The Story Dad Told to Me Only Once
It is remarkable what lies within our memories, lying dormant, unobtrusive, but suddenly lit up and part of us like no time has passed. I was thinking about the stories we tell each other. Karen and I are so familiar with one another’s stories that our eyes roll with the opening lines of the most often repeated stories. But sometimes like a mushroom popping up in your yard overnight, a fresh story arises. Karen told a story I had never heard before about growing up in Yardville, NJ which is just outside Trenton, her birth city.
Karen and her brother were riding bikes to a friend’s house, a friend that she describes as rich. Rich is a relative term, particularly in Yardville, NJ. Karen’s bike was an old, rusted cruiser, but her brother had saved his money and bought a new Schwinn Sting Ray, and Karen’s friend had a new bike also. Her friend, gazing upon the unique salvage yard quality of Karen’s bike asks, “What kind of a bike is that?” They ride bikes together, Karen riding her friend’s new bike and her friend riding the vintage cruiser, apparently because the mid-century patina of industrial rust was so appealing to a rich kid.
As we are drinking our morning coffee, reflecting on that childhood story, which I’m sure means something since she remembers it, she told me about a dream she had last night. Karen says that she is herself in the dream and is her current age, which is important to know since she often time travels in her dreams. Anyway, she is in the Shawnee High School gym where she attended high school. Lea Waters (one of the best women’s pickleball players and teacher anywhere) and her daughter, Anna Lea Waters, (the best women’s pickleball player in the world) walk into Karen’s high school gym in New Jersey and they introduce themselves and ask Karen for a pickleball lesson. I have a thousand questions about this, but I remain silent, just letting it marinate.
We keep telling stories over and over to understand where we’ve been so that we can live fully aware, knowing about not only our victories, but also the losses which are buried in the dross of our dreams, yet somehow resurrected on random mornings over coffee. In the words of Søren Kierkegaard, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
Those of you who know my dad, Terrel Taylor, know that he often repeated stories, especially later in his life, but once he told me a story that I had never heard, and he only told me one time. It was about baseball, his dad, and Mickey Mantle’s twin brothers.
A Dog, a Beer, and Heroes
Baseball was once a dream, played in faraway places by unobtrusive heroes. The ghosts of those so-called heroes still linger today. I have a key punch combination that I recall using the uniform numbers of two baseball players. While I can’t remember where my keys are from ten minutes ago, I still remember inane details like batting averages and players numbers.
Before I began playing Little League ball, baseball was an auditory experience, understood best through radio broadcasts from KMOX as Harry Caray and Jack Buck described Cardinals baseball play by play, which made my first trip to a ballgame in St. Louis memorable. It took my breath away.
Despite losing a $5 dollar bill to a Dickensian pickpocket while buying a hot dog at the concession stand, Busch Stadium in St. Louis felt like a cathedral, a place that animated my baseball cards and gave legs to the colorful radio calls of Harry Caray.
Our family walked up the ramp to our seats as the cadence of vendors in paper hats resounded across the mezzanine, “Heeey, hot dogs. Heeey, cold beer!” I was old enough to eat a hot dog, but beer was forbidden, which made me want to taste it just a little bit.
I glimpsed the tapestry of perfect grass and finely raked dirt, and players wearing white uniforms emblazoned with a redbird perched on a bat. The place was so brilliant that it was like staring at a solar eclipse, I couldn’t look away. The inner sanctum was a raised mound, the competitive stage from which my hero, Bob Gibson, glared down at hitters.
Omaha to Brooklyn
When I was 12 years old, I found my identity and confidence through pitching a baseball. That spring of 1971, I retrieved a Rawlings baseball glove from my closet and massaged lanolin into the palm. I hurled a rubber baseball against the brick wall of our house, the play by play inexplicably provided by Jack Buck which included generous words of admiration.
I learned about pitching by watching a graceful Jew from Brooklyn, Sandy Koufax, and a tough Harlem Globetrotter from Omaha, Bob Gibson.
Koufax famously refused to pitch in the World Series when his start fell on Yom Kippur. I imagine the Dodgers broadcaster, Vin Scully, upon hearing the news, describing it this way:
It is 1:00 p.m. in the city of Angels, Los Angeles, California, where 35,000 fans, on this holiest of holy days are reflecting on the impact of Sandy Koufax sitting out this World Series game, setting aside his blazing fastball for another kind of fasting. How remarkable!
Like Koufax, I also missed games for principle to attend church services. I wish that the Koufax story had been told to me when I was 12, when two competing codes waged a moral tit for tat on the chalkboard of my brain.
How do I hold in my hands the finely stitched leather of a Bible and a Rawlings glove, and choose but one? From Koufax, I discovered that there are principles more important than sports.
I was, however, a righty, and Bob Gibson was the pitcher I emulated. Gibby once suffered a broken fibula when he was struck by a line drive off the bat of Roberto Clemente. Amazingly, Gibson pitched to three more batters before his leg gave out. There was nobody fiercer.
When the Cards faced the Detroit Tigers in the 1968 World Series, Gibson threw a pitch at the Tigers outfielder, Willie Horton, a feared slugger with 36 homers that year. As the pitch bore in on him, Horton turned away from the plate and winced. When he turned around again, the ball was nestled in the catcher’s glove — it had veered over the plate for strike three.
The Little League World Series was unimaginable, yet possible, during that summer before I turned into an awkward teenager. Inspired by the image of Gibson buckling the knees of Willie Horton in the World Series, I practiced throwing my curveball against the brick wall of our house, judging strikes by whether they hit the strike zone traced onto the brick with a chunk of sandstone. Eventually, backyard practice led to a controlled curveball, which I took with me to the Price Little League fields during the summer of 1971.
continued
Bespoke 
We want part two – we NEED part two!