“It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them,” Mark Twain once said.
Sure, easy for him to say: A man known the world over, credited as being America’s greatest writer. That’s like Sylvester Stallone or The Rock telling us that muscles aren’t everything. Swill like that is hard to swallow when you’re one of the huddled masses yearning to be honored for something. Anything.
And with baseball season just starting to stretch its legs once again, I can’t help but think back to that ballpark credit denied to me for all these many, many years.
It was late in the game, the bottom of the twenty-second or so, and the setting sun dictated that it would be the last inning. The school board dictated that it would be the last softball game of the summer, with school starting the next day. The old Clincher was soft and starting to unravel anyway.
We had battled back from far behind to tie the game, which was for the championship of either the solar system or the galaxy. I forget which. Bases were loaded and I was up.
Suddenly, fame stared me in the face.
“C’mon, kid,” someone yelled, because I was the youngest player on the field, playing with my brother and his friends, all of them three years or so older than I was. “A hit wins the game!”
Actually, with only one out and the bags juiced, almost anything would win the game—a hit, an error, a deep fly ball, even a halfway decent ground ball. But an unwritten code stated that, though any of them might technically win the game, only a hit would win with honor.
And of all hits, a walk-off grand-slam game-winning home run in the last inning of the last game of the summer to win the championship of the universe, of course, carried the most honor.
It was the stuff that dreams are made of, without question the high point of my life, perhaps even the pivotal moment separating a life of quiet desperation from a brilliant career as a professional softball player, if there was such a thing.
But there was one problem: I had never hit a homer. Ever. Not even in batting practice. Still, there was always a first time, and a first homer that was also a grand-slam in the bottom of the last inning to win the final game was…. The thought was too heady even to consider.
The pitcher was ready. The baserunners chattered, feinting down the line and scrambling back. I jammed an extra chunk of Bazooka gum into my cheek (Nellie Fox), shot the pitcher a scowl of disdain (Moose Moryn), and stepped to the plate, bat cocked, hands held high, fingers nervously caressing the handle (Ernie Banks).
The pitch was perfect, right in my wheelhouse, and I sent it sailing deep into left, past the grasping elm branches that reached over the third base line to turn budding homers into dead balls. Higher, higher it sailed, and deeper.
It was deep enough, but Bob Zumstein was playing left field, and he, too, was back, past the white-line “warning track.” His feet were set, one hand behind him measuring the distance to the chain-link left-field wall, eyes steeled upward.
He gathered himself, leaped high, and stretched his long arms up, over the fence top.
Later, as we walked home sipping Kayo chocolate milk from the Candy Store, they would moan that it was a cheap way to win a ball game, hitting a sacrifice fly with one out and bases loaded. We would argue that sacrifice flies were part of the game, and that all smart teams used them, and that a win was a win… but we were secretly shamed.
Even in the eyes of my teammates, my moment of honor had fled.
I suppose Mark Twain would argue that I still deserve credit for hitting the ball so hard — the longest ball of my life, and with a dead clincher to boot. That kind of thing is easy to say for a man who hit grand slams all the time. I think Tom Sawyer would understand my shame, and Huck, but not Mark Twain.
It’s like your parents telling you that you did a real nice job of cleaning your room or mowing the lawn, and that you deserve a piece of cake — then not giving you one.
So for all of you out there who were denied the full credit due for some almost-noteworthy thing you did, here it is:
Congratulations for that in your heart which you know deserves praise.
Thank you for that in your heart which you know deserves gratitude.
Shame on you for all those other things.
TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the Sardines.” Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com.
