Paying It Forward With a Long Fly Ball

HARD TO BELIEVE, that it happened so long ago, nearly sixty years, happened so quickly, was so insignificant, and yet, I still remember it. I think it was ths summer of sixty five. 1965. I was ten years old. Cleveland got seven runs in the first, Kansas City got five.The Indians won 12-9, and Kansas City's big left handed home run hitting first baseman, Jin Gentile, struck out four times. After the game, they quickly set up the batting cage, and big Jim started taking batting practice. My dad took my older sister and me down on the field, and we stood next to the batting cage while he hit ball after ball over the left field fence, and into the parking lot behind Municipal Stadium. My dad introduced me to Mr. Gentile, and we shook hands with two fingers, through the netting. I wa in heaven. We left soon, out of courtesy, not wanting to take advantage of a good thing, my dad thanked the coach, and we left the stadium. We were walking through the parking lot, and Jim Gentile was still landing them on the pavement, An incredible display of opposite filed power. One landed fairly close to us, and dad exhorted me to chase it. I did, but it was bouncing and rolling across the pavement too fast, and suddenly, a black kid, about fifteen, dashed past me, caught up wit the ball, and grabbed it. He was much older, taller, bigger, faster. I turned around and started to head back to my dad. From behind me the kid beckoned me, walked over to me, and gave me the baseball. He told me that he lived to blocks from the stadium, and had a drawer full of them at home. Although I can't precisely recall, my father probably thanked the kid. I hope and assume I did. I wish I still had the ball. most likely, we used it in our local sand lot baseball games of late summer, 1965. No, I cannot assert with any degree of certainly that this was the seminal moment in my life when I determined to renounce racism forever, or anyting like that. But I am certain that the mere fact that the kid was African-American influenced me to generalize, as people are prone to do, and to develop a special warm and fuzzy attitude about black folks generally. I'm glad that I still remember this episode, glad that its more important to me now than it was then. I also know that from the earliest times when I learned about races and racism, I thought, and still think, that the whole business is extremely silly. My mother, who would now be a hundred and five, perhaps hated racism more than anybody I have ever known, despite her having been born into a time and place where it was the norm. My, father, himself sometimes racsit, sometimes not, in his own special way discouraged me from being one. He claimed to hate Germans and Japenese,from his experiences in World War Two. Hatred of Germans, of course,is more of an ethnic and cultural hatred than a racial one.I wonder whether I would still remember my baseball story if the black kid had not given me the ball. Perhaps; I have a good memory, for events sixty years ago, if not five minutes ago. I wonder whether my attitude, towards, racism, balck people, or anything else, would have been any different without the kid's generous act. Probably not, I suspect, although we've all read stories about how people's entires lives were frofoundly influenced and changed by simple childhood incident and memmory. Somewho, I simply cannot imagine myself having grown up to be a right wing xenophobic racist MAGA type. On the other hand, it is possible that a black ghetto kid in nineteen sixties Kansas City saved me from a life of narrow minded racism. I wonder whatever happened to the nice kid. He would be in his mid to late seventies, maybe close to eighty, now. Of course he might not still be alive. Whatever happend to him, whatever he did witih his life, I hope he lived a good life. He deserved it, He was a nice guy, a good guy. Surely they don't always finish last.