Go Phillies: This one's for Ron

I admit to being a lifelong Phillies fan through thick and thin, mostly thin. Once again we are having a rare moment, the Phillies heading for the world series.

Since Retired in Delaware talked about his fanship and how he loved the Phillies in the 1950s, perhaps he would enjoy these exclusive photos of the 1958 Phillies. The pictures were taken by my wife and her friends, Mary Lou and Lynn when they were teenagers.

On the left is my boyhood hero, Richie Ashburn. My two favorite players of that time, Ashburn and Stan Musiel of the St. Louis Cardinals.  I became a fan of Musiel because my grandfather gave me a Stan Musiel model baseball bat with I was six. But Ashburn was my number one favorite (also his jersey number) because he was on the nearest local team and he played center field.

I admired Ashburn (seen again on the right). He was a fast base runner, a great fielder and a great hitter, but not a power guy. He didn't hit many home runs, but he did win a couple batting titles and retired with an above .300 average.  He started out as a catcher.

I first began playing baseball as a catcher, too, only because my grandfather had also given me a catcher's mask.  When I got older, most pickup games didn't really use a catcher. You never had enough guys to field a full team.  In late grade school, I was a pitcher, until one day I caught a line drive in my solar plexus. Suddenly the outfield looked like a good position to play.  I was a contact hitter who seldom struck out. I struck out a couple times and got laughed at and swore I wouldn't strike out again. I probably did occasionally after that, but not very often.  I wasn't a home run hitter either. I liked to make acrobatic catches in the outfield in hard ball. I could catch a hard ball well, but for some strange reason couldn't for the life of me catch softballs. Even as an adult playing in a softball league, I could hit, but even with a glove, had trouble catching a softball.

This was not a Phillies player on the left. This was jack Whitaker in 1958, a than local sportscaster on TV. He went on to bigger and better things.

Harvey Haddox was a pitcher, I believe the Phillies got from the Pirates. he was a fan favorite. i always liked him. he was a tough competitor with some bad luck streaks. If I remember correctly, he pitched twelve innings of perfect ball only to lose by one to nothing.

Ed Bouchee was doing pretty well with the Phillies, but then he got arrested for exposing himself to some girls and disappeared from the game.

I'm glad he kept zipped up when my wife and her friends took these photos.

Curt Simmons, the left-handed counterpart to the great Robin Roberts in the 'fifties.

They were a pretty good one-two punch for awhile.

Jack Meyer, another Phillies pitcher. Phillies seemed to have pitchers named Meyer.

Bob Bowman, another of the pitchers.

Andy Seminick was a long time catcher through the fifties for the Phils. he caught in the 1950 World Series.

Rip Repulsky, one of the great flakes of the game and pitcher Don Caldwell.

Another pitcher, Seth Morehead.

I guess the girls weren't able to get Del Ennis, Granny Hammer or Puddin'head Willie Jones to pose.

Anyway, now we have a brand new team to root for and hopefully the 2008 World series won't go the same way as the 1950 Series did for the Phillies. They lost that one to the Yankees in four straight.  I still loved the 'fifty Phillies anyway.

Stranger In a Familiar land

The Kid and lived in town six months short of six years. It was all he knew or remembered at age six. Six months, six years, age six, 666, the Beast’s number, perhaps that was a sign.

He had gone to a private kindergarten in town, twice. He had started first grade at the East Ward Elementary School, right across the street from where he lived. There was no trouble there; he got along with his classmates and with Mrs. Warren, the hair-pulling disciplinarian. She never pulled his hair because he never misbehaved. He was a good reader and although Mrs. Warren made a point of showing that skill off, his classmates didn’t seem to resent it.

He had a lot of friends in the class; he had a lot of friends, period. They were all from his neighborhood. You didn’t wander far at age six. He never considered where these friends came from and he assumed they would always be companions as he grew. There was Tim and Billy, Denny and Gary, there were two Bobbys, there was Sandi and Iva and Toni and Judy, and others.

Although his father was away to war, he never felt loneliness. He lived with his mother and her parents and he had all those friends.

And then the war ended and his dad came home and moved The Kid out of town to a place between a swamp and a cow pasture. There it was lonely. It was void of others and isolated. His dad became a long-haul trucker and was home not much more than when he was in the Navy. The kid lived alone with his mother and his imagination. It may have been only two years, but perhaps two years that affected the remainder of his life.

After two years they moved back to town, back to the same house on the same street and back to East Ward School. It was a familiar land populated by familiar faces. What a shock when The Kid discovered he was a stranger there.

To be shunned, ignored and even bullied by those he had once played with was a new experience. It was hard to understand why his friends had morphed into antagonists in such a short time. True, some hadn’t become hostiles; they had simply moved elsewhere and disappeared from his world. Billy was in another town and Gary was on the West Ward side, which may as well been the dark-side of the moon, but most of the others remained. Iva was still his friend and playmate, but Iva was a girl. Eight-year-old boys have a hard time accepting a girl as there best friend.

In a way, this lack of friends was not a problem to The Kid. After two years of isolation he had come to be comfortable alone. He knew how to entertain himself, how to fill the hours without compatriots. Still, even a loner occasionally feels the need to talk with someone who is a peer.

The question for The Kid was how to make a friend. Those who had once been were more often now tormentors, laughing at his clothes, jeering at his lack of team sport experience, even picking on his hat.

In those days Philadelphia had two baseball teams. The Kid wore a Philadelphia Athletics cap, blue with an A on the front. The A’s had once been a great team led by the legendary manager-owner, Connie Mack. But the Kid moved back to town in 1950 and the A’s had fallen on tough times, while the Phillies were about to have a season that would take them to only their second World Series in their history.

So the taunting revolved around a silly cap. “Why ya wearing that hat? Don’tcha know the A’s stink? Why ain’tcha wearin’ a Phillie’s hat?”

The Kid begged his mother for a Phillies hat and he tossed away the blue cap for a red one, but nothing changed, they found a new target for teasing. It was an interesting insight into human nature. If you are the object of the ruling class’ scorn, you do not bend to appease them, for there is no appeasing them. What they tell you is the reason for their animosity toward you is only a convenient excuse. If you remove it, they only find another excuse and those excuses are only subterfuge to justify themselves. It is the deceits they play upon themselves to hide their insecurities and their own black hearts.

The Kid knew whatever he did, they were not going to let him play in their Reindeer games, and when they were forced to by the interference from adult authority, then The Kid would be chosen near the end of the choosing. So the ones to watch were those others also chosen near the end for he knew friends wouldn’t come from the in-crowd, but from his fellow outcasts.

What The Kid didn’t realize was a room back in the house in the swamp held the key to unlocking the door to his best friend to be.