A few thoughts on why baseball still matters

It was a jolting juxtaposition.

I was witnessing a wedding ceremony in a nondenominational chapel, but instead of seeing the bride and groom on the biggest day of their lives, pledging promises and exchanging rings, I kept looking at the minister and wondering why he looked so familiar.

Who was he?

“Hey,” I stage-whispered to my fiancée, “I think I know that guy.”

“Shhh,” she admonished, afraid I was going to disrupt the dignity of the proceedings, not an unfair assumption, given my sorry track record at such events. “Not now.”

I didn’t always do well at weddings.

It was nothing personal; in fact, it was never about the happy couple. Bringing a date to a wedding is tricky business. Something about the solemnity — and permanence — of the occasion triggers a default reaction in my brain, which was hardwired against anything more lasting than a nine-inning baseball game.

Add that to the fact weddings can sometimes turn single women into window shoppers on speed and you have trouble. I remember one such caustic chain reaction that involved a girl (not my date), a slow dance and a Cat Stevens song.

For a moment there in the parking lot of the country club, where I had sought shelter from the raging storm inside, I thought the cops might be summoned, but that proved to be a false hope.

I was on my own when it came to untangling the unholy mess laid at my feet like a flaming bag of dung left on my doorstep, and it took all of my diplomatic charisma to defuse the situation.

But I learned; slowly, it’s true, but by the time my fiancée and I were in attendance at that nonsectarian rite, I had pretty much mastered the skill of negotiating most wedding-bell-bottom-blues.

Still, I knew that I knew that preacher.

And it bugged me.

He had a folksy, Andy Griffith way about him, kind of an aw-shucks “yes, ma’am/“no, sir” earnestness that gave him a man-of-the-cloth aura without the traditional vestments of the office.

And then he said, “Leave us bow our heads in prayer,” and — Crack! — like a line-drive double in the gap, I knew who he was.

It was the spring of 1969, and he was sitting at the kitchen table trying to explain to my parents why he wanted me to play third base during the upcoming season.

“But he’s always been a first baseman,” my mother said, her voice quivering slightly, the way it always did when she imagined her first-born child heading off on a new adventure. “Are you sure?”

He smiled and said, “Leave him try it, ma’am. He’ll be fine.”

That telltale verbal tic — using “leave” for “let” — had always stayed with me, and I smiled to myself when I heard it again during that wedding service.

But I wasn’t really in that chapel anymore.

No, I was back in the moon-landing Woodstock summer when, as a 14-year-old kid, I played third base for a Pony League team that lost its first game and its last one — and won all 18 in between.

For all I know, that’s still a record back home, and even though I fear that Pony League baseball may have gone the way of the Pony Express, I will always consider it an honor to have been part of it.

Pony League was the big time.

The dugouts were actually dug out, with concrete steps leading up to the field and a water fountain on the wall. The field was lined with light poles, which meant actual night games. The outfield fence was festooned with signs advertising local businesses. There was a press box with a PA system, which meant your name was announced every time you came to the plate.

But best of all, to my way of thinking anyway, was standing at third base and placing my cap over my heart when they played the national anthem before the start of the game.

Like I said, it was the big time.

Oh, and lest I forget, there were lots of girls in the stands, and when you’re a 14-year-old boy and your wristbands fit just right and you pine-tar your bat before stepping in and you look down to your manager in the third-base coach’s box and you get the “hit” sign and there’s a runner at second and you know you’re going to drive him home, well, girls like that kind of thing.

Don’t they?

As I said, we lost our first game, but that was before we knew how good we were, and we dropped our last game, but that didn’t matter since we had long since wrapped up the championship.

But those 18 games in between? I played for a lot of fine teams over the years, but that might have been the best one of them all.

Pony League posed a lot of new challenges to Little League alums: Pitchers threw from an actual mound, runners were allowed to lead off and steal bases, it was easy to lose balls in the night sky until you got used to the lights, and as I may have mentioned, there were lots of folks in the stands, including girls in halter tops and cutoffs.

So you really wanted to play well, but that’s the wonderful, maddening, rewarding, difficult thing about baseball.

It can get in your head, and once that happens, doubts creep in.

“Leave me do the thinking,” our manager always said. “You guys just do your best and have fun.”

As I write, there is serious doubt about there even being a major league season this year. Owners and players seem oblivious to the real-world problems facing America, be it the pandemic, record unemployment or protests against police brutality.

Some people are in the streets even as others remain in lockdown.

And I know it’s a business, and I understand it’s easy to spend other people’s money. I get that baseball is no longer as popular as it once was and that the games are a little too long for some. And don’t even get me started on all the cheating. No one likes that.

All I’m asking is that for once, the players and the owners think of someone else, maybe a 14-year-old kid who won’t get to play this summer because his little town can’t afford uniforms, let alone lights, real dugouts, outdoor advertising and a speaker system that can be heard all the way to the ice-cream stand many blocks away.

But maybe, just maybe, you could spare us the bickering and the posturing and the greed and leave us have back the game we love.