CRYING TO VIDA BLUE - 1971
I was among the best!
One of the greatest in the annuls of baseball history!
Few have tried, and even less have succeeded in reaching the levels of self-delusion that I achieved with ease on any day at any time and at any place.
Fourth grade for example, when I became convinced that I was going to be a Hall-of-Fame pitcher on the New York Mets. The fact that I had never played baseball did not discourage me. The fact that I did not own a baseball glove or baseball bat did not dissuade me. The fact that I was the last one picked for kickball, even after Lacy Leftkowitz, who picked her nose while waiting to be picked, did not dishearten me. After all, I’d read every book in the Paramus Public Library about baseball, and I had a near perfect set of 1971 Tops Baseball Cards, including the checklist cards, so I knew I was ready.
I determined the best way to pursue my baseball dream was to create my own Chuck Freericks baseball cards, so after dinner one night, I dressed the closest I could come to a baseball uniform – Dacron bell bottoms, a striped terry cloth shirt-sleeve, and black buckle Thom McAns. I posed by the hedge in the backyard, which was the closest I could find to an outfield wall. I wore my father’s antique left handed mitt and my dad recorded me on Kodak Tri-X Pan.
A week later I get my baseball cards, but they were black and white and big and floppy, not like real baseball cards at all. Still, I wrapped them with a stick of bubble gum to give them the right smell.
Now, here’s the funny thing about ridiculous fantasies… those of us that have them will somehow manage to get ourselves into grand situations that others can only scratch their heads about, How the hell did that Goober manage that? And thus, a few days later I received an ad in the mail from Pro-Way Baseball Camp for Boys.
My mom took me to see the camp, where I met the great former Brooklyn Dodgers catcher Roy Campanella. While others pursued their baseball dreams by playing Little League or in stickball games, I, at all of nine years and three months old, pursued mine by networking.
I stood at the side of Roy’s wheelchair, scared to touch it, and desperately tried to think of what I could tell him from all the books that I had read and all of the baseball cards that I had perused that would immediately convince him that I was a baseball star to be. I mean, this was it… right? This was my chance. I had the ear of Roy Campanella. I stood there and stared at him. He smiled, the way kindly men will often smile at stupid children. Finally he asked me what position I played.
“Pitcher,” I sort of whispered, but not much sound came out. Campy nodded and turned away. Man, oh, man, this was it and I was blowing it. I had to say something brilliant, something to let him know what a great ballplayer I was… “Who was your favorite catcher when you were a kid?” I finally mustered out. “Bill Dickey,” he said… and our conversation was done.
I got my mom to sign me up for a session just so I could try to talk to Campy again. My parents deposited me at my grandmother’s apartment and left on vacation. That night, I was so excited that I couldn’t sleep. I lay in my mom’s twin bed beside my grandmother, Mama’s twin bed and listened to her sleep. Mama snored like a horse with strep. She had two glasses on her nightstand, both filled with water, one with her teeth. As an aside, Mama used to say water needed to breathe the air before you drank it. For years I would pour a glass of water and let it sit for hours before drinking it. It did taste better, but I’m not sure why.
Anyway, back to that night. Mama’s dressing table was smothered with photographs, mostly black and white. Her casement windows overlooked the parking lot, and when cars came in, tires munched the gravel. Their headlights reflected four squares against the dressing table mirror and glided silently up over the pile of Reader’s Digests, the table fan, and across the ceiling. The room smelled of old newspaper and mothballs. I lied there, imagining that when they made the movie about my life as the world’s greatest baseball player, they would show this scene of me lying in bed the night before, watching the headlights glide across Mama’s ceiling and having a drink of dusty water.
The next day, Mama was sick. Still she somehow managed to put a winter coat over her nightgown and walked me to Tenafly Road in the 95 degree heat. She held my hand in a death grip as she quizzed the camp bus driver if he was really from Pro-Way and hadn’t stolen a school bus and twenty-five kids in order to kidnap me. Mama escorted me down the bus aisle, keeping her death grip on me until she found a seat for me, which she wiped clean with a crushed Kleenex.
An hour later, I was at camp listening to Roy Campanella speak. Campy told us that baseball was designed to break our hearts. His heart was still broken from the Shot Heard ‘Round the World, Bobby Thompson’s homerun in the 1951 playoffs. Campy also said that after that game Ralph Branca, the pitcher who gave up the homerun, sat by himself, weeping in the Dodger’s locker room. No one went to talk to him. No one would sit with him. If we went on with baseball, each one of us would one day have that moment when baseball broke our hearts and we wept like a baby.
After Campy’s talk we lined up to play catch, but I couldn’t actually get the ball to the guy I was paired with. I couldn’t actually get it anywhere close to him. I was sort of pushing it through the air to the floor in front of me. Campy took me aside from the rest of the boys, and spent the afternoon teaching me how to throw.
“No, no…you’re pushing the ball …see what I’m doing…reach back and then high and then snap your wrist….No, no, no…you’re not watching me, are you? Do you really want to do this? Then why aren’t you trying? That’s not trying is it? Like this, okay, like this.” During the whole time, I was trying to please Campy, but I kept sort of missing what he was saying because I was too busy trying to figure out what I could tell him that would let him know that I was a superstar baseball player. Finally camp was done and he told me to go get on my bus.
As the days went by, I learned more and more about baseball. Like, did you know that there are special baseball shoes? Did you know I was the only kid at camp who didn’t have them? Did you know that baseball gloves need to be broken in before you use them? I did not, and had a glove that was as stiff as wood. Did you know that baseball players wear protective cups? I was not aware of this, and it was a bad thing when other kids played “Cup Check.”
Did you know that baseball players eat meat at lunch, to get their energy up? Mama packed me Welch’s grape jelly sandwiches on Arnold White Bread. She included an aqua blue chemical Ice-Pak the size of my head, which mashed the jelly into the bread so that it looked like I was eating a purple penicillin farm. She’d also give me a can of ShopRite ginger ale.
After lunch, sailing on a sugar missile of insulin, I’d head out to the ninety degree heat and 100% humidity to play baseball. But that part of camp wasn’t that interesting. What I needed was to make more contacts… and one day, when I got in trouble for not changing in front of the other boys in the locker room, I was told to sit in the gym Campy, Johnny Bench and Ted Kluzewski of the Cincinnati Reds walked in. This was my chance. Once Johnny Bench and Ted Kluzewski met me, and heard what I knew about baseball, I would be on my way. I tried to think of what would be the best thing to tell them… maybe that the Reds used to play at Crosley Field. That seemed like a good opener. But I couldn’t get the words out, so I just sat there and stared at them. They never noticed me.
Then it hit me… I would tell them how good I was, it was that simple… Oh damn, all of a sudden, every boy in camp suddenly poured into the gym and filled the bleachers. We all formed a line to get Ted and Johnny’s autographs. When I got up to Johnny, I took a deep breath to get ready to explain to him that I was a future star, but when I breathed out, no words came. He looked at me staring at him, grabbed my baseball glove and signed it.
“It’s a little stiff,” he said to me, as he handed my glove to Ted Kluzewski, who signed it too. They ruined my mitt. I never said a word. I just took it back and walked on.
Afterwards, all the boys went out for a catch, but the kid I was paired with kept hitting me in the back with the baseball. (He threw so hard I had no choice but to spin away from each throw, causing him to hit my back.)
That night I tried to wash off Johnny Bench and Ted Kluszewksi’s signatures from my mitt, but all I did was make them fade.
Even more days passed, and I started to realize that I was lost at camp. There were just too many boys there for me to be noticed. What was worse, was that there really was no way to get to talk to Campy, as he was only actually there an hour or so a week. The next time we saw him, he told us Vida Blue was going to visit, on the very last day of camp
Vida Blue was the 18-year-old ace of the Oakland Athletics. He had been on the cover of Time Magazine. He was considered the greatest prospect in a generation. This was it. This was my last chance for greatness. I had to tell Vida Blue about myself. I had to tell him everything I knew about baseball and how good I would be if someone would just give me a chance to play.
I thought about what brilliant information I would impart to Mr. Blue as I came up to bat in a scrimmage game. The pitcher looked in to the catcher, wound up, and threw a ball that appeared to be coming straight at me at the speed of a rocket propelled grenade. I ran away to the left side of the backstop, while I heard the umpire yell, “Strike One.” I got back into the box. The pitcher set, and threw, another bullet, this one aimed at my temple. I ran away, to the left side of the backstop, while I heard the umpire yell, “Strike Two.” I returned to the batter’s box. The pitcher lobbed in a slow curve. I ran away, to the left side of the backstop. “Strike Three.”
On the last day of camp, I ripped a piece of paper from my lunch bag for Vida Blue to autograph. We all gathered in the gym to meet him. Vida stood off to the side, this young boy, only nine years older than me. Unlike Campy, Kluzewski, and Johnny Bench, Vida was more of a boy than a man. He was the same age as some of my baby sitters. He seemed baffled by the kids wanting to meet him. I practiced what I was going to tell him in my head as we began to form a line. I wanted him to know that I was going to use the same pose he did on his baseball card on my first baseball card. I pondered the best opening… Mr. Blue… Vida… Vid… Vi?
I looked up and all the younger boys were gone, already in line. When I tried to move to them, a councilor told me not to cut, and put me in the back, with the 12-year-olds.
“What are you doing here, faggot?” one of the boys asked. I didn’t have an answer, so I didn’t respond.
“This is the kid that Campy was trying to teach how to throw,” another one pointed out. “He’s the reason Campy didn’t come see our game.”
Two of the 12-year-old boys grabbed me by the arms, while a third whispered in my ear, “Cup Check.” I saw his knee flying at me, but I could not move. And then I was on the ground.
“I don’t think he’s wearing one,” one of the other’s pointed out.
I don’t believe that I had ever cried so hard and yet I did not make a noise. I sobbed silently, unable to hold back the tears, the pain, or the embarrassment. When I looked up, I was next in line, and Vida Blue was looking at me.
And then something miraculous happened. Vida Blue dropped to his knee and asked me if I was the kid that Campy and Johnny Bench had been talking about. “I hear you’re going to be a star.” I nodded yes.
“Do you want to come to Yankee Stadium with me?” he asked. “You can help me warm up and I can teach you my curve.” I nodded quickly. “You remind me of me. I think you’re gonna be a Hell of a ballplayer,” he said. “And I want to be your mentor.”
Okay, none of the stuff after the Cup Check actually happened. The reality was that that when I looked up, Vida was looking at me sobbing and he asked, “Are you okay?” When I nodded yes, he took my baseball glove and signed it before I could tell him I had paper in my pocket. Then he signed the mitt of the kid who had just launched my private parts into my stomach.
An hour or so later, camp was over and I was back on the bus to Mama’s house. I noticed that the Johnny Bench and Ted Kluszewksi autographs on my mitt were sort of faint, so I traced them with a green pen to make them darker. I then traced Vida Blue’s autograph so it would be in the same color.
Now you may think that sometime during those weeks I realized that I was never going to see my face on a Topps Baseball Card, but that realization took another five years… ten years. What I did learn was that baseball will break your heart and make you cry.
And I’ve cried many times since, from watching Freddie Patek choke up on national television when the Royals lost to the Yankees in the 1978 playoffs, to seeing the movie Field of Dreams a few weeks after my dad passed away, to meeting Roy Campanella’s son when I was an adult and telling him this story, and having him grin and say, “I’m gonna tell my dad. He has to have really liked you to have taken you aside and taught you how to throw. It’s going to make him really happy to hear that you still remember it.” And I cried again when Campy died only a few months later.
Tom Hanks once uttered the famous line, “There’s no crying in baseball.” Tom Hanks was wrong. And I speak with authority. You wanna know how well I know the game? Roy Campanella taught me how to throw a baseball. Vida Blue has seen me cry.
Okay… now that that’s settled – everyone… Cup Check!
I was among the best!
One of the greatest in the annuls of baseball history!
Few have tried, and even less have succeeded in reaching the levels of self-delusion that I achieved with ease on any day at any time and at any place.
Fourth grade for example, when I became convinced that I was going to be a Hall-of-Fame pitcher on the New York Mets. The fact that I had never played baseball did not discourage me. The fact that I did not own a baseball glove or baseball bat did not dissuade me. The fact that I was the last one picked for kickball, even after Lacy Leftkowitz, who picked her nose while waiting to be picked, did not dishearten me. After all, I’d read every book in the Paramus Public Library about baseball, and I had a near perfect set of 1971 Tops Baseball Cards, including the checklist cards, so I knew I was ready.
I determined the best way to pursue my baseball dream was to create my own Chuck Freericks baseball cards, so after dinner one night, I dressed the closest I could come to a baseball uniform – Dacron bell bottoms, a striped terry cloth shirt-sleeve, and black buckle Thom McAns. I posed by the hedge in the backyard, which was the closest I could find to an outfield wall. I wore my father’s antique left handed mitt and my dad recorded me on Kodak Tri-X Pan.
A week later I get my baseball cards, but they were black and white and big and floppy, not like real baseball cards at all. Still, I wrapped them with a stick of bubble gum to give them the right smell.
Now, here’s the funny thing about ridiculous fantasies… those of us that have them will somehow manage to get ourselves into grand situations that others can only scratch their heads about, How the hell did that Goober manage that? And thus, a few days later I received an ad in the mail from Pro-Way Baseball Camp for Boys.
My mom took me to see the camp, where I met the great former Brooklyn Dodgers catcher Roy Campanella. While others pursued their baseball dreams by playing Little League or in stickball games, I, at all of nine years and three months old, pursued mine by networking.
I stood at the side of Roy’s wheelchair, scared to touch it, and desperately tried to think of what I could tell him from all the books that I had read and all of the baseball cards that I had perused that would immediately convince him that I was a baseball star to be. I mean, this was it… right? This was my chance. I had the ear of Roy Campanella. I stood there and stared at him. He smiled, the way kindly men will often smile at stupid children. Finally he asked me what position I played.
“Pitcher,” I sort of whispered, but not much sound came out. Campy nodded and turned away. Man, oh, man, this was it and I was blowing it. I had to say something brilliant, something to let him know what a great ballplayer I was… “Who was your favorite catcher when you were a kid?” I finally mustered out. “Bill Dickey,” he said… and our conversation was done.
I got my mom to sign me up for a session just so I could try to talk to Campy again. My parents deposited me at my grandmother’s apartment and left on vacation. That night, I was so excited that I couldn’t sleep. I lay in my mom’s twin bed beside my grandmother, Mama’s twin bed and listened to her sleep. Mama snored like a horse with strep. She had two glasses on her nightstand, both filled with water, one with her teeth. As an aside, Mama used to say water needed to breathe the air before you drank it. For years I would pour a glass of water and let it sit for hours before drinking it. It did taste better, but I’m not sure why.
Anyway, back to that night. Mama’s dressing table was smothered with photographs, mostly black and white. Her casement windows overlooked the parking lot, and when cars came in, tires munched the gravel. Their headlights reflected four squares against the dressing table mirror and glided silently up over the pile of Reader’s Digests, the table fan, and across the ceiling. The room smelled of old newspaper and mothballs. I lied there, imagining that when they made the movie about my life as the world’s greatest baseball player, they would show this scene of me lying in bed the night before, watching the headlights glide across Mama’s ceiling and having a drink of dusty water.
The next day, Mama was sick. Still she somehow managed to put a winter coat over her nightgown and walked me to Tenafly Road in the 95 degree heat. She held my hand in a death grip as she quizzed the camp bus driver if he was really from Pro-Way and hadn’t stolen a school bus and twenty-five kids in order to kidnap me. Mama escorted me down the bus aisle, keeping her death grip on me until she found a seat for me, which she wiped clean with a crushed Kleenex.
An hour later, I was at camp listening to Roy Campanella speak. Campy told us that baseball was designed to break our hearts. His heart was still broken from the Shot Heard ‘Round the World, Bobby Thompson’s homerun in the 1951 playoffs. Campy also said that after that game Ralph Branca, the pitcher who gave up the homerun, sat by himself, weeping in the Dodger’s locker room. No one went to talk to him. No one would sit with him. If we went on with baseball, each one of us would one day have that moment when baseball broke our hearts and we wept like a baby.
After Campy’s talk we lined up to play catch, but I couldn’t actually get the ball to the guy I was paired with. I couldn’t actually get it anywhere close to him. I was sort of pushing it through the air to the floor in front of me. Campy took me aside from the rest of the boys, and spent the afternoon teaching me how to throw.
“No, no…you’re pushing the ball …see what I’m doing…reach back and then high and then snap your wrist….No, no, no…you’re not watching me, are you? Do you really want to do this? Then why aren’t you trying? That’s not trying is it? Like this, okay, like this.” During the whole time, I was trying to please Campy, but I kept sort of missing what he was saying because I was too busy trying to figure out what I could tell him that would let him know that I was a superstar baseball player. Finally camp was done and he told me to go get on my bus.
As the days went by, I learned more and more about baseball. Like, did you know that there are special baseball shoes? Did you know I was the only kid at camp who didn’t have them? Did you know that baseball gloves need to be broken in before you use them? I did not, and had a glove that was as stiff as wood. Did you know that baseball players wear protective cups? I was not aware of this, and it was a bad thing when other kids played “Cup Check.”
Did you know that baseball players eat meat at lunch, to get their energy up? Mama packed me Welch’s grape jelly sandwiches on Arnold White Bread. She included an aqua blue chemical Ice-Pak the size of my head, which mashed the jelly into the bread so that it looked like I was eating a purple penicillin farm. She’d also give me a can of ShopRite ginger ale.
After lunch, sailing on a sugar missile of insulin, I’d head out to the ninety degree heat and 100% humidity to play baseball. But that part of camp wasn’t that interesting. What I needed was to make more contacts… and one day, when I got in trouble for not changing in front of the other boys in the locker room, I was told to sit in the gym Campy, Johnny Bench and Ted Kluzewski of the Cincinnati Reds walked in. This was my chance. Once Johnny Bench and Ted Kluzewski met me, and heard what I knew about baseball, I would be on my way. I tried to think of what would be the best thing to tell them… maybe that the Reds used to play at Crosley Field. That seemed like a good opener. But I couldn’t get the words out, so I just sat there and stared at them. They never noticed me.
Then it hit me… I would tell them how good I was, it was that simple… Oh damn, all of a sudden, every boy in camp suddenly poured into the gym and filled the bleachers. We all formed a line to get Ted and Johnny’s autographs. When I got up to Johnny, I took a deep breath to get ready to explain to him that I was a future star, but when I breathed out, no words came. He looked at me staring at him, grabbed my baseball glove and signed it.
“It’s a little stiff,” he said to me, as he handed my glove to Ted Kluzewski, who signed it too. They ruined my mitt. I never said a word. I just took it back and walked on.
Afterwards, all the boys went out for a catch, but the kid I was paired with kept hitting me in the back with the baseball. (He threw so hard I had no choice but to spin away from each throw, causing him to hit my back.)
That night I tried to wash off Johnny Bench and Ted Kluszewksi’s signatures from my mitt, but all I did was make them fade.
Even more days passed, and I started to realize that I was lost at camp. There were just too many boys there for me to be noticed. What was worse, was that there really was no way to get to talk to Campy, as he was only actually there an hour or so a week. The next time we saw him, he told us Vida Blue was going to visit, on the very last day of camp
Vida Blue was the 18-year-old ace of the Oakland Athletics. He had been on the cover of Time Magazine. He was considered the greatest prospect in a generation. This was it. This was my last chance for greatness. I had to tell Vida Blue about myself. I had to tell him everything I knew about baseball and how good I would be if someone would just give me a chance to play.
I thought about what brilliant information I would impart to Mr. Blue as I came up to bat in a scrimmage game. The pitcher looked in to the catcher, wound up, and threw a ball that appeared to be coming straight at me at the speed of a rocket propelled grenade. I ran away to the left side of the backstop, while I heard the umpire yell, “Strike One.” I got back into the box. The pitcher set, and threw, another bullet, this one aimed at my temple. I ran away, to the left side of the backstop, while I heard the umpire yell, “Strike Two.” I returned to the batter’s box. The pitcher lobbed in a slow curve. I ran away, to the left side of the backstop. “Strike Three.”
On the last day of camp, I ripped a piece of paper from my lunch bag for Vida Blue to autograph. We all gathered in the gym to meet him. Vida stood off to the side, this young boy, only nine years older than me. Unlike Campy, Kluzewski, and Johnny Bench, Vida was more of a boy than a man. He was the same age as some of my baby sitters. He seemed baffled by the kids wanting to meet him. I practiced what I was going to tell him in my head as we began to form a line. I wanted him to know that I was going to use the same pose he did on his baseball card on my first baseball card. I pondered the best opening… Mr. Blue… Vida… Vid… Vi?
I looked up and all the younger boys were gone, already in line. When I tried to move to them, a councilor told me not to cut, and put me in the back, with the 12-year-olds.
“What are you doing here, faggot?” one of the boys asked. I didn’t have an answer, so I didn’t respond.
“This is the kid that Campy was trying to teach how to throw,” another one pointed out. “He’s the reason Campy didn’t come see our game.”
Two of the 12-year-old boys grabbed me by the arms, while a third whispered in my ear, “Cup Check.” I saw his knee flying at me, but I could not move. And then I was on the ground.
“I don’t think he’s wearing one,” one of the other’s pointed out.
I don’t believe that I had ever cried so hard and yet I did not make a noise. I sobbed silently, unable to hold back the tears, the pain, or the embarrassment. When I looked up, I was next in line, and Vida Blue was looking at me.
And then something miraculous happened. Vida Blue dropped to his knee and asked me if I was the kid that Campy and Johnny Bench had been talking about. “I hear you’re going to be a star.” I nodded yes.
“Do you want to come to Yankee Stadium with me?” he asked. “You can help me warm up and I can teach you my curve.” I nodded quickly. “You remind me of me. I think you’re gonna be a Hell of a ballplayer,” he said. “And I want to be your mentor.”
Okay, none of the stuff after the Cup Check actually happened. The reality was that that when I looked up, Vida was looking at me sobbing and he asked, “Are you okay?” When I nodded yes, he took my baseball glove and signed it before I could tell him I had paper in my pocket. Then he signed the mitt of the kid who had just launched my private parts into my stomach.
An hour or so later, camp was over and I was back on the bus to Mama’s house. I noticed that the Johnny Bench and Ted Kluszewksi autographs on my mitt were sort of faint, so I traced them with a green pen to make them darker. I then traced Vida Blue’s autograph so it would be in the same color.
Now you may think that sometime during those weeks I realized that I was never going to see my face on a Topps Baseball Card, but that realization took another five years… ten years. What I did learn was that baseball will break your heart and make you cry.
And I’ve cried many times since, from watching Freddie Patek choke up on national television when the Royals lost to the Yankees in the 1978 playoffs, to seeing the movie Field of Dreams a few weeks after my dad passed away, to meeting Roy Campanella’s son when I was an adult and telling him this story, and having him grin and say, “I’m gonna tell my dad. He has to have really liked you to have taken you aside and taught you how to throw. It’s going to make him really happy to hear that you still remember it.” And I cried again when Campy died only a few months later.
Tom Hanks once uttered the famous line, “There’s no crying in baseball.” Tom Hanks was wrong. And I speak with authority. You wanna know how well I know the game? Roy Campanella taught me how to throw a baseball. Vida Blue has seen me cry.
Okay… now that that’s settled – everyone… Cup Check!
