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Baseball Dreams

Mitchell Waldman

    Coach Kravitz liked to win. At all costs, at any cost. Which didn’t make him the greatest little league coach.
    I was twelve years old. My heroes were Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Ron Santo, Ken Holtzman, and the rest of the Cubs who’d earned the name Lovable Losers.
    That year I was playing for the Fergus Ford team, with Coach Kravitz. It was a “Major League” team in the Skokie Indians Little League System. The year before I’d played in the “Minor Leagues” for Public Pontiac. We’d done pretty well. I liked keeping statistics for the Cubs players and for myself. By my records I batted well over. 400 that year. It was a good year. All the kids had fun and we actually won our league’s championship.
     But that was the Minors and now I was in the Majors.
    The star of the Fergus team was Jack Kravitz, the coach’s son, who played all game every game. He played third base and was pretty good, could hit, field, throw and ran faster than anyone else on the team.
    I’d dropped a ball in right field in our very first game, lost it in the sun, but heard the cries of “Oh no!” while I chased the ball down and hurled it back into the infield as one, then two runners on the opposing team crossed home plate to take the lead.
    So, I was left on the bench after that most games until we were ahead and the coach could count on me not to blow the game.
    I was officially batting .000 that year which, if you know baseball, means I wasn’t hitting anything. Not that I had much of a chance, hardly ever getting to play.
    So, once in a while I’d get to play, but most of the time I was on the bench watching, along with Bobby Bluestone, Keith Feinstein, and Marv Kettleman, while the regulars got their practice and tried to get the lead.
    When I did get in, the fear of the ball coming my way out in right field was always there, the shadow of that one dropped ball weighing like a storm cloud over my head.
    With all that competitiveness going on, Benny, Keith, Marv and I would have a good time on the bench, talking about school, girls, TV shows, just chatting away while we watched the action like we were fans at Wrigley Field. Sometimes I almost felt like I should be getting a hot dog or popcorn or something from a vendor, but then I remembered where I was, watching from the bench while Jack circled the bases again after a long hit over the left fielder’s head.
    One day gangly Benny was chewing his gum, blowing bubbles, Keith, with his bowl-cut dark hair, was staring at his mitt, pounding it with his fist over and over to work the pocket in given how little chance he’d had to play that year, and Marv, big, bloated, but happy Marv, was making lewd jokes, or at least what we thought were lewd jokes – hell, we were twelve-year-olds, what did we know? – when all of the sudden Coach Kravitz’s voice called out “Youngman!” I just looked up as if coming out of a daze, like I forgot what my name was.
    “Youngman! Come on, hustle up! Grab a bat!”
    It was the sixth inning in a seven inning game, our team ahead 6-4 and I was going to get a chance to bat. I jumped up, grabbed a stick (yeah, we were cool that way, calling bats “sticks”!) and ran to the plate, kicking at the sand like I’d seen the pros do, the catcher and the teenage ump behind me. I stepped back, took a couple practice swings, then moved into the box, doing a couple half swings, then cocked the bat in behind my ear, the way I’d seen Ernie and Billy do it, and stared out at the pitcher. It was fourteen-year-old Sonny Lambert, the toughest pitcher in the league, in his last year of eligibility. He looked about seven feet tall, thin and lanky, and with an arm that looked four feet long.
    Sonny wound up and threw the first pitch, and before I could react the ump cried out “Stee-rike!”
    When the second pitch came, I don’t even think I saw it it went by so fast. “Stee-rike two!” the pimple-faced ump cried out.
    “God...Gol-darnit, Youngman!” Coach Kravitz yelled out. “Swing the darn bat!”
    I took a breath and got myself ready, cocking the bat, tightening my stance, getting my feet just right in the sand, waiting, waiting while Sonny took his gyrating wind up and delivered the next pitch which looked like it was way outside, but then, at the last minute, hooked back in fast and hit me with a stinging heat on my right thigh.
    “Take first,” the ump said, pointing down the white line.
    There was a cry from the opposing team – the Riley Pharmacy team’s coach yelling out, “C’mon, ump, he didn’t even try to get out of the way!”
    I stood in front of the plate, not moving. It had been my first curve ball and I hadn’t seen it coming. It had baffled the hell out of me, curling in like it had, moving from one side of the plate to the other. I looked from their coach to Coach Kravitz on the bench, who waved at me to head for first.
    I dropped my bat, and jogged down the line, not even caring about the pain in my thigh, suddenly jubilant, smiling, hearing Benny and guys cheering for me, “Thattaboy Marty, thatabboy!” jogging with the widest smile planted on my face. Then standing on the base, the first baseman standing in front of me, spitting down into the infield sand, pounding his glove, while I stared across to my next challenge—second base—and the next batter, the pitcher Freddy Fleishman, stepped up to bat.
    But then I heard Kravitz call “Time, ump, time!” and the ump waved his arms over his head.
    Next thing I knew Robby Schneider, one of the regulars, who had sat out most of the game with an ankle injury, was jogging down to first. I was wondering what was going on. Then Schneider stood next to me, tapped me hard on the shoulder and said, “Back to the bench, nerd. Coach wants me to run for you.”
    My brief flash of euphoria crashed like a building hit with a wrecking ball. The pain in my leg returned suddenly, and I bent down, staring at my sneakers, stepped off the bag and trudged back to the bench, a zombie, as play resumed.
    I took my seat next to Benny, who said “Bad luck, Marty, too bad,” and slapped me on the back.
    I couldn’t even watch the game anymore. I felt like I wanted to cry, stared at the dirt beneath me, but held back the tears, sucked them back in.
    We lost the game the next inning on a long home run by Sonny Lambert with two men on.
    Afterward, my stepdad drove me home in silence, until he broke it, saying what he thought was encouraging: “Well, at least you got on base this time.” Thanks, I wanted to say, that helps...not! But I didn’t. We didn’t talk back to our parents like that back then. I just sat there and stewed while the sites of Skokie’s parks, schools, shops, and fast food spots flew by outside the car window.
    The next game I sat next to Benny and the guys and watched as Jack Kravitz, in a 1-0 game got thrown out at home plate in the seventh inning. We watched as Coach Kravitz jumped up screaming, and charging the teenage ump, calling him an imbecile, a fat lousy imbecile, while the chubby boy stood there, taking off his mask, arms crooked at his sides like real umps did, and Kravitz jumped on him, and two fell and wrestled on the grass behind home plate, while Benny and I looked at each other, bewildered.
    The next day we learned that Coach Kravitz had been banned from coaching anymore and wouldn’t be returning. His son, Jack, quit the team too.
    The rest of the year Benny, Keith, Marv and I got to play more than just an inning a game, under assistant coach, now the new coach Jimmy Brown. I even got a couple hits. We didn’t win the league championship, but it was good to play again. Even as I swung and missed and the ump yelled “Strike three!,” then patted me on the shoulder and said “Don’t worry, kid, you’ll get ‘em next time,” and I thanked him, then walked back to the bench, thinking of Ernie, Billy, Ron, and Ken, a smile on my face as I imagined them standing there beside the ump, nodding at me with encouragement.

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