My Footpath to Braidwood Baseball 

“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.”

Langston Hughes

My path to baseball may have been worlds apart from the early experiences of my future teammates in high school and college. Kids in Joliet and other cities might have specially designed fields with outfield fences, leagues with finely organized structures, and baseball savvy coaches. My Braidwood boyhood pals and I had none of this.

My footpath was literal and not symbolic. I could run or walk 90 feet from my home to first base of the town’s only baseball field, the home field for the high school and semipro teams. Reed-Custer High School and the “Braidwood Merchants” summer town team competed with visitors from the surrounding area on a regular schedule, while providing a youngster like me with all the elements of the game.

Observing and theorizing about the intricacies of baseball represent a shallow shell for the realities of playing the game. Getting on the field and choosing sides among other kids approximately my age would be the true test for becoming a baseball player. I was the lucky one who could wait for bicycles arriving loaded with kids, gloves, and an occasional bat. 

And they bicycled down Walker Street, jean clad and gym shoes, gloves draped over the handlebars: Barney, Mike, Buddy, Danny, Richard, Pete, Louie, and Eddie.

Game balls came from a stockpile of unfound foul balls hidden in our grapevines from previous high school and semipro games and broken bats were gifts after those games. We had it all: players, bats, gloves, and balls. Umpires were supplied by the fielding team’s catcher, pitcher’s hands were out, right field was out. The sun is shining and no adult telling us what to do. Four guys on a team: perfect.

Until I was 13, this would be the foundation for playing the game. 

A New House, a New Location

My family had the addition of a baby brother in 1949 and the little house of 800 square feet was no longer adequate. Mom and dad took the gigantic risk of buying a house on the East side of the tracks (for $8,500) and my trips to the field were on my bike. 

Fortunately, the new residents of our old house included a baseball player and a mother who had played baseball in her younger days. I was now 13 and a half years old, and Pony Baseball had come into existence (1951). Braidwood and Wilmington joined together to form a 4-team Pony League and we now needed a coach.

When no men stepped forward, the new mom resident, Mary Bennett, volunteered becoming the first female Pony coach in the country. None of us had previously played organized baseball but in 1954 we were on our way.

The next year, I was too old to play Pony Baseball and was accepted on the Braidwood town team as a rookie. Our pitcher, Russ Nielsen, and one outfielder, John McFarlan, travelled to Braidwood for Tuesday/Thursday practices and Sunday games. Two years later, Russ formed his own Joliet team, a team that joined the Coal Valley League. (Braidwood, Essex, South Wilmington, Wilmington, Coal City, and Minooka.) Russ asked me to be on the new team.

As a junior at Joliet Catholic, I made the baseball team as its first baseman. I performed well enough to catch Lewis College’s coach Gordie Gillespie’s eye and landed a small scholarship where I played for four years as a starter.

I never tired of playing, coaching, and watching baseball. I was never “over coached” or felt the pressure that is placed on kids who now are on “travelling teams” and constantly supervised. And I fully appreciate the Braidwood baseball experience that was afforded to me.

The footpath from home to first base continued through Joliet to the greater outside world but my Braidwood dreams recur on a their nightly home run schedule.