By Ed Cullen
Editor’s note – This article originally appeared on AstrosConnection.com on September 28, 2000.
In the long ago, when a child talked about summer games he wasn’t talking about the Olympics.
In the days before organized youth sports ran the lives of families, you saw boys, and the occasional girl, facing the front porch steps, shoulders squared, head down, one hand gripping a fuzzless tennis ball. And, if you happened to be passing on the sidewalk and listened closely you might hear “THE VOICE.”
“Mantle knows Cullen has his number. And Cullen knows that if he doesn’t keep his amazing fast ball down, the Mick will park it in Comiskey’s center field seats. Here’s the windup … And the … ”
“Momma, that boy’s talking to himself.”
Boy, indeed. Call Early Wynn a boy, Missy, and he’ll wrap your pig tails around your head twice with the breeze from his high heater.
In the late 1950s, the Chicago White Sox, my team, were flirting with greatness, something they do without fail every 40 years or so. They were the Go Go Sox, and I re-enacted their games on our front porch steps.
I do not know how many times I sent a tennis ball crashing against the blue, concrete porch steps of the house on Turner Street. But if I had a dollar for each pitch, I’d be writing this column on a deck in Telluride, Colo.
Our front yard on Turner Street consisted of two squares of grass defined by a shallow ditch on one side, the driveway on the other and, right down the middle, the walk that lead from the city’s sidewalk to my blue steps.
From the pitcher’s mound, I looked into the deep shade of the porch where the blue theme continued on wide boards that ran perpendicular to the yard.
Dark, screened rectangles flanked the front door. In the rectangles, flimsy white curtains billowed, pulled inside by an attic fan with blades the size of bomber props.
I cannot tell you how many times I took the measure of DiMaggio, Ruth, Mantle and Maris while thousands cheered and the white pennants waved in the backwash of the attic fan.
“MILL-dred!” (My grandmother calling to my mother.) “He’s hitting the house with that ball again.”
“Throw the ball BEHIND the house,” my mother, the peacemaker, would call from somewhere behind the billowing curtains.
“I’ll be careful,” I’d answer. “I won’t hit the house.”
Then, “THE VOICE” would pick up the action:
“Cullen is under pressure now from manager Al Lopez. He knows if one more fast ball sails on him he’s out of the game.”
And, of course, the next pitch DID sail, smacking the wall between my grandmother’s window and the front door with the velocity of – not a freight train, not a bazooka – with the velocity of a slick tennis ball hurled by an arm the circumference of a broomstick.
I didn’t hang around for the manager’s hook. I was around the corner of the house and down the driveway before my grandmother could come to her senses.
I disappeared from the front yard so fast, my mother must have thought I’d whapped the front of the house with the tennis ball and, then, been jerked skyward by a vengeful God.
I hated the back porch steps. They were not a pitcher’s steps. Too steep. Tennis balls came off the steps in flat, hard grounders that were hard to field. Even with Luis Aparicio and Nellie Fox behind me, every pitch was, well, as THE VOICE once said, “An adventure.”
When THE VOICE took control, I would sometimes stop in mid windup to listen. I wasn’t always sure if I was the only one who could hear THE VOICE.
“Momma, that boy’s talking to himself.”
“Hush. He was probably born that way.”
Most of the batters I faced were nameless unless they required names for dramatic reasons. Occasionally, THE VOICE would give a batter a name I’d never heard before.
“Culbertson digs in. Montesque is thinking curve ball. Torqueson calls time.”
Culbertson? Montesque? Torqueson? Torqueson! I couldn’t even spell Torqueson.
With the decline of porches and steps, you don’t see nearly enough kids talking to themselves anymore.
Every once in a while, I’ll pick up a tennis ball or one of those balls you squeeze to relieve stress. I’ll look around and if no one’s close enough to hear THE VOICE, I’ll rock back and fire.
“Cowabonga! What does the radar gun say?
“112 miles an hour! Amazin’! And the guy’s gotta be in his 50s.”
Fifty-four, if you must know. And still bringing the heat, still hearing… THE VOICE.