Little League

 

Eleven and twelve were my Little League years.

            Growing up in Sacramento, it was also when the New York Giants moved west to San Francisco. As an adult, I only now truly appreciate the magic of hearing on my backyard radio every home run Willie Mays hit those years - and Russ Hodges’s Hall-of-Fame call: “You can tell that one, bye-bye Baby!”

             On matchstick ankles disappearing into what passed for spikes, small for my age, and sporting (I use the term loosely) a Nellie Fox glove that Abner Doubleday himself must have designed, I’d decided second base was my position. (Fox, a second baseman, still shares the White Sox career record for triples – 104.) I had no arm, so pitching and the outfield were out of the question. People got hurt at third or short, playing catcher was suicidal, and somebody else always nabbed first, first. The Keystone Corner it would be then.