Robin Writes: Baseball summers
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By Robin Garrison Leach
We played Bottle Cap Baseball all summer long when I was a girl; the laundromat up the street saved all the Tab, Orange Crush and Pepsi bottle caps from their machine for us. My brothers would amble there with an empty Kroger bag each Saturday morning and come home with a jangling sack that they tossed back and forth as they walked.
With an old broom handle and those cork-lined caps, Mom and my brothers and I had many afternoons of yelling, bragging and fun that turned our gravel driveway into a Field of Dreams.
There were ball games with neighborhood kids; games of catch with grimy baseballs or softballs whose frayed stitches wheezed puffs of country dust with each mitted whump, and even ‘Keep-Away from Robin’ games that my four brothers invented to make sure I remembered that I was ‘just a girl’.
But my favorite baseball memories were ones of the Cardinals. Though I lived more than 50 miles from the stadium and couldn’t imagine what it looked like, the sounds of the game were mine to treasure.
We didn’t have a radio in the house. On hot summer Sunday afternoons, I would hear the kitchen screen door slam shut and knew it was Cardinals Baseball time.
Dad had grabbed a cold beer from the ice box and was on his way to our black 56 Chevy that sat baking in the side yard.
I’d wait a bit, until he had all the windows down and had cranked up the volume on the crackly AM station in the car’s dashboard.
Then I’d gallop, barefooted and pig-tailed, to scramble onto the steamy back seat for a sweaty afternoon of Harry Caray and the rhubarb of hordes of baseball watchers miles away.
The boozy, smooth voices of the announcers were as memorable as the scores. Their baseball commentary and manly banter was not too interesting to a 9-year-old, but the tone and timbre of each phrase melded with the smell of the hot plastic car seats and Dad’s beer to inspire excitement and a feeling of being a part of something special.
One minute, Harry would be hawking Busch Bavarian Beer with his usual carnival patter…then…
“Up to the plate…HOOOLIIIAAANNN HAVIER!!”
Julian Javier had the best name on the team. It sounded like music; like an exotic, fantastical place your kite would land after breaking free from its string and soaring out of sight.
I’d watch Dad lean forward, grip the steering wheel with fists that wished for a bat, and bend his right ear closer to KMOX.
And we waited. We cringed as Harry told us what was happening:
“Steeerike One!” “Steeerike Two!” …
But most of all, we wished together. Would Harry scream out the words that made Dad smack the dashboard with glee? The phrase that made me bounce on the back seat until the worn springs in the seat creaked like summer-weary crickets?
A cracking sound flew through the speaker and into the air around us. We heard the roar of the crowd. We felt the excitement of a moment I still remember.
“IT MIGHT BE…IT COULD BE…IT IS!!!! A HOME RUN!!!”
“HOLY COW!!”
Dad grinned into the rearview mirror and winked. I winked back.
• Robin is a freelance columnist who lives and writes in Quincy, Illinois. Contact her at [email protected].
