One Regret

I really don’t regret much about my life so far, well past my 75th year.  The regrets are small almost insignificant. But I’ll relate one that persists after these many years.  That is; I never made it the big leagues.  Yes, I’m talking about Major League Baseball.

Ah, C’mon you might think and reasonably so.  But the little bit of the kid is still alive in me and guides this singular regret.

I was smitten way back in the Spring of 1951 at the age of seven, seven and a half, really.  A friend asked which team was my favorite and at that time I had not heard about baseball, or my now lifelong favorite, at least since being seven and a half, Detroit Tigers.  He was a Tiger fan and I felt dumb not having any honest response.

So, upon arriving back home from my friends house two blocks away, I began asking about baseball.  My mom knew little about it nor was my dad apparently very interested in it either.  My three older sisters were no help at all.  Dolls, piano lessons, learning to sing an excellent Ave Maria dominated their interests.  Being the lone boy, and the youngest at that, made it difficult to hear about sports.  So I was a late comer in and about baseball.  For God’s sake I was almost eight years old and was lost on the American Passtime.

But, my dear mom said that Art, the next door neighbor was very much a big baseball fan.  So off I went to see him.  For the next decade I became awash in baseball history, baseball lore, and baseball skills.  Art had been a good athlete along with his younger brother in the area baseball leagues.  Art was also an excellent goalie at ice hockey.

Art, also worked during the depression in the Detroit area and during World War 2 he worked in the factories building the war material the saved the world.  While in Detroit ha watch many Detroit Tiger Baseball games and could recount the many stories created there in old Tiger Stadium.  It was called Briggs Stadium before that and was one of the iconic ball parks for nearly a hundred years.

My interest in baseball was now almost overwhelming.  My friends began to collect baseball cards with all the players statistics on the back and various images of the players of the day.  Almost all of my loose change was spent buying cards with the wealth of baseball history, players pictures and a flat almost tasteless slab of bubble gum.  My sisters relished the gum but it was not my thing.  To this day I cannot blow a bubble with gum.  And I don’t care one hoot.

With this high interest in baseball came looking for someone to play catch with, and play, play, play baseball everyday, all day, with breakfast, lunch, and dinner squeezed in between.  A makeshift field a block away from my home was the gathering place to be.  It was clearly the center of the universe during the Summers for the next few years.

I was also blessed with a new friend who moved in just three doors away who also had a keen interest in this best of all games.  Ronnie Toupin played catch and all other sorts of baseball “games” in the street, and at the nearby field which we called “Pete’s Park”.  Pete Vialle would cut the outfield grass with a scythe and that enabled us kids to have a better field.  We also expanded our baseball efforts two blocks further away to “Peterlin Field” an open space next to the Peterlin warehouse where Peterlin’s beer distributorship was housed.  There I learned to play ball in earnest, emulating Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and the Tiger’s new rookies, Harvey Kuenn and Al Kaline.  For sure we were going to be the great ballplayers they already were.  It was just a matter of time.

So now, as I entered my teens I was quite good at baeball.  I could hit well to all fields, had very good speed on the bases, and had a strong arm.  On the reverse of one of Al Kaline’s cards the story of Al winning a throwing contest of a baseball at 12 years of age, with a distance of 187 1\2 feet.  At age eleven I practiced long throws and threw one 211 feet.  I was encouraged that I had the right stuff.  A Little League was formed in 1956 and of course I played as hard as I could. I was having the time of my life hitting, running, throwing sliding with a flannel uniform on to boot.

Soon it was on to Babe Ruth League where the fun continued through my sophomore year in high school.  My school system does not now nor did it in the fifties have a baseball team.  The spring season would be way too short and cold to have one in such a northern clime.  Therefore my baseball participation seemed to be coming to an end.  There was a Twilight League for men but you had to be at least 18 years old to play.  I was only 17 when I graduated from High School so my baseball career came to an end.

Once 18 years old I was in college, or working and enjoying a new game called golf.  Time for baseball was slipping away.  I heard about other kids going to tryouts in professional baseball but none that I knew ever made if very far.  But, for me, now I’ll never know.  My one regret is not pursuing the game I love and still love.  Was I good enough? Regrettably I’ll always wonder.