certain that I was dying.

Once again, Daddy took me into the bathroom and cleaned me up. I probably should have had a few stitches but back then you didn’t run to the doctor for every little thing. Some alcohol, mercurochrome, and a few butterfly bandages, and I was good as new. When asked how I had come to get bonked on the head with a ladder, I told daddy it had just fallen on me as I was innocently passing by. The wind must have knocked it over. My brother had been told repeatedly not climb in the pine tree, that it wasn’t safe. So, when daddy went outside to put the ladder away, still confused as to how it got up against the tree to begin with, Jeffrey didn’t make a sound. My rather oblivious father never looked up either. And I never told.

It was much later that night, when dinner rolled around and Jeff still wasn’t home, that mom and dad began to wonder about him.  Mother was out on the back porch calling him in, when Jimmy’s mother called asking if her son was at our house. I got up from the table and went to my room to play with my dolls. I still didn’t tell them.

Finally, Jeff and Jimmy decided that the pain of a whipping was better than being stuck all night in that damned tree and started yelling for help. Of course, in an effort to save at least part of his hide, he ratted me out. The spanking I endured, along with the massive headache, was worth it though. I was learning to fight back.

I got tougher and stronger, if not bigger, and I learned to play just as hard as they did. I raced and wrecked bikes with them, ran – and won – a few foot races, endured scraped knees, bruised shins and a wealth of thorn bush scratches playing hide and seek in the woods. I played tackle football, got clotheslined more than once in a game of red-rover, and took more than my share of elbow jabs to the head playing defense in basketball. And not once did I cry. I screamed, I cursed and I raged……but I never shed a tear.

 We had the best yard for games in the neighborhood by far. It was mostly grass, flat and level and huge, the perfect venue for pickup football and baseball games. I was forever present, and though I was generally chosen last for teams, I was chosen.  But anytime we played baseball, no matter whose team I was on, I had to play the catcher’s position. It was an unspoken rule among the boys founded on two basic principles. One, none of them wanted to be stuck squatting behind the plate all day and, as I was already fairly low to the ground, it made sense to them that I wouldn’t mind it as much. The second reason was much more sinister. Let’s face it, most kids aren’t that good at baseball and, having no backstop, every time there was a wild pitch, which was often, the catcher had to chase the damn ball thirty yards and sometimes out into the street. It was quite a workout. None of us were very good at catching the ball either, so the job always fell to me.

There was one boy in the gang who always insisted on pitching even though he really stunk at the job. But he was older and bigger than the rest of us, so he generally got his way.  His wild pitches made the innings drag on interminably and were a literal pain in the ass for me, as I had to constantly jump up out stance and run after them.

One day, after about four long innings of this torture, I decided I’d had enough. I watched the pitches coming off his hand carefully and began to accurately predict their trajectory. I started making astounding grabs, even though I had to jump to a standing position. Nobody was swinging at them anyway, so what was the harm? Or so I smugly thought.

The biggest boy on Handley Road was up to bat. He was tall and stocky and powerful as well as totally arrogant, and my mother hated him with a fiery passion – why I never knew. He was not even supposed to be in our yard because she had banned him long ago.  I was squatted down behind the plate, my glove at the ready, the muscles in my legs coiled to spring, watching closely as the pitchers arm drew back to make the throw. The rest of this tale I can relate only as it was later told to me, as squatting there behind home plate was the last thing I remember.

As the ball came off the pitchers hand, I saw that it was going to sail clean over the batters head. I leapt up out of stance like a jack-in-the-box in order to make the grab, just as the powerful batter decided to make a violent, if futile, swing at the pitch.

As the bat came around and I came up, the end of the bat connected, not with the ball, but with my face. I’m told that the force of the blow picked me up off the ground and my light body sailed twenty feet backward in the air. By the time I hit the ground, unconscious, my left eye was already horribly bruised and swollen. The boys all gathered around me in trepidation as a flock of crows might surround a dying snake. One boy, making an astute if not correct observation, whispered “I think she’s dead” Then another boy looked to my brother and dared utter the words that struck terror into all their hearts; “Who’s gonna tell your mom?”

My mother’s insanity was well known among the neighborhood. The adults shied away from her as if they thought her psychosis were contagious, and the kids were quite simply terrified of her. The fear of what my mother would likely do to the one who’d slain her child was all it took. The flock took wing and scattered away to cower in the safety of their own homes leaving my poor brother the horrifying job of telling my mother that her little girl was dead.

He went inside and broke the news to her as gently as he could. I don’t know what the conversation sounded like exactly, as I had been left outside, alone and unconscious, but I imagine it went something like this:

Jeff – “Hey Mom, we got any Kool-Aid?”

Mom – “I just made some lime, I know that’s your favorite.  It’s in the fridge, help yourself.”

Jeff -  “Thanks. Can I make a sandwich?”

Mom – “Sure. There’s pepper ham in there and some olive loaf. Help yourself.  You want chips?”

Jeff – “Yeah that sounds good. Do we have pickles?”

Mom – (exasperated huff) “In the fridge. Do you not see them in there? I swear you’re just like your father.  Have to ask for something that’s right in front of your nose. You’d rather make me stop what I’m doing to come hand you something that’s right in front of your eyes.  I’ve put up with that out him for twenty years, I’m not about to put up with it out of you.

Jeff – (mumbling) “Sorry Mom.”

Mom – (louder exasperated huff) “Where’s your sister?”

Jeff – “ Ummm…. Lisa?....Oh, she’s out in the yard.”

Mom – (even louder exasperated huff) “Well, go tell her to come in and eat; might as well feed both of you at the same time, no sense having to clean up a mess twice.”

Jeff – (mumbling around a large mouthful of olive loaf) “Can’t. She’s dead.”

Mom – (smacking Jeff on the back of the head) “Don’t talk with your mouth full!”

This time my injury warranted a trip to the emergency room where x-rays revealed I had a concussion but, miraculously, no broken bones. The only lasting effects I have are a small scar above my eyebrow that you can only see when I squint and nerve damage that makes it impossible for me to wink my left eye; kind of a bummer when you’re right handed and trying to sight anything with your left eye. That’s also the reason I work a scrolling mouse on a computer upside down and have difficulty with directions.

My eye was grotesquely disfigured for weeks afterward and even when the swelling went down, I had to wear an eye-patch for what seemed an eternity. I looked like a pint-sized pirate.  I milked it for all it was worth too.  Any time mother got even a little irritated at me, I’d whine pitifully and rub at the patch “but my eye hurts”.  Not only would she calm down, she’d produce a treat of some kind for me. I got all my favorite goodies and a few new, more gender appropriate, toys. My father decided I needed to spend less time with the boys, even though he seemed proud of that shiner. For years, he loved to tell the story about his little slugger and the summer of the black eye.

After that, I earned a new respect among the boys on Handley Road. Oh, they still expected me to keep up if I was going to play, but I noticed they weren’t quite as rough with me. And whenever I was outside and one of the neighbor boys rode by on his bike, I’d stand up and stare at him defiantly with my good eye, letting them all see that I was bruised but I wasn’t beaten. You might knock me down, but I’m gonna get back up and I’ll be swinging when I do. You might get the best of me once but you’d better make the most of it ‘cause it won’t happen again. And you will never, ever, see me cry.