Baseball time no matter the weather

It’s Wednesday noon and the weatherman is about to deliver another Haymaker. I’m thinking baseball, nonetheless, because it’s baseball time of year and it’s against the law not to get excited about it. Well, it should be. Everybody knows that. Anyway . . .

We started every baseball season in the driveway, having a catch. Matt, my late brother, had really fine baseball instincts and ability and, though he was smaller than me, a heck of an arm. We had good fielders’ gloves and an old catchers’ mitt. Nobody knew the origin of the catcher’s mitt. It was just there and we used it. Well, I used it.

There was still snow on the ground when we first took to the driveway to toss the ball. We’d warm up for a while and pretty soon we’d remove our flannel shirts; then I’d get out the catcher’s mitt and he’d start pitching. The driveway was gravel covered with small stones (pea-gravel?). Matt, who would grow to be 6-3, was not very big at that time, when we were about 11 and 10.

Matt worked on his pitches – fast ball and curve. He had good control. We used a board we found in back of the barn and cut it down with Dad’s saw to about the right size, for a plate. I would call balls and strikes and Matt would pitch to

imaginary players as we ran through major league lineups.

“Now batting for the Giants – Whitey Lockman.” Matt wasn’t allowed to pitch until I had announced the batter, so loud every cow and chicken in Burrville could hear it. And that’s how it went, all afternoon until supper.

As the weather grew more spring-like, the call of the golf course, Green Woods Country Club, grew louder and more irresistible. I liked baseball best but Matt was an even more skillful golfer than he was a baseball player and did he

ever love to play. Eventually, he would become a scratch golfer and club champion.

We were both drawn originally to “the course” by the jingle of money in our pockets. We found caddying to be lucrative and we were also able to turn a buck searching the woods and finding golf balls, which we would sell to the members, approaching them on the tees before they drove and entering negotiations right there.

Matt kept at it after his caddying days and even today, you may find a Green Woods veteran from the late 1940s who will tell you no one at the club at that time had ever seen anyone who hit a golf ball like Mattie Canfield.

There were six caddies. Besides Matt and Owen, there was Bobby, Paulie, Kuzzy and Ray. Although an occasional interloper appeared and worked an afternoon, I can recall no outsider who stuck for any length of time.

Golf was my money sport but baseball was my passion. Four teams – North, South, East and West – were established by the Rec Department. It was a league called the Legion Juniors. I hitch-hiked from Burrville (Old Route 8) to the North End. At Stefrak’s Lot, which later became the site of a new First National Store and for many years has been the Torrington Post Office, I tried out for the North team and made it. Thereafter, and for a few years, I played center field for the North. We had good players, but so did the other teams. The reason we won the championship two or three years in a row was we had (the late) George “Gee-Gee’’ Bielik pitching for us. (Lord, what a pitcher! He later played professionally).

I took baseball wherever I could find it. Never very good, you know, but good enough to hang on and hang in, all the while sharing the sports passion with the golf course – ka-ching, ka-ching – and caddying. What a sweet combo for a boy growing up in Burrville and loving all sports, but with baseball at the top of the list.

I’ll tell you more another day.