Baseball

We moved to Lexington from Whitesburg when I was six just as I started first grade. Garden Springs was a new neighborhood, as most of suburbia was in 1961. We kids loved to root around the new houses under construction. I can still smell that earthy mixture of fresh turned dirt, cement, wood and tar as we’d hunt for the silver discs among the rich brown dirt.

But it was really all about the dirt clods! We’d search for that perfect dirt clod, the kind you could throw without it disintegrating in your hand as you released it, and would kind of splat as it reached its intended victim, more likely than not your best friend.

When that first summer came I followed the older boys in the neighborhood to a vacant lot. I felt a part of something when they allowed me to play baseball with them. Wow, this was gonna be fun I thought—BASEBALLLLL!

“Okay kid, you stand over there,” the older boy said pointing to what I was to learn was “the outfield.”

Thing was, I had bad allergies as a kid. The grass was up to my waist, it’s hot and humid, and I’m wheezing, sneezing, scratching and itching, all the while waiting what seemed like an eternity for relief. Nobody ever hit anything, much less to me in the outfield. Nobody got anybody out, nobody did nothing and I thought I would be doomed forever, hands on knees saying “hmm batter, hmm batter, SWING!” for the rest of my young life. I saw Christmas come and go, and the next and the next with me still suffering, sweating stuck in the weeds on the Lane Allen lot.

So that was my initiation to America’s summer pastime. Mom had other younger children so I really didn’t have the opportunity to play on a team even if I wanted to. Yet baseball memories fill my life.

I used to lay on my belly in front of the TV in the “front room” on our small house at 2004 Alexandria. It was black and white, of course (Uncle Frank got the first color TV I had ever seen. We watched Joe Namath and Alabama in the 1962 Orange Bowl. Two things about that game: the COLOR—Wow, it was,,, you could taste the orange. The other was the pity I felt for Joe as he wore that knee brace, and even though he’s moving good and leading his team to victory, that brace just brought out the sympathy).

Anyway, one Saturday as I was watching Saturday afternoon baseball, hands cupping my face on our carpeted floor, I recall clearly the melodious voice of who would later become my all time favorite announcer, Curt Gowdy, as he said “And taking the field is the rookie Pete Rose for Cincinnati.” I recall Rose hustling across the diagonal stripes of the freshly mowed field. I don’t know why this memory stuck with me, maybe just such a burly athletic guy with a name like Rose.

The Redlegs, as my dad and most old timers called them (the Reds officially changed the name in the 50’s because of its association with Communism), were everything. Almost as big as our beloved Wildcats, at least in the summer months. There was literally nothing much else for anybody from the hills and hollers of eastern Kentucky. How many times would we’d be driving either to or from Whitesburg, or Hazard, or Pikeville or Neon and even between those mountain metropolises, when we’d nudge the dial for a better reception of a Redlegs game.

Finally, “Three up and three down, and at the bottom of the third it’s scratch, crackle-LOUD STATICKY SOUND—and the Phillies 2.” When you could hear him clearly, there was none better than Claude Sullivan, who joined then replaced the famed Waite Hoyt. Later in the 60’s the old left hander, Joe Nuxhall joined Claude. WOW! They were literally part of our family—road trips, cookouts, they were there. (Claude Sullivan was also the Voice of the Wildcats” until his untimely death from throat cancer at age 42 in 1967).

All the old Red’s player names come flooding back. There was Vada Pinson and Frank Robinson. Pitchers Jim Maloney, Joey Jay and Billy McCool. Infielders Leo Cardenas, Chico Ruiz, Gordy Coleman and Tommy Helms. And of course, Tony Perez and Pete Rose, although those names got much bigger later on. And though I had no desire at that time, but would later become a BIG FAN of it--there were the BEERS! The only ones that mattered then, in the days I was too young to drink it, were HUDEPOHL'S and WIEDEMANN'S, even good ol' Oertel's 92. Hudy's had he 14-K insignia with the golden wheat stalks beckoning forth thirsty drinkers.

I got to visit the old Crosley Field a number of times. Once my parents took me to a game when the baby sitter had us paged because of a younger sibling’s illness. We had to go—DARN! But the most memorable was STAN THE MAN day, when Uncle Martin took me and Joe Montgomery and his dad to see legendary Stan Musial’s last game in Cincinnati. Uncle Martin remembers telling me to count cars on the way home, I guess to keep me from asking so many questions. Two hours later, he recalls me saying “two hundred and forty two, two hundred and forty three…”

Then there was the new Riverfront Stadium. I remember the lights being the big deal—and the Astroturf. Dad took me to the 1970 All-Star game. Nixon threw out the first pitch and the NL won on Rose’s controversial slide at home into Ray Fosse. At the time we cheered wildly, but later upon hearing about Fosse’s injury I felt really sad about it. (Carl Yastrzemski won the MVP for tying the TWO records—4 hits and 3 singles).

Then came the BIG RED MACHINE years! ‘Oh what fun it was to ride with a dominating team!’ The 1975 series with Boston topped them all. I was at the University of Tennessee and watching from the couch in our apartment at the Railery…I can’t remember which game, could’ve been the historic 6th, that Boston won 7-6…I’d say in dramatic fashion, but EVERY one of those games were like Ali-Frazier heavyweight decisions!

The names are legendary: For the Reds, Sparky Anderson, Rose, Bench, Perez, Davy Concepcion, Ken Griffey (at that time no need for suffixes, he was the ONLY Griffey), Joe Morgan, George Foster, Cesar Geronimo, Don Gullet, Clay Carroll, Jack Billingham and Will McEnaney. Great role players in Pedro Borbon, Ed Armbrister and Dan Driessen. The Red Sox were similarly great: Yaz of course, Carlton Fisk, Rico Petrocelli, Bernie Carbo, Dwight Evans, Fred Lynn and Luis Tiant among them.

The 1976 Reds team made history being the only team to sweep the whole post season. I skipped a day of classes at law school to see the Reds-Phillies game three. The Reds looked like they were going down to a two run loss, when in the bottom of the 9th, BACK TO BACK HOMERS by Johnny Bench and George Foster—he with his big black bat—tied it up and saw the Reds sweep in extry innings!

I did not know that this would be the pinnacle of my love affair with baseball. Not only did career and other interests take precedence, but the vast SIZE of sports, its all encompassing immensity really soured me. The 1994 strike was the final blow—I have not watched a game since. Instead, I truly enjoy little league, with kids playing for the sheer fun of it, and parents—most of them—cheering their own as well as the others.

Passion for the game, for the fun, is hopefully what these young players play for. It was this kind of passion that fueled the instigator of this trip down memory lane, Alan Stein, in his vision to bring Minor League baseball to Lexington. He and his team have done an outstanding job bringing fun entertainment and quality baseball to Lexington with the Legends and its new stadium, Applebee’s Park.

I went to a game there last week, a beautiful almost-cool blue skied evening and ran into Alan, a hands on manager who does it because he LOVES IT! Thank you Alan and team for putting the fun back in baseball!

Richard F. Dawahare 7/17/07