Out Hitting Ty & Ted

By Garry Friesen February 28th, 2010

Family and Friends

I just finished 18 hours of Ken Burns’s “Baseball.”  It brought back baseball memories.   The most vivid were going years to watch the fast pitch softball team “The King and His Court” who played with four men against nine-man teams.  I remember how delirious I was after getting my first hit in the 13-15 year city league.  I was so delirious that I forgot everything and the pitcher picked me off first base.  I remember taking my glove as a young boy to the center field bleachers in Tiger stadium hoping to catch a homerun from Mickey Mantle.  He hit two home runs.  One 15 feet to my right and one 15 feet to my left.  My glove was empty but my eyes were big.  I remember going to the ’69 Tiger season opener with Denny McClain (31 wins in 1968) on the mound.   A race riot almost broke out in center field and I forgot about baseball and was cheering for a policeman who was trying to stop a racial fight between two fans in front of me.  I remember finally starting to hit in the city league (4 for 9 to start the season). Then I went to a Christian camp and God got a hold of my heart.  I stayed the whole summer.  I was doing something eternal and had the satisfaction of ending my career batting over 440, something even Ty Cobb and Ted Williams failed to do.

G

Next Aslan’s How Tour Marach 6, 2010 (11 am).
Sign up at: gfriesen@multnomah.edu

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 28th, 2010 at 8:15 pm and is filed under Fortnightly. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.