Kes: Every Kid Dreamed of Being Him

He wasn’t a big guy, known more for his glove than his bat; although his 2,000 plus major league hits indicated he could bring some wood to the plate. He turned double plays at second base like Rembrandt painted portraits.

He has eight Gold Gloves to his credit. He never took a day off, and his seven-time selection to the All-Star Team is testimony that he was more than just a defensive specialist.   

He spent his entire 17-year career with the Pittsburgh Pirates. I can see that big number 9 on the back of his sleeveless home jersey like it was yesterday. I applauded him more times than you could ever imagine. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2001.

But none of that is what made him special….

William Stanley Mazeroski died this past week. The news reported that he was 89 years old. I don’t believe that! Bill Mazeroski will forever be 24, racing around the bases in the most historic moment ever at Forbes Field. The date was October 13, 1960.

The New York Yankees and Pirates had split the first six games of the World Series. The seventh game was played on a Thursday afternoon. I begged a couple of junior high teachers to let me out of class to go to the auditorium and watch the small screen TV that the school would set up on special occasions.

(It was this same TV our entire student body was glued to three years later, on November 22, 1963.)

The Yanks, as always, were the heavy favorites. The final game swayed back and forth. It was tied 9-9 when Mazeroski led off the bottom of the ninth inning. He didn’t waste any time. He hit the second pitch Raph Terry threw just slightly left of the 406-foot sign, and well over the 12-foot-high left field wall.

There was nothing cheap about this World Series ending homerun! I could hear Mel Allen describing the action. And I watched the dejected shoulders of the Yankee left fielder, Yogi Berra, sag as we all realized it was over.

Wow! Was all I could think of. Wow!

Real baseball people will tell you from the depths of their hearts, it is the most dramatic moment ever in the history of baseball….

But it stretches way deeper than even that. It is the only walk-off homerun ever hit in the seventh game of the World Series.  

And that brings millions of young people from all walks of life into this picture. Kids from Bangor, Maine, to Walla Walla, Washington, have, for years, stood in backyards, never ending fields of clover, cow pastures, beside railroad tracks, vacant lots, small makeshift baseball diamonds of every description, and anywhere else they could toss a ball up in the air and smack it with a bat, stick, or broom handle…in hopes of living that dream Bill Mazeroski showed them was possible.

The most memorable words in Ernest Thayer’s poem are not, “mighty Casey has struck out.” It is the amazing life breathing possibilities, “The rest clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast.”

I know young people who were born on the wrong side of the tracks, the back side of nowhere, the outskirts of Osage County, and way out at the end of Stonewall Street. The pace of life was a tad past stopped. We fought inaction, tedium, boredom, monotony, and each other.

The one respite, or more correctly, the escape, we had in life was baseball. We played it with reckless abandon in every shape, form, fashion, and way that we could muster up. Sometimes it was choosing up sides and playing all day. We played pitch, rolling at the bat, throwing to a spot…we sat on the porch and juggled baseballs.

When we didn’t have another soul to pitch with, we’d bounce the ball off the side of the house. The game had to go on! We’d be our own pitcher, hitter, fielder, umpire, and we’d have ghost runners on every base. The game always came down to the bottom of the ninth inning. In the seventh game of the World Series.

We always hit the game winning homerun…in our minds. And, our hearts.

You may not think this much of a big deal. But it was our moment to be someone. I can still hear the roar of the crowds….

I had college baseball teammates who followed this same path. Books have been written about us, “Boys of Summer.” I don’t know why we haven’t started a club to keep track of all of us.   

I met Bill Mazeroski once. His son, Darren, was the baseball coach at Gulf Coast and his dad was at the game. I thanked him, and he cordially nodded his understanding. He’d obviously known many like me, and felt the connection.

It would have sounded like bragging, so I didn’t mention it, but I could have told Mr. Mazeroski I have hit a million seventh game, bottom of the ninth, game winning World Series homeruns…just like him!

Respectfully,
Kes
kesley45@aol.com