Wichita Braves

Each year in March, as Spring Training begins, my mind returns to my early teen years as a sometime pitcher and sometime outfielder and mostly bench-warmer on my Little League team, the Braves. Our team was fashioned on the Milwaukee Braves (Hank Aaron, Warren Spahn, Eddie Matthews) and to a lesser extent on the Wichita Braves, Milwaukee’s single-A affiliate at the time, our uniforms, not our abilities, being the sole hint at any connection. The fact that our coach owned a Dairy Queen where we would go for free ice cream after every game, win or lose, added to our prestige in the league.

I was not by far the best player on the team. That would have been Will Robinson, David Goodpasture, Ronnie Kaiser, or the coach’s son, Mike Lindley. But I wasn’t the worst, either. (That probably would have been my cousin, Allen, who when he was in a game was consigned to right field where he spent most of his time picking either dandelions or his nose. He’s now the Economic Development Director for a medium-sized city in the Midwest, dispelling any idea that performance in Little League is a predictor of future success. Last I heard, Ronnie Kaiser was dealing blackjack in Vegas.)

The only lasting memory I have of playing for the Braves was a game in which I fouled off 12 pitches against Benny Banta of the Yankees before grounding out to second base for the ninth and final out, called because we were behind by more than 10 runs after our bat in the third inning (it’s called the “mercy rule,” sometimes the more accurate “slaughter rule”). This at-bat was actually the highlight of my Little League career. The Yankees were the perennial champions of our league (as the major league Yankees most often were as well back then). They rarely, if ever, lost. And Benny Banta was by far the best pitcher – the best player – in the league, the size of most of the coaches, a power hitter, and a strikeout pitcher with a fastball, curve, and slider, when most of us other pitchers were just glad if we could fling it somewhere near the plate without hitting the batter or throwing it over the backstop (as I once actually did).

Our coach chose me to pitch this particular game, which was why (among other reasons) I was batting ninth. “Fat chance” wasn’t a concept I was familiar with then, but I’m sure our coach was. The game went pretty much as every parent in the stands and player on the benches could have foreseen: The Yankees’ sides of the innings would last perhaps an hour, my tossing up pitches that they would either take for eventual walks or if I somehow got a pitch anywhere near the plate they would smack to one of my teammates for an error or just knock it neatly over the fence. Our sides of the innings were brief affairs, mostly Benny Banta hurling three-pitch strikeouts, occasionally a weak pop-up or maybe an infield groundout. When I came up to bat in the bottom of the third, it was Yankees 10+, Braves 0, there were two outs, Benny Banta was pitching (another) perfect game, and there wasn’t a person in attendance (myself included) who thought I would do anything except strikeout, finally ending the game. But to everyone’s surprise (and I suppose some parents’ annoyance), I began swinging at everything Benny Banta gave me, thinking that he isn’t going throw anything but a strike, and I successfully (today they call it, positively, “extending the at-bat”) was able to foul off 12 pitches. I could hear encouragement coming from my father in the stands and my coach and teammates on the bench, as if somehow fouling off all these pitches was a sign that we were somehow going to make up the 10+ runs that we were behind. But of course that wasn’t to be. I did, however, connect with a pitch, and the ball rolled (in my memory it’s a hot grounder) to second base, and I was thrown out to mercifully end the game (or slaughter).

But I’d fouled off 12 pitches from Benny Banta. And I’d grounded out, not struck out. And not for that game, but at least for that at-bat, I’d been successful. That’s one of the things I like about baseball, and maybe it’s this experience that instilled the idea in me: Success is not just in winning. It can come in small, tiny, inconsequential moments, moments when the context of the game allows for success, even if personal and fleeting