Camden Yards
Camden Yards
By John Schmidtke
July 30, 1993
I think the ball slipped out of Scott Cooper’s hand. Mo Vaughn at first base didn’t even try to jump; he stood with his right foot loosely toeing the bag and watched the ball sail over his head.
“Heads up,” I said to our boys, my voice sharp with warning. “Ball coming!”
***
God invented baseball for July afternoons with the temperature in the mid-80s and a light wind blowing out to left just enough to keep the flags awake. We were testing God’s invention as part of our family’s summer trip from Hawaii to the East Coast. The goal was to see as many of Mary’s eight sisters as we could in a two-week vacation. Two sisters lived in Baltimore and we decided to spend a Friday afternoon at a game between the Orioles and the visiting Boston Red Sox. The usher had just wiped off our third-row seats in Section 14. The seats faced shallow right field barely past the infield cut. Mary was already sitting down.
I still stood, watching the Red Sox take infield practice: Cooper at third, John Valentin at short, Scott Fletcher at second, Vaughn at first, and Tony Pena behind the plate. A coach hit fungos to each fielder. A grounder to the fielder’s left, the catch, the gather, the throw to first, and then a grounder to the fielder’s right, the catch, the gather, and the throw to first again, and again, and again; a rhythmic cycle of grace, agility, and power. Vaughn’s glove popped with each throw. As the infielders worked on the diamond, the boys stood next me wearing their Hawaii Kai All-Star hats—Scott, 10, with his glove on, and Riley, 8, carrying his glove under his armpit. They stared around the nearly new stadium—it had opened the season before—at the retro-design, the brick walls, the iron supports, and the green seats filling with the crowd. They looked for Cal Ripken Jr. in the Orioles’ dugout. They didn’t look at the field.
I watched the Boston coach swing and hit a sharp two-hopper to Cooper’s far right, forcing him to backhand the ball in foul territory and to leap, wheel, and throw to first while in the air. That’s when the ball slipped out of his hand and sailed over Mo Vaughn’s head.
You can’t appreciate the power of a major leaguer’s arm unless you’ve been close to the field. TV doesn’t capture the deadly speed and air-ripping hiss of a well-thrown ball, and radio only hints at the force of the ball with the distant slap of leather on leather lost behind the announcer’s voice. My words made the boys look up, the bills of both their hats pointing at the infield, and when they looked up they saw a well-thrown ball by a major leaguer tearing the air their way.
Every baseball fan comes to the ballpark hoping to take home a ball as a souvenir. The one that might be ours came at us in a rush. From where I stood, I knew I couldn’t make the play without moving hard to my right and maybe knocking down one or both boys. As good as they were as fielders, I wasn’t sure either of them could catch a ball thrown at major-league speed.
***
Our Scott has soft, sure hands. As a youth-league catcher he received the ball with nonchalant grace—very few passed balls. As a first baseman he turned lots of poor throws into outs. His first word as a baby had been “ball.” Mary and I played catch with him using tennis balls when he was five and six. When I took him to Kokohead District Park to try out for Pinto baseball as a seven-year-old, I walked him from the parking lot to the Pinto field feeling confident yet nervous. I knew he was good, but this was his first time throwing and catching in public.
The Pinto League coaches stood on the infield holding clipboards and stopwatches as they looked over the newcomers. The dads leaned on the chain-link fence near right field to watch their sons. The simple try-out started with the kids sprinting from home to first, one after the other. The coaches timed the sprints. Next, the boys lined up on the foul line and one at a time took a defensive stance at first base, glove ready. The Pinto division director rolled the ball from home to first. Every ball rolled smoothly. Every ball rolled right to the fielder. The boy at first base was supposed to field the ball and then throw to a coach near the pitcher’s mound. Scott stood in the middle of the line of about thirty kids. I waited for his turn with confidence.
The ball from the Pinto director went through the first boy’s legs. He turned, ran into right field, picked the ball up when it stopped rolling, and then heaved it toward second base rather than at the coach near the pitcher’s mound. The Pinto coaches wrote notes on their clipboards. I smiled, knowing Scott could field rolled balls easily and knowing he could snap off a throw to the coach’s chest. The second kid did the same as the first: he missed the ball, waited for it to stop rolling, picked it up, and threw wildly, with no attempt at accuracy. Each kid did the same. Knowing what I knew, I saw Scott as a potential number one draft pick. I stood shoulder to shoulder with the other dads. I prepared to stay calm, to not react to Scott’s play, not wanting to show off when it was my stud kid’s turn. I knew Scott would look the ball into his glove, scoop the ball to his chest, turn his shoulder to his target, crow hop once, and throw the ball on line to the coach.
When his turn came, Scott took his stance. The Pinto director rolled the ball. Scott watched the ball roll between his legs. I’m sure I straightened up from the fence and gasped—what was that? Scott ran after the ball and waited for it to stop. I paced behind the other dads. Whose kid was that? Scott threw towards second and the ball rolled into left field. I turned away. What in the . . . ? The coaches on the field wrote notes on their clipboards.
“Next!” the director called. Scott jogged off the field towards me, smiling.
Keeping my voice casual, I said, “Hey, Buddy. Have fun?”
“Yeah!”
I kept disappointment out of my question. “Were you nervous?”
“No! It was fun.”
Don’t be that dad, I thought, even as I asked, “Did the ball take a funny bounce?”
“No.”
Leave it on the field, John. Don’t take it home. Don’t be that dad. “Was it too hard?”
“No.”
I couldn’t help myself. “What happened?”
“Huh?”
I had to know, “The ball got through your legs. What happened?”
“Nothing.”
I was all in. “Nothing?” I asked. “How’d it get through your legs?”
Scott looked at me like I was stupid.
“It was supposed to.”
“Huh?”
“We all did it that way, Dad.”
As Scott Cooper’s errant throw screamed across the Camden Yards infield, I wondered whether our Scott would make the play this time.”.
***
But maybe the ball was headed for Riley; it had a slight hook as it closed on us. All year in the regular season, and in the post-season All Stars, Riley had played third—the hot corner they call it in the Bigs, but it’s just a tepid position at the Pinto level: no seven- or eight-year-old ever yanked a screamer down the left field line. Certainly nothing like the fungo Cooper backhanded in Camden Yards’ foul territory. Riley’s hands weren’t as soft as Scott’s, but he stopped everything hit his way, knocked down anything he didn’t catch cleanly, and made the play with a powerful, high-elbowed throw. But even if his glove had been on his hand rather than under his arm, I had no confidence he could catch Scott Cooper’s ball.
***
In the slow instant after I said “heads up,” I decided to try for the ball. I looked down, like a first baseman finding the bag, to see whether I could scoot quickly to my right without knocking the boys down and hurting them. But I knew I was coming their way no matter what—a bruise from falling against a seat or a scrape on the knee from skidding on the concrete would hurt or bleed, but getting beaned could be deadly. When I looked down, I saw I couldn’t scoot to my right at all. Both boys were on their knees and elbows like supplicants begging mercy, butts up, hands over their heads, the bills of their All-Star hats touching the floor, their gloves on the concrete next to them, and both using the seats of Row Two as a shield.
Scott Cooper’s errant throw crunched into the back of the seat in front of our Scott. Two inches higher and it would have cleared that seat in Row Two and smacked into Riley’s seatback. No way either boy would have caught it. I might have, even barehanded, but it would’ve hurt. Scott Cooper’s ball ricocheted down from the seatback and into the spring-loaded seat itself. The force of the ricochet pushed the Row Two seat down and the seat’s springs absorbed the energy of the throw. As the springs pulled the seat up and into place, the ball softly flipped straight up. Our MLB souvenir gently floated at chest level, harmless, waiting.
***
The best in the ballpark showed off at Camden Yards that day. Mo Vaughn might not have been able to catch Scott Cooper’s pre-game throw, but in the third inning he jacked a two-run home run. Two years later, Vaughn would hit .300 with thirty-nine homers and be recognized as the American League MVP. Harold Baines, the Orioles’ Designated Hitter, crushed a two-out grand slam in the fourth inning. He hit .313 that year. In his twenty-two-year career, the six-time All-Star would drive in more runs than anyone not in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Andre Dawson, the Red Sox DH, the 1977 Rookie of the Year, an eight-time All-Star, the 1987 National League MVP, and a future Hall of Famer, cranked a three-run homer in the first. And the best on the field, Cal Ripken, Jr., a nineteen-time All-Star, a two-time MVP, the 1982 Rookie of the Year, the holder of the most consecutive games played in the history of baseball (2,632), and another member of the Hall of Fame, went deep with a solo shot in the second.
But none of them—not Vaughn, not Baines, not Dawson, and not Ripken—caught a ball when the springs of the seat in Row Two flipped it softly in the air. None of their sons, All-Star hats askew, looked up at them from the concrete. None of their sons looked up at them with wide eyes showing a mix of fear, relief, and wonder to see their dad unexpectedly holding a major league baseball. None of their sons thought the ball had been caught barehanded on the fly. And none of their wives looked at them with raised eyebrows that said, “I know what you’re thinking. Have your fun for a second—I know you can’t help yourself—but you ought to tell your sons the truth.”
God invented baseball for families to enjoy on a July afternoon, the air in the mid-80s and a light wind blowing out to left just enough to make memories.
John Schmidtke lives in Honolulu where he watches MLB.tv at his desk from his office chair while longing to be watching live from the right field bleachers. Family trips to the mainland are planned around seeing a baseball game, majors or minors. Last August he sat in the shade behind the first base dugout and rooted for the home team—the New Hampshire Fisher Cats—as they played the first of a twin bill.
Matt Lawrence is a Spanish/ESOL teacher in Baltimore, Maryland. He is the father of two young men and has been deriving joy from making art for decades. You can check out some of his work on Instagram at @Mattymarcador.
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