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This spring is the anniversary of one of the pivotal moments of my life, for 35 years ago my Major League Baseball dreams came to an end, and without a Hall of Fame ceremony.
To start, you need to know that baseball was my life from as far back as I can remember. I started playing in youth leagues and never grew out of it.
My friends and I traded baseball cards (sans that plastic piece of gum that came with them), played elaborate games of whiffle ball and rode our bikes many miles just to challenge another neighborhood. I even created a homemade game where I hit a dice with a pencil – anything to get the feeling of being on the diamond.
While my eyes eventually betrayed me as a hitter, I got halfway decent as a pitcher. In three years of high school, I went 20-1 with a 1.49 ERA and more than three times as many strikeouts as walks. The fact that I still can rattle off these stats shows how important it was to me at the time.
My favorite year, without a doubt, was when I was a junior at Murphy High School. Some of my teammates from then still live here or visit, like Ken Beal, Keith Clark, Joel Jackson, Mark Kephart, Kenny McKeon and Greg Moore. We had a great team and had a great time; who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?
Alas, when you attend a different high school three years in a row, it’s challenging to keep track of you. So I attended Palm Beach Community College, which had a first-class baseball program. A wife and child later, and I was south of Atlanta starting my first newspaper job.
During this time, the dream didn’t die, it just took a back seat. When I turned 20, I figured this was it. I had finally grown into my body – I skipped kindergarten way back when, so I didn’t turn 17 until the middle of my senior year – and, in the words of Bruce Springsteen, still thought I could throw that speedball by you and make you look like a fool.
There was a fairly well organized semipro league around Atlanta in 1986, and when I heard professional scouts often attended games or held tryout camps I got into shape. I hung a U-Haul blanket on the fence behind my house and threw a bucket of balls at the corners of the painted strike zone for hours. While covering the Braves, I would pester pitchers in the clubhouse afterward for tips on how to throw a better changeup.
As the season progressed, the Pirates held a tryout camp that was only worth attending because of the strange-but-true stories the scout told about life on the road in baseball. Then the Royals came to town; the scout was wearing an actual uniform, and his wife was equipped with a radar gun, so it had to be legit.
Every pitcher, it turned out, was going to get to throw three balls. That’s it. If you could hit 90 mph on the radar gun, they’d talk with you. Turns out a nasty changeup wasn’t needed after all.
My first pitch hit 86 mph. The second one was 87 mph. And the third one, with the wind at my back and delusions of grandeur in my face, came in at 89 mph.
The scout saw my 6-foot-5 frame, took down my number and said we would talk. We never did. How often since then I have wished I was left-handed, as southpaws almost always get a shot.
I returned to the semipro league, only with less enthusiasm. A few weeks later, I threw a pitch and felt my right arm give out. On the next throw, it felt like dead weight. A trip to the doctor revealed that in addition to tendinitis in my elbow, I had torn my rotator cuff – the kiss of death for many pitchers.
“First Rod Carew, then you,” the Clayton News/Daily’s witty sports editor, Bill Evans, said on hearing of my retirement.
Three and half decades later, my rotator cuff is still torn. I had to hide my pain while playing catch with the kids as they were growing up. Still, every time I feel a tingle from my arm I am reminded of what once was, and I wouldn’t give up those memories for anything.
Sometimes God answers our prayers in ways we can’t understand until years later. I may have lost baseball, but my wife and I have been given so much more – a great life, four wonderful children and the most adorable grandbaby ever.
What more can a man ask for? How about another grandbaby in September?
David Brown is publisher & editor of the Cherokee Scout. You can reach him by phone, 837-5122; or email, dbrown@cherokeescout.com.