Carl Erskine, Just a Kid from the Heartland
Carl Erskine, Just a Kid from the Heartland
By S. A. Robbins
Those were the glory days of baseball, when autographs were collected, not for their material worth but for the intrinsic value of a Moment, a signature serving as evidence of that unique moment in time, when a fan requests a player’s autograph, becoming a keepsake to be treasured for decades to come.
If we are lucky, another Moment may later come along, one that reinforces the original memory of the autograph, preserving its significance, so much so that, even if the ball itself is misplaced, or gifted, or otherwise lost in the passing waves of time, the memory itself remains—undeniable, unique—the stuff that dreams are made of, a revered part of the story of our lives that can be retold again, and again.
***
I knew Carl Erskine’s name long before I met him.
It is a story unfolding over decades, one that began six years before I was born. For me, the long arc of baseball history, spanning more than sixty years, begins in Danville, Illinois (circa 1947). And yet, it also serves as an exemplar: how one unique Moment in time can be preserved and transformed by a second Moment, one that underscores and enlivens our cherished memories of the game, and the good men who have played that game.
My grandparents’ home on Vermilion was the perfect place to play Dog-and-Stick, or Hide-and-Seek when our cousins visited from Chicago. There was only one room off-limits to the kids as we played—my grandfather’s walk-in closet in a bedroom upstairs. As such, because my sister and our cousins would never dare the off-limits closet, it was my favorite hiding place. There, I could rustle through the drawer where he stored the keepsakes of his life: a Turkish scimitar, an ivory-handled Japanese knife, dozens of Hamilton watches, his diamond-stickpin, and a baseball autographed by players who happened to be in town on the afternoon he caught a foul ball.
The clearest and most legible of those signatures was “Carl Erskine” and I remember (on more than one occasion) standing in that closet, admiring that baseball. I can still feel the ball’s stitching against my palm. I can still recall my grandfather’s amused grin when, forgetting the family taboo, I asked him about the baseball. He didn’t scold or lecture. He simply explained that Erskine’s curveball was the best he’d ever seen.
***
I first spoke by phone with Carl Erskine in early 2019, and later, I had the good fortune to visit Carl and his wife, Betty, in Anderson, Indiana for an extended conversation—about Danville, his relationships with Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson—stories that have become legend in Roger Kahn’s The Boys of Summer and, later, in Carl’s book What I Learned from Jackie.
Anyone acquainted with him knows that, even in his 90s, Carl’s recollections are precise and lovingly recalled in detail. He can still accurately report how many times he faced Stan Musial (168) and then, his strategy for approaching great hitters. He remembers the coach that helped him adjust his curveball (he was tipping his pitches), words of advice that sparkle in his eyes with gratitude. Equally important, he recalls many details of the afternoon in Danville when he proposed to Betty (at the edge of Lake Vermilion, his first year in the Dodgers’ system).
The arc of baseball history is mirrored by their 74-year marriage, dating back to the moment my grandfather asked for an autograph, continuing through one pitcher’s notable career from Danville to Cuba to Fort Worth to Brooklyn, then to pitch in the team’s first Los Angeles game, and a career facing some of the game’s greatest hitters—Stan Musial, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays. Then he returned to his hometown, to confront social barriers as a parent of a son with Down syndrome. Not every professional baseball player dedicates themselves heroically to the betterment of their communities, but those who do care for their fellow citizens of the world (Erskine, Clemente, Hutchinson, et. al.) deserve our admiration, and their lives convey the values we want for our own children.
I told Carl about my grandfather’s keepsake, then asked him to autograph his rookie baseball card for my son (another Moment preserved in the amber of time). He wished me the “best of luck” for my stories about the history of baseball in my hometown.
“Let the tradition continue,” Carl said, standing beside the homemade sign for the Duke Snider Memorial Driveway in front of his home.
The memory of my grandfather’s autographed baseball, resurrected when Carl signed a card for my son, reverberates still in rippled time. We rejoice in the memories of games and players from our past, even as we look forward to tomorrow’s game, and we’ll tell those stories to our sons and daughters so that they might pass them along, long after we’re gone.
Imagine my quickening pulse when I learned there might be a black-and-white photograph that preserves the moment when Carl and his teammates signed autographs at the Danville stadium in 1947. With the same fervent hope we, as fans, root for our team to prevail in the bottom of the 9th inning, I’m imagining a photo of the scene as I write these words: there, at the edge, a group of fans are waiting—among them, one man holding a foul ball he caught during that day’s game.
He’s younger than my recollections of him, jet-black hair combed straight back, loosened black necktie and white shirt, eyeglasses and perfectly-trimmed mustache—my grandfather, moments before the autograph that circles three generations, from a kid from Indiana who happened to throw the best curveball my grandfather had ever seen, and another kid from Illinois who can still feel, sixty years later, the stitching of that ball in the palm of his hand.
S. A. Robbins received his MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College in 1986, and his collection of short stories about Silicon Valley, The System is a Mirror, was published by John Wiley & Sons in 2007. Stuart’s stories and poems have appeared in The Plum Creek Review, Aiki-News, PoetryNOW, Paragraph, Ararat, PocketPal, Berkeley Poets Cooperative, Amazing Stories, The Jewish Ledger, Having Been There (a Scribner & Sons anthology) and recently, BaseballBard (an online journal). Stuart is currently working on a series of novellas entitled Coming Home.