Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [61]
Before I could touch third base a mud hole sucked my spikes deep into the ground, and I fell five feet shy of the bag. The catcher retrieved the ball and threw toward the pitcher, who was covering third. The pitcher would have caught that toss had his arm been just six feet longer. Instead, the ball carried so far into the outfield, I recovered my balance, touched third, and scored the game’s go-ahead run on a jarring hook slide that raised a tsunami at home plate. A spectator who also served as a judge for Canadian water sport competitions gave me a 6.4 for time but a 9.2 for form and execution.
When I stood up to run into the dugout, no one could see me for the mud. My uniform blended into the environment. After a few minutes the mud caked, leaving me with all the defensive range of a Frederic Remington statue. I could not catch any balls hit more than an inch or two to either side of me for the rest of the game.
We won that day and quite a few other days, but not nearly enough to satisfy our promoters. When the Legends played hockey, they won 99 percent of their matches. The softball team achieved victory little more than half the time. The promoters thought we could do better and called me in to ask how we could improve the club.
“I know this might sound crazy,” I told them, “but instead of putting hockey players on your softball team, why not try stocking it with baseball players?”
Now there was an idea. The promoters put me in charge and we invited former major leaguers such as Tony Oliva, Rico Carty, Ferguson Jenkins, Willie Wilson, and Rick Miller to join the club. I insisted on retaining Hull. Bobby was a top-notch softball player, and besides, I didn’t want to lose his services until we had that cognac-drinking thing down. Luckily for both us, I am a slow learner.
13
BABES IN THE WOODS
Not all California males grow up longing to be surfer boys. Oh, I do love the ocean, but prick me with a pin and you will discover river water flowing through my veins. Whenever some team I play for visits a town near a river, I make it a point to rise just before dawn to walk alongside its currents. In many places, I arrive so early water from the evening tides still covers the paths alongside the banks. As this water recedes, its continual rise and fall creates the impression that the river breathes. And, of course, it does.
My grandfather Paul Hunt passed on this love for streams. He owned a farm on the Stanislaus tributary of the San Joaquin River near Sacramento, California. Granddad taught me to fish those waters soon after I learned to walk. Most of the time, we used poles, but he also showed me how to improvise when rod and reel were unavailable.
First we filled the bottom of a fishing net with salmon and trout heads. My grandfather would attach a rusted wagon wheel rim to the net to weight it down. We dropped the contraption into the water. A large cork at the top of the net kept its four corners open and suspended so any passing fish could easily enter. Grandfather would have me tie one end of string around the cork. Then he would fashion a miniature lasso out of the other end and loop it around the neck of the empty Clorox jug we floated on the river’s surface as a marker. We would leave the net there unattended and go off to fish at some other spot.
To a crawdad, a succulent crustacean that resembles a midget lobster, few meals are more alluring than a pile of fresh fish heads. When we retrieved our net at the end of the day, we frequently found as many as fifty crawdaddies chowing down on their meal.
My family would enjoy a crawdad boil that night. Mom cooked them in a big pot of water with nothing more to spice