My “Field of Dreams”

“The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game; it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again.”Terence Mann to Ray Kinsella in “Field of Dreams”

Spring = Baseball

It is February but my thoughts are of spring, green grass, and the sound of the bat hitting the ball. With those pleasant thoughts, let’s talk baseball.

My connection with baseball started in Braidwood with my Walker Street house, located within 90 feet of my town’s “field of dreams.” From the age of 5, I chased foul balls that would roll into our yard off the bats of the high school or town team’s bats, retrieving only those balls that escaped both my eyes and others, only to be found later hidden among the weeds and grape vines in our yard.  

By the age of ten, I was involved in pick-up games with kids from the area, gradually evolving to a loosely organized 12-year-old team and then to the town’s first 13-14 “pony league” team.  

Baseball in a small town like Braidwood in the 1950’s was a boy’s game.  We thought that girls could never play because they threw funny and liked to do other things.  My first involvement in organized sports, however, unpredictably involved a female. When I was thirteen, Braidwood started its first Pony League team which competed with three other teams located four miles away in Wilmington. For whatever reason, no man in town was available to organize and coach our team, so one of the mothers volunteered to do the job.  

Mary Bennett: a Legend

Mary Bennett became the first female Pony League coach in the country.  We saw her only in slacks, which was highly unusual for women at that time. She hit fungoes and knew the game pretty well. I can remember her getting upset only once, when teammate Pete Cinotto took a bathroom break in the outfield during a practice.

Mary’s son, Larry, and Danny Turner were our starting pitchers and Barney Faletti was the catcher. Other players included Bobby Poppleton, Pete Cinotto, Richard Bone, Marty Koslowski, Dan Chinski, Benny Kessler, and me at first base.  Mary’s biggest contribution?  She gave us the chance to play organized baseball when no man would step up.  She also demonstrated to a group of boys that a female could be involved in baseball. Braidwood, Illinois was ahead of the times!

Watching the Older Guys

Watching the older men play their Sunday games next door further absorbed me and inspired future baseball aspirations. I especially enjoyed watching the town team consisting of Tommy Bergera, Jim and Hike Touvelle, Eddie Begler, Albert Cherry, “Beebe” Mandat, John “Mac” McFarland, Carl and Teddy Adams, Carl Edmundson, Bob Caise, and Marty Corn.  There was also an “old timer’s game” when Tofie, Jimmy, and Freddie Nahas played against the Coal City “old timers.”  When I turned 15, I joined the men’s town team, playing on Sundays against neighboring towns Essex, South Wilmington, Wilmington, Coal City, and Minooka. 

But it was major league baseball that gave me a special entrée to the national scene, getting me out of my provincial setting.  A neighbor, Joe Dahl, was a New York Yankee fan who introduced me to a team that would remain with me as a favorite.  White Sox and Cub fans were all around, but the Yankees, as Joe explained, were “winners” and they had young superstars like Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra about whom I could brag.

My mother chose to be a Cubs fan because our black and white TV made that team available to us every game day on WGN.  Her favorite player was outfielder Hank Sauer, a star only in the myopic eyes of Cub fans.  She liked him because he hit homers and was not a very handsome man. (?) I never understood why she felt that way.

School and Baseball Cards

Grades one and two were in Braidwood’s East side school, about 10 blocks from Our Walker St. house. The method of transporting my six-year-old body from home to school was either by our family car or by my little legs. Starting with grade three, however, I was enrolled at St. Rose Grade School in Wilmington, four miles from my house but probably fifteen miles by a circuitous bus route that took us through Braidwood and then Coal City and Wilmington.

Although riding in a bus for those six years of grade school and then four more years in high school was considered compulsory bondage for its youthful occupants, it also was a social event.  It was on a bus where I encountered my first baseball card collecting friend, Walter Dondanville, who further fueled my baseball passion.

I guess I was about 11 years old at the time Walt already had a collection of 1951 Topps baseball cards. Inspired by Walt, I started purchasing packs of the bubblegum cards and traded liberally with the other kids at school and in town. Card collecting and trading continued most notably with Jesse Field and Judy Trofinchuck, both diehard White Sox fans. Being a Yankee fan, I found that trading cards with Jesse and Judy to be mutually beneficial. I would gladly exchange my White Sox cards for their Yankee cards.

I bought my packages of Topps cards at Floyd Nielsen’s Confectionary, the local store in Braidwood. I still have memories of the smell and taste of the gum as I assessed my latest batch of cards which sold for five or ten cents. I never put these new cards in the back pocket, but always in my shirt pocket to avoid bending. Unlike stories I heard, I knew of no kids who put their cards in the spokes of their bicycles.

I guess I quit buying baseball cards in my junior year of high school. I was busy traveling back and forth from Braidwood to Joliet Catholic, playing in the band, working on the yearbook, writing for the student newspaper, and playing baseball. These were busy years, especially between 1956 and 1958. I also worked summers driving a truck and playing more baseball, so card collecting was not a priority.

Mom: the Hero

Fortunately, my mother wasn’t like 97% of other mothers who threw out their sons’ card collections. Mom saved a piece of her son’s childhood (and her canonization) by guarding my cardboard fantasies in her closet. I bet Jessie’s mother did the same.