ONE FOR MOM
A reader shares with his son, and with us, the story of the greatest Mother’s Day gift he ever gave
Editor’s Note: Matthew Ronconi heard this story from his Dad many times while growing up. One day he asked his Dad to write it “so that I can always have it to read.” This is what Rob Ronconi wrote to his son. It has been edited for length and other considerations.
This is how I remember it. It was 1964; I was 9 years old and playing in the San Bruno Youth Baseball League. I played on a team called the Pacific Coast Blueprints. We wore gray uniforms with blue trim and hats, of course. The blue hat featured a white disk on the front with the letters PCB embroidered on it. (This would never happen today as we now know that PCBs are highly toxic, cancer-causing elements that were found in electric transformers. Not a good name for a team now.) We had the old school stirrups with stripes that always managed to be down around our ankles by the third inning or sooner.
I used an old “Keystone” glove that was stiff as cardboard and sold for about $5 in those days.
Of course, my dad and I bought it from Ellingson’s Sporting Goods on San Mateo Avenue in San Bruno. I was mostly a catcher or outfielder on this team.
It was quite spontaneous that I even came to be a Blueprint.
My best friend at the time, Tom Koski, said one Saturday, “Hey, they’re having baseball tryouts down at the park, do you want to go?”
It wasn’t like I was looking forward to it or signed up in advance or even knew that the baseball league existed, I just said “OK” and followed Tom to the park. I am not sure I would ever
have played organized baseball if it weren’t for Tom.
I owe him a lot.
Our coach was a very robust Cuban man named Cy Castro. He was my first coach and he made a tremendous impact on me.
He ignited my love for baseball. He taught me how to play baseball, and how to deal with it when things didn’t go my way.
It was all about playing hard, doing your best and being a good sport. He made such an impact on me that when he passed away not long after that year; I think from some form of cancer, I was crushed.
My mother, Dorothy, your grandmother, had been diagnosed with breast cancer about two years before the events of this story.
For two years I had witnessed the slow decimation of my mother as the cancer took hold.
She had gone from being a very strong person to periods of being unable to leave her bed. Despite the fact that they had detected the cancer as early as was possible, in those days they had very few treatments.
I only remember this “new” treatment that was called “Cobalt,” but every time my mom received it she was physically sickened and weakened.
I remember it being like my mom had aged fifty years in just two. She was always tired and very frail.
Yet she was determined to be a good mother to your Uncle Ron and me.
This brings us to Mother’s Day 1964.
As was the custom, our league played on Sundays. and Mothers Day or not, the game would go on.
My mother was going through a particularly difficult stretch. I remember her being very weak and in bed most of the time. However, that day, she let my dad know that she wanted to go to my baseball game.
She summoned up all the strength she had to get down the two flights of stairs from her bedroom to our garage where my dad very gingerly assisted her into the front seat of our 1962 Chrysler Newport.
We pulled out of the driveway and drove the half-mile or so to San Bruno Park, the home of San Bruno Youth Baseball.
San Bruno Park had two baseball fields, tennis courts, a recreation center and a community pool. It is where I spent the majority of my summer days, playing baseball, tennis and learning to swim.
The greatest feature was a candy stand under the bleachers of the large baseball field that was operated by the local VFW. For me, the choice was always simple and the same. I would surrender my quarter in return for five packs of Topps Baseball cards and then retreat to the shade of the nearby trees and carefully open each pack to see what treasures were inside while chewing on that wonderful bubble gum included in each pack.
On those rare occasions when I had a dollar, given to me by Grandpa Nelson, it was 20 packs, and that was heaven.
We arrived at the park and pulled into a parking space that skirted the park. The parking spot was perfect; it had an unobstructed view of the baseball field I would be playing on. It was about 300 feet from home plate in straight-away left field. I remember my mom being happy that she could see the field, even though it was pretty far away.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but leaving the car was not an option for her. She was far too weak.
The fact is that I didn’t realize how sick my mom was. I didn’t even have a concept of death, so I had no idea how serious her condition was.
At that point, I assumed that she would just get better and return to normal. So I bounced out of the car anxious to go play ball and got a few steps before I realized that I hadn’t kissed her goodbye. So I returned to the car and she rolled down the window and I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
As I turned to leave she said, “Hit a home run for me.”
Now at this point in my career, I was not what you would call a power hitter. A crushed ball for me was one that made it about 20 feet into the outfield. I also had the speed to match, so rarely did I get beyond second base any time I hit the ball. My first at-bat was pretty typical, I hit a weak grounder to shortstop and was beat by the throw to first base by about 10 feet.
In those days we used a ball called a “rubber-coated hardball.” It was supposed to be safer than a regular hardball, but I think it was even harder and it didn’t get heavy from moisture as we played so it was always hard and dry and traveled well when hit. In Pee Wee League, complete games were unusual. Because of the time required for all the kids to be herded in and out each inning, and the general slowness of play, games with more than two or three at-bats were rare.
It was my second and last atbat that day that the “miracle” happened. The magnitude of the situation never really hit me. I wasn’t going to the plate thinking that I had to get a hit for my sick mom on Mother’s Day. It surely wasn’t thinking it would be the last time she would see me play, or that she would be gone within months.
I was just playing baseball and having a good time. In Pee Wee League, the coach pitched to the kids. I remember that Coach Castro was pitching and he had a habit of throwing fastballs to us kids. The bad news was that they were really hard to hit. The good news was if you hit one, it could really take off. I remember the first two pitches being in the dirt.
The third one came in belt high right over the middle of the plate. I can still visualize that pitch even after all these years. I didn’t overswing or try to kill it, but I did put a pretty good swing on it. I made contact, and the last view I had from the batter’s box was the ball sailing over the shortstop’s head by 10 feet on a line.
I remember everyone yelling as I took off for first base. I reached first and our first base coach was yelling at me to go to second. This was highly unusual. As I approached second, I saw the ball and it was still going with the outfielder chasing it. I could see it bouncing off the walking path about 150 feet from the field. Believe it or not, I can remember seeing it heading in the direction of our car and I could see my mom’s face in the window. As I approached third base, the coach was waving me home, so I made the turn and went home.
When I scored, the ball had still not been retrieved from the outfield. I don’t remember whether we won the game or not, but I do remember being swamped by my teammates at home plate. It was a great moment.
After the game as my dad and I walked to the car, he of course asked me what happened in my first at-bat. But it was still clear that he was very proud of my hit. When we reached the car, the first thing I noticed was that my mom seemed better. She was smiling and didn’t seem nearly as tired. She was very excited and I noticed that there were tears in her eyes, but I didn’t understand why.
She excitedly pointed to a spot about 15 feet from the car door where she said my ball stopped rolling. She recounted the whole scene for me from hitting the ball to me running the bases to watching the ball rolling right towards her in the car.
She said it was the best Mother’s Day gift she could have gotten.