The Baseball

Near the end of the sixties, for my gang, baseball was king. We played for the love of the game much like our current heroes Willie Mays, Johnny Bench and Hank Aaron. They played for the love of baseball just like us. We played everyday all summer long unless there was a Monopoly game going on at someones house. More on that later. We even fashioned our own baseball diamond from a weed strewn field across the street from my house. The sweltering heat of central Texas made what took just a few days seem to be a whole month of lost baseball games. But we were on a mission to have our own field. Sweat and dust clinging to our faces as we cleared weeds taller than we were, cut out baselines in the dirt and cleared enough rocks out to make the slide into base a bit less painful. Baseball was our game and now we owned a field, well sort of. The landowner eventually built some homes there and our games moved back to the street right next to Bill's house at the top of the hill. An adobe style house that had a driveway in the front that did a semi circle back to the streets. That was also to become our racetrack. The street was flat here and his house was less susceptible to an errant fly ball finding window glass. But I caution you, don't overrun third base or you will wind up in the cactus. Ouch. In our gang of friends most of us were between 6 and 10 years old. But we didn't mind if the occasional teenager happened along and wanted to play. Right here I would suffer my my most severe concussion of my younger years. On a balmy fall day I would defiantly tell this older teenager he couldn't pitch worth beans. Hey you can't pitch worth beans I yelled at him. Beans were still pretty cheap back then and it was definitely an insult as I recall. A painful mistake as I would soon find out. I returned to my position at first base ten or so feet from where he was pitching and turned around....blam....the baseball struck my right eye knocking me out cold. He threw a regulation MLB baseball square in my eye. A sucker punch to the eye with a baseball. I don't remember his name or much else after except when I came to I was spinning on the ground screaming. The ball had rolled off and down the hill somewhere in the weeds. We searched for it days later but never found it. Over a year later I found a ball in the weeds and the overwhelming feeling that this was the baseball that hit me sent a chills up my spine. I still have that baseball. Forty years I have saved that ball as if it were a home run ball by Hank Aaron. I never think about that day or dwell upon being hit in the eye unless I get the ball out and handle it. But today it sprang up from the abyss of my memories and into consciousness became this story.