Baseball highlights reel

A friend is attending an Orioles/Royals game in KC tonight. I've been showing my students a clip from the baseball time travel movie "A Kid in King Arthur's Court". Baseball is on my brain, so maybe I've been beaned. These are special baseball memories for me:

Wilson Alvarez throwing a no-hitter against the Orioles during one of the last games at old Memorial Stadium in 1991. After arriving in the majors with Texas in 1989, it took Alvarez a while to get his act together. He gave up two homers and three earned runs without retiring a batter in his major league debut with the Rangers and, five days later, was traded with Scott Fletcher and Sammy Sosa to the White Sox for Harold Baines and Fred Manrique. In just his second major-league start -- on August 11, 1991, at Baltimore's Memorial Stadium -- Alvarez showed his potential by becoming the eighth-youngest pitcher in history to toss a no-hitter.

We were sitting up really high with our backs against the chainlink. The boys all had on blue Texas Ranger caps. (That was how we kept track of them on the Metro and at the museums on the Mall.) My sister drove us up to Baltimore. We were plagued by yellowjackets the entire game, and were afraid to eat or drink anything because of the bees. We had spent the morning at Ft. McHenry. It was Jeff's ninth birthday. I had forgotten that. Mike was six and Steven four. It was an unusual vacation because no one broke their arm or required stitches.

I think Jeff was four when he went to his first Major League game in Kansas City. It was my first, too. Mike was maybe one, so '85 or '86. I had been to Royals Stadium before for a Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young concert with the Beach Boys back in '74 or '75. I am pretty sure George Brett hit a triple at the game. We mostly watched the fountains and scoreboard as I recall. A fan three rows behind us got excited and flipped his beer and hotdog with sauerkraut into the air. It all landed on me. As soon as the boys got cranky I was real glad to go back to the motel and take a shower.


When we first moved to Texas we attended lots of Rangers games at the old Arlington Stadium. Little Steven would usually fall asleep in my lap. Jeff would count all the airplanes that flew over. Mike would eat fruit roll-ups, raisins, and jalapeno nachos. The Rangers had Bobby Valentine managing back then, Julio Franco 2B, Rafael Palmieio 1B, Steve Bueuchele 3B "Boooosh"!, Nolan Ryan, Pudge Rodriguez (age 19)C, Jeff Huson at SS, Ruben Sierra, Juan Gonzalez, and Gary Pettis in the outfield, Brian Downing at DH, Kevin Brown, Jose Guzman, Bobby Witt, Brian Bohanon, Oil Can Boyd, Rich Gossage, Kenny Rogers pitching...

I remember an especially scary night when all the fans were told to exit to the concourses. The sky was dark and very green. I was sure we were all a-gonna die in a tornado at the ballpark. The weather was too bad to attempt the long trek across the parking lots to our car with three tiny boys, so we just had to hang out as the temperature dropped about thirty degrees and golf ball-size hail fell.

The boys each had a radio in their bedroom, and I would let them listen to Rangers games until they fell asleep. It takes amazing concentration for anyone to create a mental picture of the action of a baseball game just from radio descriptions while wrapped in blankies in a dark room. I figured they were either being lulled to sleep as pitchers tediously reviewed the signals, or they were developing impressive skills that would last a lifetime, and either way they were being quiet after a long day. They also developed math skills figuring out baseball statistics that make absolutely no sense to me to this day.

When Mike played T-ball he would put a clip-on earring on one ear so he could be Ruben Sierra. We would play a cassette tape of "We Are the Champions" on the way to the field so he could get psyched. I was supposed to imitate the KRLD radio announcer saying "Roooo-Ben Sierra!" when Mike walked up to the plate. Always fashion-conscious, Mike had to have a batting glove even for T-ball. He didn't like soccer because soccer players don't wear caps.

Steven spent many hours during his bigger brother's T-ball, coach-pitch, and kid-pitch baseball games playing in the dirt behind the backstop. He would bring a case of GI Joes or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and hang them all from the chainlink backstop. Even then he appreciated members of the opposite sex if they had brought sidewalk chalk to the games.

Some other day I will post about the meaning of the '68 World Series between the Detroit Tigers and the St. Louis Cardinals to an eighth grade girl in Lincoln, Nebraska. I can't write it just at the moment. I'm having a bad flashback of 3B Dean Palmer's arm tendon rolling up like a window shade underneath his skin.

My dad used to tell a story of breaking his arm during the Depression. He didn't let that put him on the DL. He just used the plaster cast on his arm as a bat. Amazingly, he grew up to have pretty good sense later on.

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you (Wo wo wo).
What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson?
"Joltin' Joe has left and gone away" (Hey hey hey, hey hey hey).

Dizzy Dean and PeeWee Reese on a tiny black and white t.v. My dad snoozing on the couch with the newspaper over his face after a lunch of saltines, summer sausage, and cheese, priceless.