RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,164
(no batter, no batter)
When I was young there
was a baseball pitcher, for
the Detroit Tigers, named
Early Wynn. The name
itself, always fascinated me.
For a pitcher to have that
name, it just all seemed so
perfect. After all, when
he took the mound, an early
win was what you were after.
(Not that, in baseball, then or
now, a 'win' is predicated on
early or late; there being no
time, per se, and the change-
factor being always constant,
right up to the last moments.
But, you must - and I assume
you do - get my gist).
-
I just looked him up, actually,
only to see that he died in early
April of 1999, after having
been born in 1920. My own time,
and his own time, in their strange
and mischievous ways, I suppose,
only crossed by concept, certainly
not by reality. Yet, over those
years, he was a presence -
something about old baseball,
when it was practically al white
anyway, had a manner of drawing
the hayseeds and the yokels to
itself. All those farm boys and
plow hands coming from far and
disparate, rural places. They ranged
from the Abner Yokum Mickey
Mantle and Roger Maris types,
to the absolute madmen types
like Jimmy Piersall or Ed Whitson.
Strangely-coiled, taut men.
That's all gone now, the game
having been turned itself over
instead to Hispanic and Caribbean
and Black influences, which have
changed completely the complexion
of the game and the play. It hardly
really belongs in America any
longer, except I suppose for
the money and. capitalist-greed
aspects now so tiringly prevalent.
It took a long time, but an early
win has turned into a late loss.
-
I used to love flipping those baseball
cards - those 1950's and 1960 years,
with al those awkward poses, the
power stances and the oddball grins
and smiles; the crowded team
portraits with bunches of players
all jammed in, with their managers
and who-all-else t ever was. The
backs (as the fronts) differed each
year - a tiny bio of the player,
perhaps 15-20 words, and then
a stack of statistics oddly gridded
and stacked, with, sometimes, a
cartoon-image or a note about
some peculiarity personal to the
player. Some of these cards were
read far more carefully and intently
than were others - some players
seemed clownish, or looked to be
14 years old, maybe all promise
but certainly nothing yet worth
delving about. Some had the
bizarre or glamorous nicknames
they gotten or earned. Others just
had plain old funny farm names,
all those like Orville, Cletus,
or Duke.
-
In point of fact, there were even
a few who wore glasses. One guy
whose name I cannot recall now,
pitched (no pun) his entire game
on the premise of his wearing
glasses and being so otherwise
bat-blind that his 90mph fastball,
errantly and perhaps even sightlessly
thrown had a fair chance of joining
the batter's head or face in a pure
mishap formed by strength, heave,
and blindness all working together.
That form of intimidation had to
be good for, I'd bet, 5 or 6 wins
alone each year, over and above
the rest. Maybe a lot of walks,
but an ERA kept way down too.
-
It was all good fun, in its way,
and is all so different now that
it's hardly worth bringing up.
But, the farther reaches of old
America did once thrive on this
stuff - the little whitewashed
walls and fences of small-town
rural America, late to electrify,
except in the crowd of baseball
fidgets cheering and sweating
for their local boys. I know I
was getting older when, first,
the cops started looking younger
than me, and then the baseball
players did the same. What
once were gruff and foul adults,
somehow turned into bunches
of powder-faced kids playing
at a game, Spanish-accented
or not.
-
In line with this, sort of, or
in the same overlap of years,
I can also recall the line-up of
cigarette brands as they reflected
America. On the one side were
the three, big, raw, unfiltered
brands - Camel, Old Gold,
and Raleigh. On the other side
were the more prissy brands,
Tareyton, Parliament, and
Marlboro (back before that
brand's cowboy days). Coming
right down the middle, sort of
separating the one side of America
from the other, was Kent. With
the Micronite Filter (later proven
to be a foolish hoax, somewhat
like America itself). Good old,
middle of the road Kent Cigarettes,
almost without meaning but
agreeable to all. What a
pleasurable foist on the as
yet bare-of-graffiti wall of
America. I used to separate
people by those cigarette
categories, when I could, and
as often much as they gave
themselves away. Often I'd be
surprised as teachers, or priests,
or cops or clerks, were seen, in
their side-hours, to sucking
down on their requisite brand
of smokes.
