Sunday, 31 March
 |
| Justin Slays His Dragon |
Good Morning Justin…
It’s Spring and I’m beginning to think baseball, once
again. Today I was thinking all the way
back to the 1960 World Series. Fifty
years ago these games were played in the daytime. The Fall Classic brought work to a
standstill, at least at our school. I
was in the sixth grade and a television was wheeled into the classroom for us
to watch. It was game seven with the
score tied at nine going into the bottom of the ninth. The Pittsburgh Pirates were coming to bat
against the perennial favorites, the hated New York Yankees. The Bronx Bombers was a powerhouse team of
all-stars, including Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Yogi Berra. Yankee fans were so accustomed to being
reigning world champions that they looked upon winning as their birthright. The fact that the lowly Pirates managed to
fight their way to this tie in game seven went way beyond anyone’s expectation
of them. They were a team of no
names. You’d gladly trade most any Pirate
baseball card for most anyone, somewhere else.
They were a bunch of guys reserved for the bottom of most any rubber
band wrapped deck of bubblegum cards. From
this depth of anonymity was first to bat, Bill Mazeroski. Who the heck is Mazeroski? Looking ahead in the line up I came to
realize it wouldn't get any better than this. We’re doomed. Of course, the name
Bill Mazeroski has been forever burned into my memory because of what happened
next. Mazeroski solidly cracks his pitch
over the left field wall for a walk off, series winning home run. The classroom broke out in a pandemonium of
cheers and of chairs being knocked over as boys erupted from their carefully
assigned seats. There was no instant
replay in those days but we could savor the stunned looks of the ancient Casey
Stengel and his crew of pin-stripped matinee idols. Time to hang up the cleats, pick up your
final paycheck as you leave the building, and go into cold storage until the first
thaw of Spring training come next year.
I sincerely felt at the time that this historic World Series
moment was one of the greatest of my short life. It would be decades before I would feel its
equal in sports. Maybe I never
have.
One guaranteed annual thrill for me came in June with the
last day of school and three full months of summer vacation ahead of me. That was twelve weeks where every Wednesday
was the equal of a Saturday and Sunday night didn’t mean homework to be done in
time for school the following Monday morning.
It was 84 days where you could assume each having 16 waking hours and being
able to stay up as late as I pleased most every night. That comes to 1,344 consecutive conscious
hours uninterrupted by a single classroom lecture on anything from verb
conjugation to a host of algebraic properties to inane poetry on the
metamorphosis of a butterfly. If you
limit yourself to 10 hours of television viewing a week it would take you over
two and a half years to watch 1,344 hours of television. Thinking in these terms you can see why I
felt Summer Vacation was almost forever.
There was no equal to summer. I
was in my natural element.
The final countdown of days before Fall classes resumed was
a time of mind games I played to soften the letdown of returning to regularly
scheduled classes. One week remaining
became the equivalent of Spring Break.
Three days became a weekend with an attached holiday. The final Sunday night was pretty depressing
but, at least, there was no homework due.
I suppose I could say that once I arrived for the first school day I was
heartened by the renewal of friendships with classmates and invigorated by the
challenge of a new academic year. If you
want to believe that, go ahead. It’s
probably a harmless mythology. I will
say, though, that the first day was never as dreadful as I anticipated. Day one always had a certain charming novelty
about it. Even day two might seem
OK. It was the endless days of forced
march learning that followed, quickly turning into weeks, then months. Each hour of each day I tried to go as long
as I possibly could before having to look at the clock. Only seven minutes. It felt easily like twelve. Fortunately there were always girls to
watch. They kept me going. Patty in the forth grade. Roberta in the fifth and sixth. Shirley in the seventh, later Diane, and so
on.
So how has life turned out for me since? I would have to say that I barely crawled across
the finish line at sixty-two and immediately applied for whatever retirement
was due me. I make ends meet. And, indeed, I am again in my natural element. Every Wednesday once more feels like Saturday
and Sunday night has no particular meaning, what so ever.
Love,
Dad
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