Baseball season opened last week. When I was a young boy baseball was undeniably king. Today, it is overshadowed by both professional football and basketball, but back in the summer of 1950, when I was 10 years old, I knew very little about any professional sports other than baseball.
I had never seen a big league game and neither had any of my friends. That didn’t stop us from knowing about the game. The box scores were in the newspaper every day, and the Mutual Broadcasting Company broadcast a “game of the day” every weekday with Al Helfer and Dizzy Dean on radio station WCTT. We also saw clips on the newsreel at the movies now and then.
So, baseball was our game and we played it about every day during the summer.
My breakthrough came when I got my first glove from Wilder Hardware Sporting Goods. Then a friend of our family gave me a baseball she caught while attending a Philadelphia Phillies game. Talk about a treasure… in my mind it was huge.
It wasn’t long before that ball was wrapped in tape having taken a beating from me throwing at a circle on the foundation of our home.
I got pretty good at hitting the target, so when I signed up for Little League I told the coach that I was a pitcher. That was my position in Little League and Babe Ruth ball.
Kids today would not relate to our growing up. We were at the ballpark everyday from early in the morning until supper time. I really believe we loved baseball more than today’s kids like computer games. It was our dream to grow up and be a big leaguer.
My pro team then was the Brooklyn Dodgers. Louisville’s own Pee Wee Reese was their shortstop. As kids, we knew everybody on the team, their batting averages, and the position they played.
I dressed out for high school baseball, but I wasn’t good enough to beat out pitchers like Lonnie Cornelius and Chalk Alsip.
Years later, I enjoyed going to Crosley Field to watch the Reds. Now that was the kind of ballpark that baseball was meant for. I attempted my first foul ball catch there off the bat of Tony Perez. All I got for the effort was a swollen hand.
When I started working for WCTT in 1961 I had the night shift and the Reds were on often.
My one story about that adventure was when the Brooklyn Dodgers moved its team to Los Angeles.
Waite Hoyt, a Hall of Fame pitcher, was the announcer for the Reds. Back then, Hoyt stayed in Cincinnati when the game was played in LA and broadcast from getting a feed off of a ticker-tape machine.
Talk about boring. Tick, tick, and a few more ticks and Hoyt would mumble, “ball one” or “strike one,” whichever it was. Then more sounds of ticks. Hoyt wasn’t an exciting announcer when it was live, but this was less interesting than hearing a cow moo.
A game had gone into extra innings and it was 2 a.m. I couldn’t take it any longer, so I turned on the microphone and said, “If I don’t get a phone call I’m turning this game off and going home.”
The phone rang. The guy on the call said, “I’m the night watchman at the Town House Motel and I’m listening to the game.” I didn’t receive any other calls, so the two of us stayed until the game was over.
After that, I glared at that guy every time I drove by the Town House Motel.
