Not being a very high draft pick, when sides were chosen to play stick ball, I was in charge of the stick. So it was not unusual in the summer of my 12th year to find me rummaging through backyards in search of mops and brooms that were near death and would welcome decapitation as mercy killings. When I would show up with a new stick I was rewarded by calling balls and strikes, should the games involve realistic baseball conditions. Occasionly I would get to pinch hit. Thus I found myself in a no-win situation, being harassed for striking out or maligned for making bad calls.
In late August as the sun was setting on the summer vacation, the recreational office of the city of Paterson, in a move to shift gangs from the streets to the ball fields, created a city softball league. We never considered ourselves members of a gang nor did we have an organized softball team. Nevertheless we found our neighborhood scheduled to play a team from across the tracks, a section normally off limits to our guys because those kids were said to be hooligans who would pick on stragglers into their territory.
The game was to be played on a Sunday morning at Lafayette oval, their home field. Too embarassed to call the whole thing off, we hastily put together a ragtag team and called ourselves, "Amicis". Bull Horowitz , one of our more learned members came up with name. "It's Latin for friends" he told us. Having little time to argue, we went along with a name sure to instill fear into the opposing team, the "18th Street Raiders."
The Amicis featured the best jocks that could be assembled from a nice, friendly neighborhood where the worst "shonda" (scandal) was Bull walking out of Kay's with a comic book under his coat and the book falling out from under when confronted by old man Kay.
As luck would have it we were one player short on the day of the game, so they all looked at me and I became the starting left fielder, a position deemed least risky to the team's success. My palms immediately began to wet the inside of my borrowed fielder's glove.
You might say the game was decided when the Raiders showed up. As they jumped from a beat up pickup, they looked more like members of a work release gang than a softball team. They were a motley crew, but they had beautiful black and gold team shirts with names like Tony, Wolf, Angelo, Mario, Spider, Turk and Rocco who turned out to be their pitcher. Our team featured Marvin, Marty, Seymour, Worm, Harry, Squirrel, Burton, Scaz. Sidney, Stewie and me Alvin. However in my neighborhood I was known as Ted, as in Ted Williams my idol. This was a blessing since Alvin was then a popular name of a chipmunk. Anyway, if you lined us up we looked just like a class that had just come home from Temple.
Our first six batters struck out. They called him "Rocket" because he seemed to have one attached to his arm. We watched as a softball turn into a pea. We soon knew that we were in a laugher. Our Scaz was a pretty good pitcher but he was not having luck getting anyone out. Third inning, the score eleven to nothing and another long fly ball, this one in the area of left field, where you might remember I was standing. The ball was coming my way and I'm thinking "Oy vey, Hampel this is it". First I ran in, then I stumbled back, then to the side. The ball seemed to be drifting. Understand, the surface of this outfield made Mars look like a croquet lawn. "With a little luck I thought, I would disappear into one of those craters". A lot of breaths were held on our sideline. After what seemed like an eternity that nice and friendly ball found its way into my glove. A hugh cheer went up from the spectators.
"But it's not over Hampel". You have to bat. Until my turn our team had just one feeble ground out. Even though my heart was thumping and my hands were clammy, I believe I made an imposing figure at the plate. From the time they started calling me Ted, I worked on developing a formidable batting stance and a smooth swing of the bat, homage to Ted Williams. I might not get a lot of hits but I had a beautiful swing. Behind me their catcher yelled to the Rocket, "Careful, this guy looks like a hitter." I turned and said "Would you say that louder please?" He did and suddenly I'm feeling like the legendary hitter I was named after. I swung at the next pitch and lofted a lazy fly ball into short left field. The shortstop drifted out: the left fielder came running in. And I'm standing there in a trance hearing "run, run, run, what are you standing there for?" Before I could reach first, anyone else would have been on third, the left fielder,running as though he was on fire, made a spectacular shoe string catch.
The only member of the Amicis to hit a ball out of the infield, I was greeted as a hero with much applause and high fives. So what if we lost 21-0, So what if Rocket had 16 strikeouts. So what if our five pitchers gave up a dozen hits and almost as many walks. A miraculous catch , miraculous for me, routine for anyone else, robbed of the only hit we could muster, I reached the acme of my athletic career, my fifteen minutes of fame even though it came in a losing cause.
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