Senior Year

by Dan Shaughnessy

  Sam always loved baseball more than the other games, and he loved hitting more than baseball. He loves hitting the way Ted loved hitting. Sam can watch hitting videos all day. He's never far from one of his bats. And his sisters still laugh when they remember watching him from a kitchen window, playing alone in a driveway when we were road-tripping in Montana, hitting rocks out of his hand and posing like Ken Griffey Jr. before going into his home run trot.

  One of his earliest school essays was entitled "Hitting." He led off with "Hitting is my life. I cannot think of many things I would rather do than step up to the plate. I could take batting practice every day until my hands bleed and still love it. I love everything that has to do with hitting. I love bats, batting gloves, batting helmets, pine tar, doughnuts, fences, anything and everything that is associated with hitting. A baseball bat to me is a piece of art, a stick of wood crafted into a thing of beauty."

  I missed his first Little League home run. Sam's Metco brother Alexis was there for the historic shot and retrieved the baseball from the small creek beyond the right field fence at Murphy Playground. A week later, I was sitting in the aluminum stands at the Murph and saw Sam hit a fly ball over the fence in right-center off a lanky lefty. It was quite a thrill to see my son rounding first after the second homer of his career. Then, before you could say Barry Bonds, I wanted to put a bag over my head. Sam was in a full-blown home run trot. He was stylin' his way around the bases. He was taunting the opposition.

  This stuff didn't happen when I was a kid. If you were lucky enough to hit a home run, you circled the bases with dignity. When you crossed home plate, you shook hands with the on-deck hitter, who'd be standing on the other side of the dish with his hand extended. You looked like a couple of stockbrokers meeting for lunch. That's the way Mantle and Maris always did it. It had a certain understated style.

  Now this. Hot-dogging from 11-year-olds. We know where it comes from. The beast is known as ESPN SportsCenter and it's where our precious games sadly morphed into moronic entertainment. Muhammad Ali is probably the one who got it all started and then we had Joe Namath and those white shoes and then basketball players who decided that style was more important than substance. There's no room for fundamentally sound, square-shooting Larry Bird anymore. It's all about whatever you can do to bring attention to yourself to get a top-ten highlight. I regard the end zone dance—take out a Sharpie and sign the ball, make a call on your cell phone, do a couple of pull-ups on the crossbar, or use the goal post to wipe your butt—as a crime against sportsmanship. Barry Sanders was one athlete who suggested dignity, telling young players to "act like you've been there before." But too many of our young players would rather look good and miss a shot than do something awkward and put the ball in the goal.

  So there was my 11-year-old son, showing off. I said nothing until we got into the car, then offered, "Sam, nice home run. What didn't Dad like?"

  "Showing off around the bases?" he asked.

  "Right," I said.

  About a week later, I was on assignment in Arizona, responsible for talking to Mark McGwire about the upcoming Home Run Derby at Fenway Park before the 1999 All Star game. This was in the days after McGwire set the country on fire, hitting seventy home runs in 1998. It was also in the days before the steroid scandal of 2005, when McGwire walked into a congressional hearing with feet of clay. In 1999, Big Mac was still a diamond god, particularly to a certain young home run hitter.

  I interviewed McGwire about Fenway Park and the upcoming Home Run Derby, then told him about Sam and the home run trot and asked him for a little parental help. Sam was born the same weekend as McGwire's first son in 1987, and Mark was only too happy to speak into my tape recorder about home run decorum. Simple stuff: put your head down and run around the bases. Don't try to show up the pitcher. He's not trying to show you up.

  Sam was in the bathtub when I came home from the trip. It was nighttime, but I couldn't wait. I went into the bathroom and set the recorder down on the corner of the tub.

  "Here's what Mark McGwire says you do when you hit a home run," I said, pushing the Play button as I set down the small machine.

  We never talked about it after that. Lucky boy. He got the message directly from the then-god of home runs.

  Newton North's diamond, Murphy Field, is perfectly symmetrical, with a green wooden outfield fence and bleachers behind both dugouts and home plate. In our section of town, we allow signage on the outfield fences, and local hardware stores and landscaping companies support the league in exchange for ads on the fence. Other parts of our PC city ban signage at their ballparks and there was a big to-do one year when a local pub had a sign on its outfield wall. Concerned citizens worried that the league was promoting drinking, so all signs were banned. Meanwhile, I'm told that in parts of St. Louis, there are Anheuser-Busch beer stands in the middle of Little League complexes ... for the dads and moms, of course.

  I stayed out of Little League politics. Lesson one: never, never, never offer to umpire. Do I make myself clear? Never. You know why. If you make a call that favors your child's team, you will hear about it from some nitwit dad who has a player on the other team. If you rule against your own kid's team, you get the silent treatment from your own family. Also, no matter how well you think you know baseball, something will happen that you have never seen before and you will not know which call to make. I made the mistake of offering to render a decision in a girls' softball game when Kate was in middle school. We had an episode that would have highlighted SportsCenter if it had happened in the World Series. The play involved a simple ground ball to the pitcher and a simple throw to first base. The throw beat the runner, but it was a one-hopper that the first baseman somehow managed to secure between her knees. No kidding. Her glove was nowhere near the ball, but when it skipped in front of her, it bounced toward her kneecaps and she grasped the ball by closing her knees together.

  Safe or out? You make the call.

  I called the kid safe. But I wasn't sure. Somehow, even though the first baseman had control of the ball, it didn't look like a legal catch. After considerable debate, I inquired if anyone had a cell phone. I called the American League office and asked to speak with Marty Springstead, a former big league ump I'd known back in the days when I covered the Orioles and he was always throwing Earl Weaver out of games. Marty told me that the base-runner was safe. The fielder needs to have possession of the ball, and possession means the ball must be in the fielder's hand or glove. It's not like in the NFL, when a receiver would be credited with a catch even if he secured the ball by having it jammed into his facemask. Not in baseball. An outfielder who falls down and has a ball land on his stomach has not made a catch. He must secure the ball in his hand or glove.

  On another day, when I watched another dad volunteer to umpire, I witnessed a hideous scene after a close play at home plate. The little girl pitcher had run in to cover home after a wild pitch, and she took the throw from the catcher as the baserunner steamed in from third. The dad/ump ruled "safe," which sent the pitcher into a Weaveresque tantrum. The little girl ultimately wound up on her back, crying and kicking her legs, not unlike Animal House's John Belushi during Otis Day and the Knights' rendition of "Shout." Next thing you knew, the softball mom was kneeling over her daughter, saying, "It's okay, Lindsey. The umpire knows that he lied. He has to look at himself in the mirror knowing that. You'll be okay."

  Then there was the perfect May night when a team from the West Newton Little League arrived at our ballpark and immediately turned back because their coach would not be part of any game involving the umpire who'd been assigned to work that night. I didn't want to get involved, but I simply couldn't believe this was happening. We had more than twenty kids and dozens of parents gathered on a beautiful night for baseball, but there was not going to be a game because the coach didn't like the umpire. He said the ump had been verbally abusive to his kids. He said he had warned league officials. As his little players walked back to their cars, I ca
ught up with a few parents and asked them if they were okay with this. They nodded and agreed. They'd rather forfeit than play another game with this umpire.

  Not me. Not now. Not ever. Let the kids play the game. The world is going to be full of teachers, coaches, and bosses that our kids do not like. What is the message when we tell them it's better to go home than to stick around and play the game?

  My all-time favorite parent-as-jerk moment came when Sarah was coaching field hockey at Newton North and one of the dads from the other team refused to put out a cigar he'd lit while standing on the sideline. The guy thought the request to lose his stogie was one of our endless PC rules, when, in fact, it is state regulation that prohibits all smoking on school grounds. After much consultation with captains, coaches, and officials (I think he made one of our players cry), the man stormed off the premises, and the Newton team was awarded a corner opportunity. Proving that there is a sports god, our girls scored their only goal on the corner and the visiting team went home with a 1–1 tie, knowing that one dad's cigar had cost them a win. The non-victory cigar. The anti–Red Auerbach. Hang down your head, Dad.

  For anyone who loves to play baseball, there is almost nothing better than your last year of Little League. It's when you are 12 and finally big enough to master the small diamond. It's when you can hit the ball over the fence and give pointers to the younger kids. It's when you are almost ready for the next level.

  The inimitable Jerry Sack came into Sam's life when he was a 12-year-old Little Leaguer. Jerry is a legitimate Newton legend, a Little League bird dog, annually scouting all five Newton leagues and assembling a traveling all-star team of 12-year-olds. Crusty, crude (did he really moon the crowd back in the day?), and well past middle age, he could have played the Walter Matthau role in the original Bad News Bears. He drives a giant black Caddy and deals in precious metals. Jerry, who is Jewish, loves to recruit the hardscrabble Italian kids from the Lake section of town (where there is no water), and he once told me, "When in doubt, always draft the kid whose name ends in a vowel—unless it's Shapiro!"

  Stocked with big, strong kids who could hit the ball over the fence, Jerry's team went to tournaments throughout Massachusetts. They wore ultra-cheap, powder-blue hats and shirts and won most of their games. Sam struggled at the start. He wasn't sure he belonged, but he fought his way through and finished batting in the three hole and reaching base in fifteen of his final sixteen Little League at-bats.

  There's beauty in comfort when you play sports and somehow outgrow the dimensions of the game. It happens to young ballplayers just before they reach the next level, and it happens to a few professional athletes who reach a point where they are men in a game against boys. Wilt Chamberlain must have felt like this when he averaged fifty points a game. Michael Jordan, too. Watching Barry Bonds early in the twenty-first century gave one the same feeling, but then, of course, it turned out Barry was cheating.

  I felt this only once: Eric Monroe's barn on Blossom Lane in Groton, Massachusetts. It was the mid-1960s, and we hung baskets inside at both ends of the big cold barn at the top of Mr. Monroe's driveway. I was older and bigger than most of the boys who were playing in our pickup games in those days, and I was never on the losing side. I learned how to make shots over the rafter in the middle of our makeshift court. It was a feeling of absolute invulnerability. There was never a doubt. There was no way I could lose. I was only 12, but I had no challenge, nothing to shake my confidence. Years later, sitting courtside at the Boston Garden, I would watch Larry Joe Bird impose his will on basketball games and win just about every time. He could do whatever he wanted. He would go to the foul line in the final two minutes and everyone knew he'd make the shot. And in my own odd way, I could relate to what he was feeling. It was the feeling I had in the barn all those years ago—only Larry was doing it against the world's best players. Absolute invulnerability.

  After Little League, Babe Ruth baseball was next for Sam. It's an interesting leap. Boys go from 12 to 13, the mound goes from 45 feet to 60 feet, the base paths go from 60 to 90, and the fences from 200 to 340. It's like landing in Paris and trying to understand the locals after taking one year of high school French.

  By the time Sam was a freshman in high school, he'd established himself as a pretty fair local hitter. I figured he was a cinch to leapfrog the freshman team and land on the junior varsity. Still, there was a minor incentive to playing for the Newton North freshman because Kent Damon, Matt Damon's dad, coached the team. A graying, handsome man in his early fifties, Kent coached the freshman for the fun of it. Legend held that his famous son would stop by for at least one practice per year, and the kids loved to hear stories about Matt's ballplaying as a youngster in Cambridge. While working on a magazine profile, I spent a day with Matt in 2004 and noted that he was most animated when his limo drove past a Cambridge Little League field where he'd hit a home run when he was 12. Better than the Oscar probably.

  Kate was a senior softball captain when Sam was a freshman, and she got word that Sam was tearing it up at the high school baseball tryouts. Veteran coaches considered him the best hitter in the school but didn't want to rush him onto varsity where he might struggle, so they put him on the junior varsity team. He hit .500 in half a season with the junior varsity before getting called up.

  It was a heady time for a 15-year-old boy. He'd gone to Legion tryouts just a few days earlier and made the team when he launched a homer over the rightfield fence that shattered the windshield of Post 440's star pitcher. He was also experiencing some lower back pain, and I'd received a rather alarming phone call from his doctor on the same day Sam was called up to the high school varsity. There was something on Sam's back x-ray that concerned the doctors. It was either a skeletal abnormality that had been there since birth ... or it was a tumor. They wanted him to have a CAT scan and an MRI.

  I dissolved. It was too reminiscent of what had happened to Kate. We'd learned she had leukemia only because we'd taken her to the clinic when she complained of back pain. Now, here was Sam, readying for his first varsity game, as a freshman no less, and the possibility existed that this might be his last game. I knew I was overreacting, but I just had a bad feeling. When I found the field at Milton, the Newton varsity coach, Joe Siciliano, proudly showed me his new lineup card. He had Sam batting cleanup. Ouch. I told the coach that Sam would miss school tomorrow because of medical tests. And then I watched Sam go 1-4 in his first varsity game. He looked small and overmatched. His hit was an infield hit.

  We went to Children's Hospital at eight the next morning, and I never told Sam the potential seriousness of the situation. By noon, the doctor was telling me that everything was normal. Sam played a home game against Brookline the next day and struck out four times. Truly overmatched. He cared deeply. Too much. And that's why he wasn't able to hit. I cared not a bit, not anymore. He did not have a tumor. There would be plenty of time to get out of this slump.

  Knowing that Sam was worried about his nonhitting, the way I'd been worried about the nontumor, I gave him a copy of Willie Mays's autobiography and opened it up to the section on Willie's first month in the big leagues in 1951. Mays went 1-25 when he first got to the majors and told his manager, Leo Durocher, "I can't hit up here." Durocher said that as long as he was manager of the Giants, Mays would be his centerfielder. Mays wound up hitting .264 with 20 homers in 121 games and went on to be perhaps the greatest baseball player who ever lived.

  As the high school season drew to a close (the North varsity was stumbling through a lifeless season, well below .500), Newton North Athletic Director T. J. Williams selected Sam to speak to a packed house of eighth graders and parents regarding the leap from junior high school sports to high school sports. Marilou and I were stunned. Sam? Speaking to an auditorium of people? Without subtitles?

  "He'll do great," said the veteran AD. "He played three sports and we like to pick someone out who can use a little push in this area. You watch. He'll surprise you."

  Sam w
as still in his baseball uniform, spreading infield dust on the stage as he shuffled to the podium. His clay-stained uniform jersey (number 24 in honor of Ken Griffey Jr. and Manny Ramirez) was unbuttoned and he had dirt smudges on his face as he slouched slightly behind the microphone. He looked like a ballplayer. He had scribbled notes, but he talked to the audience without reading. He told the kids and their parents that sports had been a great way for him to get involved in the big high school. He said that playing three sports had forced him to be organized about his studies. His speech was peppered with "like"s and "you know"s, but he pulled it off, and I thought about what T. J. had said. More often than not, veteran teachers and school administrators know what they are talking about. They've seen thousands of students pass through their corridors and they know kids.

  Sam didn't get many varsity hits, but you could see he was feeling more comfortable at the end of the season. He went directly into the Legion season, where some of the boys were already playing in college. They all had cars. Too proud to ride his bike, Sam got dropped off by his parents a safe distance from where all the players were gathered.

  The Newton Legion coach is Manny Connerney, who looks like former Tiger Hall of Fame skipper Sparky Anderson and sometimes sounds like Earl Weaver. Manny was one of the finest athletes in the history of our town, a high school running back with bullet speed and a Ty Cobb clone on the baseball diamond. He's a retired fireman, half Irish, half Italian. When he's not watching sports, coaching, or spending time with his family, he's tending to the carrier pigeons he keeps in a large gray shed next to his home in the Lake section of town. In the dugout, as in all other matters of work and play, Manny is decidedly old school. He's a my-way-or-the-highway kind of guy. I have never heard him second-guess himself. This streak of stubbornness can be an asset for any coach. When Manny's head hits the pillow at night, he's not wondering if he made the right move earlier in the day.