When I was little my family would sit around the table at dinner (remember dinner with your family!?) and ask Dad to “Tell us a story about when you were little”. My daughter has asked me this question a lot of times. I thought that I’d pass along some of the stories I remember my Dad telling me when I was little.
Dad was what I would call a self made man. He grew up in Scranton, PA (think “The Office) where his mother was a stay at home Mom and his father was an Industrial Arts teacher. Dad graduated Valedictorian of his High School class and enrolled at MIT on scholarship. One evening he told us the story of Oliver Smoot, a fraternity pledge who was used as a measuring stick to see how many “Smoots” it took to get across the bridge from Boston to Cambridge. I remember the story as if it happened when Dad was at MIT in the early 1940′s but it appears that it happened in 1958. It seems a Fraternity brother thought it would be a good idea to use Smoot’s 5′ 7″ body as a unit of measurement and they painted a mark on the bridge for each 5′ 7″. Those marks are repainted every year by pledges to the same fraternity. You can check out the story in more detail here. Enjoy!
I remember that I was outside playing with other kids in the neighborhood when my Mom called to me from the front door. She said I had a phone call from WHIO-TV. I couldn’t believe it. They said they wanted me to come in so they could meet me, that I was a finalist. I went in but I never got the impression there was anyone else as they told me I had won! That began a whirlwind of activity. I was going to be bat boy for one game, probably only pick up the bats for the first inning as it was a MLB rule that you couldn’t be on the field unless you were an employee of the team but the umpires would “look the other way” for the first inning. I went to the radio studio and recorded some promos for the game. My family got tickets right behind home plate for the game. The night of the game I got there early and was given a uniform to wear and shown how to fix the socks the way the big leaguers did. There were some promotional photos taken. I was given a baseball and I got almost every player on the team to sign it. I still have that ball and I bet it gets more valuable every day. One of the batboys showed me around and told me which players were friendly and which players were grumpy. They tried to get me to try “Red Man” chewing tobacco but I politely declined. I got to pick up the bats for the bottom of the first inning. The Reds went down 1-2-3. I got to sit in the dugout for the next 6 innings. Sometime during the game I had the most amazing experience any kid who loves baseball could have. Pete Rose was the lead off man and Joe Morgan batted second on that team. I remember sitting on the back of the bench with my feet on the seat and my rear-end on the top. Pete Rose come over and sat down just to my right and Joe Morgan sat down just to my left. They carried on a conversation with each other as if I wasn’t there and I felt like I was in a parallel universe where I was a fly on the wall in a major league dugout. I will never, ever forget that experience. After the seventh inning I was taken into the clubhouse where I changed back into my street clothes and was taken to the seats where my parents were behind home plate. My life was changed forever. Baseball was for me the greatest game there was.
