Baseball

Farmersville had a professional baseball team before any of the surrounding communities.  

The team’s baseball park originally stood on the west side of town, where the junior high is now. The team moved elsewhere and by the late fifties and early sixties, the park was increasingly falling into disrepair. The stands were splintered wood planks, the backstop heavy wire netting with several open gaps.  No fences surrounded the park.  It was bounded in left field by a road, and in right by a cotton field and some old houses. One could watch the game from a car parked just off the road next to the field or from the stands behind the backstop. 

Despite its condition, the park was still the site of a lot of baseball.  Games of all levels were played at the park, from Little League, Babe Ruth, American Legion, even occasionally, a semi-pro game.

While watching one such game, I saw a rare feat of hitting. 

There were all kinds of magazines in those days dedicated solely to baseball.  Good reading for a kid who loved the game and the legends of the game.  The mags would recount great plays by individual players like Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Duke Snyder.  There were pictures a young boy could study of the stars hitting and fielding.  I remember studying photographs capturing an over the head catch in center field by Willie Mays, a remarkable throw from a deep corner of right field by Mickey Mantle cutting down a player trying to score from third, and Mickey hitting a ball completely out of Yankee Stadium. 

And there were stories of those rare instances in which a batter hit four home runs in a game.  

You to have to have been reared in a culture of baseball and know its history to realize how difficult it is to hit four home runs in a game.  At any level.  Only 18 players in Major League History managed such an accomplishment.  No matter the level of baseball, it’s a remarkable occurrence.   

And I saw it happen at what we still called Tiger Park.

It was during a semi-pro game. The pitching was high quality.  Out beyond the right field boundary was an old house.  On four consecutive at bats, a local man, a left hander, came to the plate and hit homers which landed on the top of the house.  The batter was in his late twenties from a family familiar to the residents of the town.  His family, like many of ours, was a mixture of the good and bad.  One held a leadership position in the community, another led a church, another spent time in prison for a serious assault. Regardless, all were athletes and all were good ball players.  

The man I saw hit the four homers, came to the plate a fifth time. I and the rest of the crowd watched eagerly to see if he could do the unimaginable.  But this time he hit a ground ball deep between third and short and the short stop fielded the ground ball backhanded and make a long throw off balance.  The first baseman did the familiar stretch to edge the runner and get the out which, in turn, led to an incident which spoiled the ending of the game.  

Angry or frustrated at not getting another home run, losing his temper, the batter, as he ran by, stomped on the outstretched leg of the first baseman.  It was brutal and nasty. The other team reacted as expected and soon fists were flying, players were wrestling around in the dirt, and, in the stands, bedlam broke out.  Order was eventually restored, but the game was over.  The players, bleeding and banged up, settled down and wandered off to their dugouts or their cars. 

My memory of a great performance forever marred by a nasty ending.  Sports, as with so much in life, I learned, are ever a mixture of great feats sometimes spoiled by the petty and awful nature of the those who participate.  It was true then, there.  And is true here, today.      

As kids, from about age 8 or so, on up to our teens, we could always find a baseball game to play.  At old Snowden school there was a game which seemed to last all summer.  It was continuous from morning until dusk.  We rode our bikes from all over Farmersville to the field, our gloves hanging from the handlebars. Players came and left, (sometimes to ride home for Mom to slap together fried bologna sandwich, lots of mustard, topped with a little melted cheese, maybe with a nice slice of tomato and a bit of red onion) and returned to rejoin the game.  

As kids, we played baseball the way the adults played. It was real baseball.  Hardball, overhand, fast ball, no easy slow underhanded lofting of a softball. To play that game, a kid, no matter how young, had to handle line drives, curve balls, high tight fastballs. It was played hard.  You could hurt.  Sometimes fights broke out.  But the game always resumed.

Balls and strikes were called.  Usually by the catcher.  But there was seldom a conflict regarding the calls.  No one was up there trying to work the count to get a free trip to first base.  And the pitcher was not shaving the corners, he wanted to strike you out with a fastball or curve.  He  usually gunned it down the middle.  And there would be the loud crack of a well hit ball by a wood (not aluminum) bat and, if you were watching you would see surprisingly adept fielding and strong throws. 

And bases were stolen.  Players took big leads, and as the pitcher delivered the ball, took off digging for second or third.  The runners made elaborate hook slides, but seldom head first.  Players often wore spikes. And back then the spikes were steel, not rubber, and going into a base head first could get you hurt.  Many of us, still have small oblong scars on our calves or ankles from being “spiked.”

Even so, the runner likely was already bleeding from the ever-present “strawberries” on his knee. “Strawberries” were deep scrapes of the epidermis from sliding on the hard ground. They never seemed to heal. They would just get scabbed over only to be torn open with the next slide.  

All the ball players had distinctive styles.  This was not a place for homogenized “baseball camp” throwing motions.  Baseball stances too were distinctive.  You could be passing the game in a car or sit on your bike out by the road and from a long distance away, and you could identify who was playing by the way they threw a baseball, whether they threw sidearm or overhand, how they stood in the batter’s box waiting for the pitch, how they held the bat, whether they took short or long windups on the pitching mound.

The infield was hard dirt. The bases were rags or shirts wadded up and everyone knew where they belonged, and if they got out of place, a fielder or even the runner would put them back.  There was a little grass in the outfield, but one didn’t play barefooted, you wore shoes of some kind because of the ever-present patches of sticker burrs.

On the field you heard their names:  Jerry, Henry, Hector, Ronnie, Larry, Steve, Santos, Billy, Ray, Jim; you heard nicknames like Arkie, Butch, Bones and Runt.

The kids on that field knew baseball.  Not so much football or basketball.  

Baseball was what had been played by their fathers and brothers, back in Arkansas or Oklahoma or Missouri.  The intricacies of the game, how it was to be played, was something passed on to the kids.  And the kids learned, shared with each other what they were taught, and they were good at it.

Once, during my brother’s time, (he was five years older), a school from a neighboring city, came to play a game against Farmersville’s eighth grade team.  There were no athletic programs at Farmersville schools in those early years so when another school came to town, the boys themselves formed the teams and fielded them.  They were required to have a teacher as a coach, and on the day of the game, the only one available was an elderly lady teacher, who agreed to sit on the bench with the team so the game could be played.  

The boys ran the game. They knew where each player belonged in the batting lineup.  Who should “lead off,” or bat “clean up” who best to play shortstop or patrol the outfield.  To the chagrin of the other team’s coach, Farmersville won as we usually did when other towns sent teams to play baseball against us.  All the while the elderly teacher sat at the end of the bench reading a magazine and occasionally looking up when the game got loud. 

A high school for Farmersville kids was many decades in the future.  During those years, Farmersville kids from one side of town attended Visalia schools and kids, from the other side, like me and my brother, attended Exeter High.  Throughout that era, Exeter High School had some of the top-rated baseball teams in the valley.  And the rosters usually had several starters from Farmersville.  

Of the three best pitchers from that era of championship caliber teams, one, my good friend, Ray Strable, was from Exeter.  The other two, Wayne Mayfield and Henry Camacho, were Farmersville kids.  Many of those with knowledge of the game thought they were good enough to have made it all the way to the Major Leagues, had they received the kind of instruction and nurturing today’s players enjoy. In contrast, back then there were few rules against putting a pitcher on the mound for unlimited innings.  If you had a good pitcher, he might start every game.  He might pitch every inning of consecutive games.  And that has a long-term effect.  Nevertheless, these two, in their prime, were virtually unhittable.

I and my brother played on those teams for Exeter High School, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention we had some outstanding coaches.  

The coaches didn’t just come on campus to coach.  They taught classes.  They got to know the students.  A varsity basketball coach who taught physiology, a freshman football coach who taught typing.  My varsity baseball coach was as dedicated to winning as anyone I’ve ever known, however, when not on the field, he taught a class on U.S. government.  And as I look back, he did a remarkably good job.  

One of those coaches, Greg Seastrom, was a very a patient man, who in a quiet but firm manner, instructed me on how I should react to stress and frustration, how to control my own temper.  And how not to ruin the good, indeed the great things a person might do, with unthinking acts made in anger. It can be a life-long struggle.  Worth it.  

The things I learned from all those coaches were about playing as a team, about life and its occasional disappointments, about staying disciplined, about the value of sportsmanship. 

It was important. I’m glad they were part of my life. 

But as for the baseball, I, like the rest of the kids from Farmersville, who played all those games at Tiger Park, at Snowden school, and elsewhere around the town, already knew most of what they could teach us about the game.

And more.

Farmersville Tales is published Sundays.  For more writings by Phil Cline, visit philcline.com.

The Photographs are of me, age 8, proud of my uniform, having made my first Little League Team;, me at age twelve, proud of my uniform again after being selected for the Farmersville All Star Team, and, lastly, imitating the Mick’s swing and stroking what I hope was a hit as a junior at Exeter High.  The others are of my brother, showing the form which made him a very good shortstop, and, standing with me and our father, showing off his American Legion uniform from a team he played on one summer in Tulare.