Knots in My Yo-Yo String Read Online Free Page A

astounding seconds when no one was ahead of me.

    The fifty-yard-dash champion for Hartranft Elementary (age 12, 1953).

Shortstop
    From ages eleven to sixteen, if someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I gave one of two answers: “A baseball player” or “A shortstop.”
    Major league baseball—that was the life for me. And I wanted to live it only as a shortstop. When I trotted onto a diamond, I instinctively headed for the dusty plain between second and third. I never wanted to play any other position. When we got up sandlot games, no one else occupied shortstop. They knew it was mine.
    I was eleven when I first played Little League baseball. To give as many kids as possible a chance to participate, the Little League declared that some of us would share uniforms with others. And so the season was exactly half over when I pedaled my bike up to Albert Pascavage’s house to pick up his uniform: green socks, green cap, gray woolen shirt, and pants with green trim. I packed my precious cargo into my bike basket and drove it carefully home. I was a member of the Green Sox.
    During one game in that half season I played second base—apparently no one told the manager I was going to be a major league shortstop. Our opponent was the Red Sox. The batter hit a ground ball right at me. I crouched,feet spread, glove ready, as I had been taught in the
Times Herald
baseball school. I could hear the ball crunching along the sandy ground. It hit my glove—but not the pocket. Instead it glanced off the fat leather thumb and rolled on behind me.

    Shortshop, Green Sox (age 12, 1953).
    My first error!
    I was heartbroken. I stomped my foot. I pounded my fist into the stupid glove.
    When the inning was over and I slunk to the Green Sox bench, the manager was waiting for me. I thought he was going to console me. I thought he would say, “Tough luck, Jerry. Nice try,” and then tousle my hair.
    That’s not what happened.
    What he really did was glare angrily at me, and what he really said was, “Don’t you ever do that again.” He pointed out that while I was standing there pounding my glove, two Red Sox runs had scored. “Next time you miss the ball, you turn around and chase it down. You don’t just stand there feeling sorry for yourself. Understand?”
    I nodded. And I never forgot.
    Like most of the kids in my class, I got better at sports simply by growing older. I went from being one of the worst players in Little League as an eleven-year-old to making the all-star team as a twelve-year-old. The following year I was the only seventh grader to start on the Stewart Junior High School team—at shortstop, of course. It mattered little that I was not very good at hitting a curve ball, since most pitchers threw only fastballs.
    During the summer of junior high school I played in a baseball league called Connie Mack Knee-Hi, for thirteen- to fifteen-year-olds. Before each game, one team would line up along the first-base line, the other team along third base. The umpire stood on the pitcher’s mound, took off his cap, and read aloud the Sportsmanship Pledge, pausing after each line so the rest of us could repeat it in chorus. We pledged ourselves to be loyal to, among other things, “clean livingand clean speech.” In the final line we promised to be “a generous victor and a gracious loser.”
    In the Knee-Hi summer of 1955, I had little chance to be a gracious loser. My team, Norristown Brick Company, swept through the local league undefeated, winning our games by an average score of 12–1. One score was 24–0. One team simply refused to show up. Our pitchers threw four no-hitters, three by Lee Holmes. Opposing batters could no more hit Bill Bryzgornia’s fastball than spell his name. We were a powerhouse.
    We beat Conshohocken two out of three to gain the state playoffs. Three wins there put us into the title game. On a bright Saturday afternoon at War Memorial Field in Doylestown, Norristown Brick Company