Throwing Up in My Cleats

Throwing Up in My Cleats

Most of us played baseball in the same shoes we wore to play football, or basketball, or volleyball.

Gym shoes.

They were the shoes we wore in gym class, of course, and they were the shoes we played ball in. They were canvas-topped shoes with thick hard rubber soles. They squeaked on the gym floor. If they were new, we got pretty good traction outdoors on the grass and dirt. But our shoes did not stay new for long, and our parents did not buy us new shoes as long as the old ones fit.

I wanted “cleats.” Baseball shoes. Shoes you wore only on the baseball field. The uppers were made of black leather. A set of metal tabs was riveted to the soles. Each tab or cleat protruded a little more than a quarter inch out from the bottom of the sole, enough to “dig in”—to get traction while running.

Some baseball shoes had spikes instead of cleats. They were like short nails coming out of the bottom of the shoe. Compared to cleats, these were considerably more dangerous to the opposing players when you slid into a base to beat a throw from the field. The fear that the runner might slash your calf with his spikes (which would, we were told, lead to gangrene and foot amputation) was sufficient to make most fielders shy away from a tag on the runner, at least enough to give the runner the slight advantage he needed to get a foot on the base before he was tagged.

Our parents did not approve of spikes. So if we had anything, we had cleats.

I don’t remember when Dad bought cleats for me. That lack of memory surprises me now. It was something I coveted, and did not really expect. All I remember is that one day I showed up for a game with my cleats slung over my shoulder, and I sat down and replaced my gym shoes with real baseball shoes. And I remember being disappointed, because none of my teammates noticed.

I had been warned with regard to the care of my cleats. “Don’t walk on the cement pavement with them,” Dad said. (Actually, what he said was, “Don’t walk on the see-ment payment with them.” In Baltimore, the sidewalks (payments) were made from see-ment. (Later, in Junior High School Hygiene class, I could not understand how my sperm would get to my wife’s egg if it were attached to little bits of see-ment.)

Dad told me that walking on the payment would wear the cleats down. So I knew I was expected to take good care of them. But I also knew how good they sounded when I walked on cement. I could hear the click-clack of metal on the pavement. I knew I had my cleats on, and I felt special—a real ballplayer. Never mind about my batting average—I had cleats!

“Click-clack!”

Another part of caring for your cleats was keeping them clean. Dirt would cake up around the base of each cleat, where it attached to the sole of the shoe, and as a result the cleat did not go so far into the ground, and was less effective. So periodically you cleaned the dirt away, usually with a strong twig or a nail as a scraper/digger. And, of course, each time you stepped up to the plate you banged the bat against the side of the shoe to knock the dirt out of the cleats. It was not really very effective, other than to announce, “I’m wearing cleats. I’m a real baseball player!”

So, I was proud of my cleats, and I took good care of them.

Until the Baltimore Playground League Baseball Championship of 1949, when I found another use for my cleats.

We made the City Finals! We were the champions of our local school playground league, in the 12 to 14 year-old division. (We beat the All Saints Church Blue Rockets to get there.) And we were terrified!

The finals were played at Patterson Park. This was on the other side of Baltimore. The Southeast Side. Where the “other” Polish People lived.

Or, as our parents called them, “the Po-locks!”

Po-locks were not popular in Jewish homes in Baltimore in 1949. Lots of us were Polish or Russian Jews whose grandparents remembered the pogroms of Eastern Europe, and especially of 19^th Century Poland. And if we had the temerity to ask our parents why they still hated Po-locks, we were told that most of the Nazi concentration camps of the 1940s had been built on Polish soil.

“You’re playing where?” my mother screamed. “Why do you have to go to the other side of the city to play a ball game? You got a playground down the street.” She called for my father.

All I could say was, “It’s for the champeenship, Mom.”

“Champeen, shmampeen. You’re all nuts!” She turned to my father. “Tell him they’re nuts!”

Of course, our fathers sided with us, and there was no question that we would show up and defend our neighborhood honor. The team we were to play against in the championship (oops, champeenship) game was the Red Shield Boys’ Club.

The Red Shield! We weren’t sure what that was, but it sounded like something from the Crusades! That did not make my mother feel better.

I guess my mother’s fear was contagious. The morning of the big game, I woke up with a nervous stomach. By the time I had finished breakfast I had moved on to nausea. I grabbed my glove and my cap and my cleats and headed down the street to meet my teammates at our home field. Our ride to the game was to be provided by our playground supervisor, Miss Houston. Miss Houston was a student at a local teachers’ college, where she majored in Phys Ed. Her summer job was to organize activities for the kids who met at the playground at PS 69, our neighborhood elementary school. Our team was one of those activities.

The entire team did not fit into her car. But she did get seven of us in. Two in front with her. Four across the back seat. And the smallest one—me—on the floor.

It was about 8:30 in the morning by the time we got started on the drive to the game. Patterson Park was in Highlandtown—another name that brings up fear, like Treblinka. Highlandtown was simply the name of a Baltimore neighborhood, this one on the northeast edge of the Baltimore Harbor. The temperature was already in the 80s and climbing. We had a nine mile ride ahead of us. Seven of us—and Miss Houston.

Me on the floor.

Nauseous.

There was no Beltway, then, that years later ringed the city so that you could get from one side of Baltimore to another in fifteen minutes of continuous, smooth, driving. Worse, there was no smooth driving. Miss Houston’s car, like just about all cars in 1949, had a stick shift. She had not mastered the art of the stick shift.

So it was ride a few blocks. Shift, jerk, speed up. Brake, down-shift, stop. Constant jerking back and forth, at the feet of my teammates.

So it wasn’t my fault when I threw up.

And I was on the floor, so I couldn’t get my head out the window.

Miss Houston’s car was not equipped with vomit bags. I used my shoe, instead. The baseball shoe. With the cleats.

The boys in the back were groaning and shouting—fighting to get their heads out the window for some fresh air. The boys in the front were laughing hysterically. Miss Houston pulled over so that I could get out and empty my shoe, and wipe my mouth on my arm. I got back in the car—took my place on the floor—and we continued to Patterson Park in a mood that was more amusement than hostility. My own mood was embarrassment. I spent the rest of the trip staring at my one dry shoe.

When we got to the park everyone spilled out of the car as fast as they could. Miss Houston asked if I was all right, and I said I was. I walked over to a nearby drinking fountain and washed my shoe as well as I could.

 

Me at the Water Fountain at PS 69

Yes—in the drinking fountain. Kids held their dogs up to the drinking fountains in the parks. No big deal!

I dried the inside of my shoe as best I could, and pulled it—still damp—over my sock. I laced it up and put on the other shoe. When I walked I could hear, just above “click-clack,” another sound: “squeak-squeak.”

I played right field that day, and I no longer remember much of the game. My feet stayed in my shoes. The remainder of breakfast stayed in my stomach.

And we won the game!

“CLICK-CLACK!”