Seldom do I do requests.  This sounds better than it is.  Seldom do I get them.  I did have a former classmate, Scott Greif, ask me to write a story about baseball.  It was a fine compliment, for Scott would know the considerable talent I lacked in regards to the game.  I figured he thought I could lie well enough to make up for it, and that my vanity would dictate that I would do exactly that.

Our little league team was the Churchville Red Sox, and the first word in our name came from the small, unincorporated community where the field was located.  Its name came from the fact that it did have a church.  In fact it once had two.  The second was moved to Martensdale, bell and all.  How they got it over the hills, I don’t know, save that the move was a joint effort.  The Lutherans were eager to go.  The Catholics were eager to help them.

The world is small when you are in little league, and in that little world we took some pride that we were quite good.  So good, I suppose, we figured God Himself was taking note of it.  Baseball had a long tradition in Churchville.  My Grandfather played for them in the early turn of the century.  If God took note of them, I’m not sure, but His mother was reported to be the third baseman.

In those days there was neither a full-fledged field, nor enough players to field two full teams most of the time.  So Mary, the concrete Virgin which stood watch at the Church of the Assumption, became the designated 3rd baseman.  Having no glove of her own, the rules were simple:  if the ball hit her before the base runner did, they were out.  As to the length of her career, or the chips she took for the team, I cannot say, but she’d had lost her nose with a silent resiliency that was bound to have a profound effect on the rest of the team.

Churchville’s most famous son, Adam Walsh, was born in 1901 and went on to one of the more illustrious sporting careers of any Iowan.  He was the team captain for the 1924 Notre Dame Football squad.  There he played center of the “Seven Mules,” the line that blocked for the famed “Four Horsemen.”  During their undefeated season of 1924, in a game against Army, Walsh is said to have broken both his hands while playing every minute football, never fumbling a snap and defensively making a key interception late in the game.  Their famed coach, Knute Rockne, regarded the effort as the greatest game he’d ever seen a center play.  Walsh is still listed as the center on the All-Time Notre Dame Team, and after his career he coached the Cleveland Browns to the 1945 NFL Championship.

Now if this isn’t remarkable enough, consider the fact that he left Churchville at the age of 6.  Had he a chance to further develop under the Virgin’s tutelage, I suspect there would have been no stopping him.   Those that remained eventually found a field to play on, and a third baseman with a glove.

My grandfather’s favorite story about playing ball in Churchville was that one day an all-black traveling team called the Tennessee Rats came through on the train.  The traveled from town to town, setting up exhibition games against the town teams.  They made a living by charging a gate for their pay.  This was a step up.  In the early days the Rats were a traveling minstrel show.  They added baseball in the early 1900s, with a game in the afternoon and a show at night.  It was all baseball by the ’20s.

The Rats’ full team took the field the first inning.  Only their infield came out in the second.  The rest of the game was finished with their spectacular pitcher and his catcher.  When he finally got a chance to play, my grandfather got the team’s lone hit that day.  He confessed later that it took him a full ten years to realize he had gotten the hit because the pitcher had simply taken sympathy on him, the youngest member of the team.

Family tradition always said the pitcher was the great Satchel Paige, but a little bit of recent research says this is impossible.  Paige never barnstormed across Iowa until my grandfather would have been approaching 40.  If it wasn’t Paige, then who was it?  Had it even happened at all?  Then I came across a semi pro all-black team called W.A. Brown’s Tennessee Rats, and a historian who had become interested in them.

The Rats travelled all across Iowa and Missouri, into the states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, and the Dakotas.  For a time they featured two tremendous black pitchers, who were simply too old by the time the color barrier was broken.  John Wesley Donaldson, “The Greatest Pitcher You’ve Never Heard Of,” played for them in 1911, and in 1914 William “Plunk” Drake threw from the mound.  Perhaps it was the latter, whom my grandfather faced.

When the railroad line had finally been tore up, but before the bike trail had been laid down, we got our chance to be part of Churchville’s baseball lore. The teams we played were from the exotic localities of Milo, Truro, and St. Charles.  Following in my grandfather’s footsteps, I too would see action late in these games, but my age had nothing to do with it.

When I was in fifth grade, we played Milo.  They had a pitcher named Keeney, who should have been in the seventh grade but had been held back a year.  He looked six foot tall, and we suspected that he shaved.  Earlier that year, in a game at St. Mary’s, he hit a kid in the head so hard that it split his helmet right down the seam, with each half symmetrically falling at his ankles.  Kenney should have done it sooner in his career.  The story gave him something few our age were in possession of, a reputation.  It was one he had to have found great value in.

When they came to town, Coach Parker sent our own hard thrower to the mound, Ryan Lull.  Ryan was our shortstop.  As far as I know, he had never pitched.  This was likely due to worry that he could very well kill someone.  We were hoping it was Kenney in the first inning.  During his warm up, as the Milo team watched from the dugout, he sent a fast ball crashing into the backstop a good six feet right of the plate.  This had a level of theatrics W.A. Brown would have been proud of.  Things got pretty quiet.

Tom Lull, Ryan’s dad, pleaded with our coach to reconsider.  He wasn’t sure the family had enough insurance to cover whatever Ryan might do.  I imagine the Milo team could hear the pleas as well as we could.  Someone should have been charging gate.

Coach Parker knew that personal experience trumps a second hand story any old day of the week.  Whatever fear we had of Keeney now paled in comparisson to the fear they had of Lull.

We must have worked up a fair lead in the game, because at some point coach made his way down the bench to tell me I was going in.  He was a kind man, and always wore an expression that he was sorry he’d waited so long to get me in the game.  I always wore one that said it was quite all right, and he really needn’t bother in finding me.  I would have been just as content to sit on the bleachers, but it would have looked odd being the only one there with a uniform on and all.

With my stomach in a knot, I begrudgingly headed to the plate and tried to get as ready as I could for the pitch.  I finally found a spot where I was comfortable when the umpire stopped the game.  It seems I had set up shop a good two feet outside of the batter’s box.  Beyond that I don’t recall anymore particulars of the at bat.  I could offer a solid guess, though.

Having survived it at least, I now needed to take the field, and Coach sent me out to right.  I was hoping for a quick inning, but it was not to be.  The first two runners reached, standing on first and second.  I was fairly deep in right, mainly so I could let any ball drop in front of me.  The third batter nearly hit it to me, and I had to stand around for a while to make up for the fact that I hadn’t been back farther.

When it came down I charged it with great abandon, in case a local sports writer was there.  In case he wasn’t, I was writing the story for him in my mind.  While trying to find the right phrasing for the monumental events about to unfold, I passed the ball as it passed me.  Now I had to change both direction and the story line.  The key play would now be a dramatic throw to the plate, and when I finally caught up to the ball I snagged it and threw it with all my might.  After that I opened my eyes.

At the top of my view was the ball, hurtling straight ahead, and straight ahead was the side profile of the center fielder watching the runners go home.

“Eric, Eric,” I shouted, scared to death I was about to bean him.  He casually glanced my way, and with reflexes much faster than my own, caught the ball just before it nailed him.  This was to be a relay throw unlike any other, but I have lost all heart in writing about it.

Right across the road was the Church of the Assumption, and beside it was Mary still standing watch.  Meanwhile in the outfield, the heavens open and I had an assumption of my own.  I was no ball player.  Mary had suffered enough on my account, and I would make her suffer no more.  Once my 5th grade season had ended, I refrained from going out for the sixth.  Unlike the Virgin, I at least got to keep my nose.