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Remembering a brilliant baseball career cut short
Last week as we were tearing up our house looking for my childrenx92s baseball mitts, before their first practices of the baseball season, my mind travelled back to my brief Little League career.
My family lived at the base of the Frenchman Hills south of George during three of the four years I was eligible to play Little League.
It was a 16-mile, one-way trip into Quincy and it just wasnx92t possible for us to get to town on a regular basis. Playing Little League was out, no matter how much I pouted and cried about it to my parents.
But, then, we moved closer to town when I was 12 and I had one last shot at playing baseball with my friends and my younger brother.
There was just one problem. We needed new baseball mitts and we had no money to get them.
My dad was always thinking of creative ways for us to earn money.
When we told him that we needed $20 each for mitts, he thought for a second and said, x93I know where there is some scrap aluminum. Ix92ll talk to the farmer and see if we can go get it, then Ix92ll take you out there and you can cut it up and take it to Monte Holm.x94
Monte Holm, who passed away a few years ago, owned Moses Lake Steel and would buy scrap metal for salvage.
So we spent most of a Saturday digging through a huge pile of junked metal out in the corner of a farmerx92s field, cutting up the aluminum pipes and pieces we found so they fit into the back of a pickup. When we took our haul to Holmx92s business in Moses Lake, we had just enough money for our two mitts, which we bought at Quincy Coast to Coast right before our mom took us to the first practice.
I loved baseball practice. It was so much fun learning to catch flies, hit and steal. (Working on baseball skills was fun, too.) We had a great time and I knew I was going to have an incredible season. I already figured I would be the MVP of the league and then lead our All-Star team all the way to the Little League World Series.
But, alas, it didnx92t work out that way. Just a few days before our first game of the season, I was roughhousing after school with another boy and I broke my leg, leaving me in a cast for three months and stuck in the dugout as a stat-keeper and cheerleader. My Little League career was over before my first at-bat. Sure I suffered, but so did my team, as they failed to make it to the league championship game without my brilliant play-making abilities in the field and stupendous slugging at the plate.
At least thatx92s how I remember it.
