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 19th
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!”
