Friday, April 10, 2009
Chilly April baseball brings back memories
Ray Cox covers recreational, high school and college sports in the New River Valley. If you have information you’d like featured,
e-mail ray.cox@roanoke.com or call 381-1672
Ray Cox
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Game days, East 33rd Street in Baltimore was once swollen with residents beating a hasty pace.
Should it be opening day for the resident Baltimore Orioles and a cold gale was blowing in from the vast harbor not far to the south, a throng made haste through narrow streets to seats in rusting Memorial Stadium.
Likely more than one was hoping the breeze wouldn't interfere to overly much with the brave consumption of frosty products from the hometown brewery. The rest prayed both teams would field pitchers who threw strikes.
Memorial Stadium was dedicated in 1954 to "All Who so Valiantly Fought and Served in the World Wars with Eternal Gratitude to Those Who Made the Supreme Sacrifice to Preserve Equality and Freedom Throughout the World."
Memorial Stadium, R.I.P. April 21, 2001.
In its late years, the home lawn of the Orioles was a lively place. Coincidentally, the O's of the '80s were some of the last of their kin to show much life, too.
On several occasions in those days, the newspaper for which I work dispatched me there to report on events of the first day of the Major League Baseball season.
I never bothered with the press parking, preferring to find a spot in the neighborhood somewhere and walk with the patrons. Streets named Kimble, Waverly and Rexmere led to the hulking ballpark. The asphalt would have a dull glow from the damp. Gulls would squawk overhead.
A saloon or crab joint was never too far from any inbound route. A trained nose could locate one, or both, usually in seconds, often in the same building. The suds-unlicensed places might consist of nothing more than a fat guy in an apron, a newspaper-covered table (the latest Baltimore Sun sports page had already been read) and a pile of steaming crustaceans.
Much memory of those festive first days of the season have faded into regrettable oblivion.
One recollection that won't lapse: Looking Cal Ripken Jr., in the eye for the first time in person. All I could think was how grateful I and was never to have looked into a gaze like that from across a principal's desk.
Isn't that awful? Bad conscience. I'm sorry for it, too. The gentleman doesn't deserve that.
In those days, in all days, Mr. Ripken was always the last guy to leave the clubhouse as long as a reporter had a question. Ripken also typically and famously headed up the rear guard until the last customer standing with a baseball and a felt-tip pen had been waited on.
The other dominating memory of those baseball journeys to the northern shores of the Chesapeake Bay was more elemental. The elements were always most cruel. Snow showers one year. Full cloud cover and 45 mph gusts, temps in the 30s, another. Chill drizzle another.
Play ball.
All of which was coming back to me the other day out at EastMont High, which was having a hard time with Radford on the baseball diamond. The sun dipped in and out and the wind blew and the cold deepened. And I'm thinking, this isn't anything like walking the streets of Baltimore the first week of April.
There's no cold like baseball cold.
Last year, we had a family excursion to root on a then-resident of our house at a spring break tournament way up in horse country Middleburg. Twinbill.
Heading out of Roanoke, temps were already in the 70s. Not a cloud in the sky. Stop me if you've head this before. I'm wearing the basics: shorts, flip-flops, light jacket.
Crossing the county line with Middleburg minutes away, clouds thicken. By the time we get to the ballpark, the wind is almost howling. Sleet is spitting. Then rain. Then snow. Back to rain.
Fourteen innings, two games, broken by a 20-minute sprint back to a soon to be full-blast heater in the Chevy. By the time it mercifully ended some hours later, the miserable resembled near-deceased survivors of the Russian Front.
My bare toes were pale blue.
Then, there was one particularly frozen late April night at old Salem Municipal Field, now known as Kiwanis. In bygone days, it was the home of the many manifestations of the local Carolina League entrant, on this occasion, the Buccaneers.
The home bullpen consisted of nothing more than a mound, plate and bench behind a low fence, open to the stars and heaven above. On cold nights, the relief corps would sit there and shiver in abject misery. Some of these unfortunates were native of tropical climes, after all.
On this particularly bitter occasion, an abject couple of pitchers clearly lost their minds and built a fire with the remnants of broken bats. Almost caught the fence padding on fire.
One more story. Another April game was once recalled in the guest dugout at Salem Municipal. The eye-witness historian was the visiting manager, an mild and agreeable fellow named Dave Huppert.
The story he was telling was about a 1981 early-season outing catching for the old Class AAA Rochester Red Wings when they played the homestanding Pawtucket Red Sox. Thirty-one innings after it started, the game was suspended at 4:07 a.m. Easter morning, the score 2-all. The league president had to be gotten out of bed by telephone for a ruling.
The longest game ever played resumed June 23, the PawSox winning 3-2 in 33 innings.
Huppert caught the first 31 innings. His main memory? Cal Jr., playing short and going 2-for-13? Opponents Wade Boggs, Marty Barrett, Bobby Ojeda and Bruce Hurst?
What Huppert said he will never forget was how hideously cold it was.
It can get that way at night when the date is April 21 and the ball game is in Pawtucket, R.I.
