The BASEBALL RELIQUARY Inc.
I WAS THE KID
I was the kid
whose world went supernova when he discovered
baseball.
I was the kid who
learned the rudiments of the game by playing
“catch over the roof” and Indian ball in the
street.
I was the kid who
fell in love with his favorite player many many
years before he even thought of kissing a girl.
I was the kid
whose best Christmas present ever was his very
first baseball glove, a Rawlings Don Blasingame
model.
I was the kid who
rode his bike all over the neighborhood
collecting pop bottles to earn baseball card
money.
I was the kid who
tried out for Little League in the days when
kids got cut and cried unashamedly when they
did.
I was the kid who
ate uncounted bowls of cereal of dubious
nutritional value to acquire the baseball cards
on the backs of the boxes.
I was the kid who
felt like the President being inaugurated when
he made his Little League team and knew he was
going to be issued a real flannel baseball
uniform with a sponsor’s name on the back of
it..
I was the kid who
got chased out of Jake’s Newsstand downtown
every spring when the new baseball annuals came
out – it wasn’t my fault they were kept near the
girlie magazines!
I was the kid who
never flipped his baseball cards or
clothes-pinned them to the spokes of his bicycle
wheels.
I was the kid who
pored over the rosters in the back of Street &
Smith, looking for players with the same
birthday as his own.
I was the kid who
devoured every word of
Arnold Hano’s profiles of baseball stars
in Sport Magazine.
I was the kid who
made spinner cards for whole teams of players
for the Ethan Allen table top baseball game …
and cheated to make the players of his favorite
team perform better than they should have.
I was the kid who
read every baseball book in the public library
and turned in book reports with the paper cut
into the shape of a circle with red stitches on
it.
I was the kid
whose bedroom was a personal … if I may use the
term … “baseball reliquary,” full of pennants,
Hall of Fame busts, and Hartland statues.
I was the kid who
told the class when his high school history
teacher went around the room asking, that what
he wanted to be when he grew up was a major
league baseball player.
I was the kid who
went to a simplified windup as a high school
pitcher, mimicking a Cardinals pitcher he saw
work in the 1968 World Series.
And, yes, sad to
say, while I was NOT the kid whose mother threw
out his baseball cards; I was the kid who gave
his cards away when he grew up and went to
college.
I was the kid who
tried to savor every minute of his last college
team baseball practice;
And today I am
the big kid who is thrilled to become the eighth
recipient of the Tony Salin Memorial Award, and
for that honor and your kind attention I thank
you from the bottom of my heart. |