PS: I'm sorry I haven't been posting, but I'm sure no one cares. Just so much...you know. And Kate is studying at Smith remotely, from home. She's remarkably upbeat, but it stinks. It's a hard time. Nancy and I keep forgetting things. I'll try to be better at this. Thanks for reading!
When I was growing up in Ft. Lauderdale and playing baseball, I had one coach for five years, from the ages of 13-17. His name was Don Davis. His son Todd played on all of those teams, too. For some reason I felt some animosity toward Todd, but all of my memories of him are fond.
I think of Don Davis because of the way coaches are now. Youth coaches, especially in the under 12 age groups, seem so cognizant that they are coaches. They actually teach some baseball. The downside, as I understand it, is that they’re mean sons of bitches. My next door neighbor, a lawyer, had to be brought in to mediate the vicious disputes when Bainbridge Island Little League coaches were choosing All-Star teams. Really?
Back to Don Davis. He was fairly tall, dark-haired, bespectacled, and had an insurance agent’s generous stomach. Don didn’t coach at all. He essentially brought out and took back the bats, balls, and catcher’s equipment, then hit us ground balls, and stood around while watching batting practice. But I don’t ever recall him offering any advice or teaching us anything.
I had a lot of trouble hitting, for instance, and he never said anything to me. At the end of the season one year, his son Todd approached me: “We were putting the bats away, and we looked at the bat you used all year.” I remember that bat. The bat was a Nellie Fox. He was a second baseman for the Chicago White Sox in the 1950’s and 60’s. He was short, stocky, and hit lots of singles. The handle was very thick. I suppose in my kid’s mind I thought it gave me more of a chance if I hit one near my hands? Or maybe I just thought I was like Nellie Fox, which I wasn’t?
Todd said, “No wonder you had trouble hitting this year. That bat would be hard to hit with.”
Why didn’t Mr. Davis check what bat I was using during the year? And then suggest that I use another one?
Next, if the bat is hard to hit with, what is it even doing in the bag? I assume that the league doled those out and we had no choice, but maybe Mr. Davis might have warned us off of it?
Anyway, Mr. Davis seldom reproached me. He was easy-going, though his anger came quickly and sharply when it did. I never heard him get on an umpire. (I learned to do that on my own.) We had good athletes, though I don’t think we won any championships in those years.
When Todd and I turned 16, we moved into a league for 16-18 year olds. We were the cream of the 13-15 year olds, and everyone on that team except me could really hit. I pitched and played shortstop, as always, the first year. The league actually issued Mr. Davis a uniform, which he filled out nicely.
We played Tuesday and Thursday nights and Sunday doubleheaders. Imagine two afternoon games in the summer in Ft. Lauderdale. Between games on Sunday, the guys would go to a convenience store and buy lemonade and mix it with vodka. I can still hear Greg Norris’ stomach sloshing as he ran to the left field line for a fly ball. My sister said we were a team of anti-heroes.
In the second game of one doubleheader, against a terrible pitcher, we were behind 8-0 going into the last inning. I mentioned it to the team; they had just been distracted. The next nine out of ten batters got hits and we won.
The only hitter to go down was Rich Himmell, who had suddenly decided to switch-hit, and struck out every one of his seventeen lefthanded at-bats. Mr. Davis didn’t seem to mind. It was as though he saw himself not as a coach but as someone as distanced from our success as a consultant: offering advice but not on the hook if things went wrong. Except he didn’t even offer advice.
Ft. Lauderdale was such a home for baseball that our county had two leagues for boys our age. The next year, when I was seventeen, our catchers tragically didn’t communicate. Without discussing it with each other, both catchers jumped to the other league, hoping not to split time with each other on our team. Thus we had no catchers. At the first practice, Mr. Davis asked who wanted to try to catch. My hand went up eagerly. Me, me! I had always wanted to catch. He nodded to me.
Readers, it is very hard to be a catcher. And we had very talented pitchers that year, so much so, that in the first game, Kim Jackson threw a curve ball that moved so much that I couldn’t follow it, and it hit me in the shin guard. Kim Jackson was a gorgeous athlete who also hit the longest ball I've ever seen.
But I improved immediately, and, with my pitcher’s arm, threw out base stealers often. I became a very good catcher.
Yet, I wasn’t happy, never had been on this team—as you’ve learned, I seldom have been happy with this or that situation. The fellows on the team all went to Plantation High School, a suburban school west of Ft. Lauderdale. They were all boisterous and, frankly, badly behaved (see Greg Norris’ vodka intake), and not all that interested in academics.
I was the only kid on the team who went to Nova High School, a special, Ford Foundation-funded school intent on promoting math and the sciences. It was, curiously, a response to Sputnik and America’s fear that it had fallen behind. Anyone from the county could attend. So, introvert and geek that I was, I felt very left out on this team. Given my paranoia, I also decided, finally, that no one liked me.
At some point, someone found a second catcher, Charlie Norman. He was a curly blond-haired fellow, easygoing, and on good terms with our teammates, his schoolmates, so I hated him. That’s the kind of teammate I was! I was annoyed because I had worked so hard to learn the position, now here was this kid, a Plantation High kid, and he was going to get to play ahead of me. I felt increasingly alienated and disliked—probably unjustified—but it felt real at the time.
So at the end of my second year, I decided to quit. I couldn’t take the tension of being disliked so much for so long. I called Mr. Davis and made an appointment to come see him. Immediately, in his rich living room, I told him why I was quitting. His son Todd was there, which I now see as inappropriate.
Todd said something to the effect that everyone liked me. At that age, I couldn’t be convinced.
Mr. Davis said, “You were going to be my starting catcher for the playoffs.”
That hurt. Twenty years later, I’d have known to say, Well, it would have helped to know that earlier.
He also said, “You don’t have a lot of ability, but you do the most with what you have.”
Thus my baseball career ended. For years, I thought about Don Davis’ words, and I can still hear them in my mind: “You don’t have a lot of ability, but you do the most with what you have.”
I assumed then that Mr. Davis knew what he was talking about. But now I think he didn’t.
Look at the evidence: I was a starting pitcher on that team and played shortstop when I didn’t pitch. For those of you innocent of kids’ baseball, you put your best athlete at shortstop.
And then I volunteered to catch, learned the position on the fly, and became quite good at it. And then unless Mr. Davis was lying to make me feel bad, I was going to be the starting catcher for the playoffs.
I’m wondering why Mr. Davis said that about me not being a good athlete. Maybe he was mad that I had quit. The older I live, the more I realize that he was wrong. Why did he say that?
I don’t understand people’s motivations. Being a kid, I never gave Mr. Davis much thought; he wasn’t an engaging personality. I have to think he really just liked being on the field; he didn’t coach, and he didn’t market his insurance agency any to the parents.
I regret that I didn’t get to catch in the playoffs. But I still thought that no one liked me, and, at the time, that was the bigger concern. It’s the story of my life.
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