Joe Kennedy

Joe Kennedy is routinely named the region's best writer by readers of The Roanoker magazine.

Recent columns

• Farewell to those who made this space great
• Homeplace founder had recipe for success
• Pam's Snack Shack: Becoming her own boss

• Column archive

BLUE RIDGE -- Not a trace remains of the old diamond where young ballplayers gathered for games on Saturdays and Sundays into the early 1960s.

Nothing marks the short right-field fence line or the far deeper line in left. There is no clue that, just off U.S. 460, where the Blue Ridge Volunteer Fire Department and Rescue Squad building stands now, bases used to sit in the classic symmetrical pattern 90 feet apart, or that, before game days, players gathered to shovel up the cow pies that dotted their field of green.

The games are over. The players have grown old. Some have been called "out" by the Great Arbiter in the Sky.

But the memories and the stories live on.

About a dozen former amateur players from the Blue Ridge and Roanoke Webster Brick teams gathered for a reunion Wednesday at the fire hall. They and some spouses, relatives and friends sat at tables, ate sandwiches and renewed acquaintances made when they were kids.

America's pastime

Lewis Summers was the oldest at 87.

Bob Humphreys was the best known. He began playing against older boys when he was just 13. He went on to pitch for four major league teams and coach baseball at Virginia Tech.

He still coaches in the Venezuelan winter league.

Richard Radcliff was the most fervent. He planned and organized the reunion, and he eagerly looked forward to hearing someone tell the story of a terrific catch he made while playing center field.

Sam Webb played minor league ball for the St. Louis Cardinals until a bad arm did him in. Later, among other things, he coached football at Ferrum College, where he is regarded as the father of its modern athletic program. Like Humphreys, he is in the Roanoke-Salem Baseball Hall of Fame.

They are old men now, their athletic skills eroded by the years. But the stories remain fresh about the player who raced toward first base and slipped on a cow pie before a line of girls.

About the catcher who called for a pitchout in a game's final inning with the bases loaded and a three-ball count on the batter. The pitcher complied, and the winning run trotted home for the opponents.

Bygone era

They talked about the outfielder who once raced after a fly ball with his back to home plate -- and overran it by 40 feet.

About the time Richard Radcliff backed up for a fly to center, lost his footing, fell flat on his back and reached up to snag it for an out.

Radcliff brought the glove he used that day, a piece of tattered brown leather that lay as flat as a pancake, and proudly showed it off.

They talked about all the little towns that had teams -- places like Montvale, Fincastle, Buchanan, New Castle, Huddleston and Iron Gate, where railroad tracks ran through the outfield.

And the Virginia Mountain League, and others.

This was America before TV came along, before kids got cars and the Youth Culture took over.

There were no reinforcements for these summer warriors. The leagues dried up.

On weekends back in the day, you went swimming or watched baseball, if you weren't playing it, said Dale Foster, former athletic director at Salem High School. He was too young to play with these guys. He did gather up the balls that landed in his family's alfalfa field each weekend, a far piece from home plate.

Joy Carter recalled the day the coach at Colonial High School told him he would pitch -- for the first time.

Carter couldn't breathe. Yet he tossed a no-hitter.

Bob Humphreys recalled that broadcaster Dizzy Dean once described his pitching style as the "unorthodox windup on that old boy from some little town in Virginia."

Tim McCarver called it "sidesaddle."

Clark St. Clair remembered the game against Buchanan when he hit two home runs and Radcliff hit three.

John Burch said he had never been to a reunion like this one.

"Sometimes what we care about the most is all used up and goes away," Radcliff told the guests.

But, he said, the memories of important things like marriages, families and lifelong friends "keep us happy, no matter what."

Baseball is on that list.