I wasn’t what you would consider a true athlete growing up, but it was what I wanted to be more than anything else in the world, other than a veterinarian. It certainly didn’t stop me from playing every sport imaginable, at every single position, in a desperate search to first find my niche and then burst onto the pro scene. But alas, it was not meant to be and instead, I became a haunted little approximator of sports, especially baseball, as I stood in line with my mother at Safeway slow motion mimicking the impossible sidewinder release point of the great Kent Tekulve of the Pittsburgh Pirates, earning a deadpan dragging of a Lucky Strike from my mother, which translated to “knock it off.”
In truth, I didn’t know it then, but I was actually training as a mime, a skill born out of my deep insecurities that would wondrously circle back around years later, coming to my rescue, finally allowing me to go pro.
I did possess something akin to true athletic ability however. I was what might best be described as nimble, which is defined as “quick and light in movement and action.” I feel like I could get to almost any ball hit in the infield or outfield, using short, white hot explosions of neurotic hypervigilance to get there…but didn’t quite have the goods to do anything of any import once I did…at least as I remember it.
Nimbleness did not necessarily translate in any way to athletic skill, but instead looked more like a form of pageantry on the ball diamond or pitch, which as you can imagine, was warmly and compassionately received by all my fellow classmates, from elementary up through high school. Imagine one of the performers of the opening ceremony of a sporting event, who just never left the field. If you had replaced my school gym uniform with a unitard, I’m not sure many students would have noticed.
I was considered lively, agile and lithe! Best suited to desperately retrieving kites if they lodged in trees or scrambling over a scary neighbor’s fence to retrieve a home run ball. “I’m quick! I’ll get it! I’m enough! I’m enough!” (sound effect of darting over a fence) Should a frisbee catch an updraft and float onto a rooftop, I was the first kid to shimmy up the drainpipe! Little did I know, some grown-ups were paying very close attention to this, and filing it away wherever adults kept this sort of information in their already fully formed brains.
Apparently, my elementary school teacher, Mrs. Abbott, had taken notice of my whimsical pluck, as she was about to call upon it in a time of great need.
After weeks of car washes and paper drives, my fellow fourth graders and I embarked on an epic field trip, having boarded an actual freaking airplane (my very first) to travel from Orange County up to Sacramento for the day. We first visited the State Capitol, where I found myself most comfortable hiding with the other lost souls in the back of the tour as the guide taught us about state government, where Governor Ronald Reagan hung out and about some other things this building was used for. For fourth grade boys, the acoustics of the capitol rotunda was obviously used for incredibly entertaining sound effects. (Sound effects here) After being ushered off the property, we were back on the bus and off to Sutter’s Fort, a giant rectangular enclosure in the center of town with dirt, grass and some cannons in the middle. The best part were the rooms around the edge of the fort, where historians had recreated what outpost life was like in the mid 19th century. You could visit the trade store, the distillery, the bakery and the carpentry shop. But to this fourth grader, it didn’t get more FORT than the blacksmith shop, which was tucked away in the corner. And don’t even think of walking into that shop, because there, in the middle of the room, was a replica of the blacksmith himself, a full-size cast iron man, painted with a prideful smirk, as if he had just forged and hammered himself into existence! He was swiveling from the waist, back and forth, one arm hoisted high, pausing long enough to hover over an anvil with a piece of metal on it, at which point his right arm would hammer down a steel sledge, crashing hard with a deafening BDANK! then shoot back up, swivel, swivel, crash, BDANK! Swivel, swivel, crash, BDANK!
For obvious reasons, we could only stand in the doorway of the blacksmiths shop and peer in over the top of a wooden slatted half gate. Our teacher, Mrs. Abbott, was standing right up against the gate itself, snapping pictures of this iron god with her Kodak Pocket Instamatic Camera, when one of students, in the crush to see what all the BDANK! was about, knocked Mrs. Abbott’s elbow with such force, that it sent her camera flying into the incredibly historically accurate room.
The Kodak Pocket Instamatic was roughly the size and shape of an ice cream sandwich. If you were going to design a camera for maximum slide-ability across a concrete floor covered in sawdust and straw, this model took top honors. It did not disappoint that day, as we watched it glide, as if on a track, across the shop, skidding to a stop between the blacksmith’s powerfully fashioned legs. I think it was the first time I heard an adult outside of my own home use profanity. The fact that it was my teacher, in public no less, made it all the more exciting.
“Shit!” she said, as we waited for her to say it again. Mrs. Abbott looked around in vain for one of the park rangers who worked at the fort, until her eyes rested on me…the nimble little flunky hovering around her waistline. Without blinking, she said: “Stephen…jump in there and get my camera” (God I miss the 70’s) I just looked at her, still stinging a little from the rotunda sound effects shaming we had endured earlier and she said the 7 magic words that any kid wants to hear from a grown up: “Don’t worry. You won’t get in trouble.”
And with that, I was up over that half gate and straight into the Death Zone. I slid across the floor, in the narrow trail left by the camera until I was just under the iron man, paused just for a moment for the swivel, swivel so I didn’t get my not fully formed brains bashed in, and snatched Mrs. Abbott’s Kodak Pocket Instamatic Camera before the crash BDANK!
Look, I don’t want to say I got any special treatment after that, but I don’t think it was an accident that I was allowed to sit by the WINDOW on my second flight on a commercial airliner that day.
The only other time I can remember my “quickness and lightness in movement and action” being brought to bear by an adult was my little league coach, Coach Jordan. I believe I was a 5th grader by this time, and in what amounted to yet another epic field trip of sorts, the coach had chaperoned our entire team to Dodger Stadium to see a game. We were there good and early, seated in the left field bleachers to watch batting practice and catch some pre-game home run balls off the bats of Popeye armed Steve Garvey or The Penguin Ron Cey. It was still about another hour before the game was scheduled to start when Coach Jordan told me to come with him to help carry some food back from the concession stand. I was honored. After we made our way down beneath the bleachers, the coach hooked a hard left and walked very deliberately around some concrete pillars, until we suddenly found ourselves miraculously at the back edge of the Dodger bullpen. At least back then, a giant gate enclosed that side of the pen and that gate was wide open, so that if you wanted to, one could just stroll right in, but you got the strong feeling that that would be frowned upon by the Dodger organization. As it got closer to game time, no doubt that big gate would be swung closed and locked tightly, but for now, my coach and I were just a couple of guys, staring into a major league bullpen, next to a sign that clearly read “Any non-authorized personnel entering the bullpen will be fined $1000” and it was at this time that Coach Jordan put his hand on my little shoulder and said under his breath: “See those two baseballs on the water cooler over there?” “Yeah” I said, looking at the two baseballs sitting on the water cooler that was waaaaaay inside the $1000 fine zone. “Well, one of them is for you and one of them is for me” he said. I wasn’t the fastest kid on the team by a longshot, but I think coach picked me because of my people pleasing and my ability to zig zag to avoid getting tagged between bases and in this case, possibly a security guard. I got in and I got out and after I scored those baseballs, coach gave me a look that said: “Don’t tell the other players” and I didn’t. I kept that ball hidden deep in my jacket pocket until about the 8th inning, when I popped out of my seat, zipped over to the railing and peered deep down into the Dodger bullpen. There was just one pitcher down there leaning back in a folding chair, with his cleats up and sticking through the fence. I pulled the ball from my pocket and yelled down to him “Hey! Will you sign my ball?” He looked up at me but didn’t say anything. I yelled down and asked him again, and he just turned back to watch the game.
And I swear to God, it was at this point, that an old white haired popcorn vendor with a paper hat and thick glasses appeared almost out of nowhere and cryptically said to me. “Pitchers can’t write…they can’t even read…all they know is baseball.” And I believed him. I believed that pitcher way down there was some sort of illiterate thoroughbred born into captivity, living in a paddock under the stadium like a gladiator or something. Overall, it was a fairly stressful night in Chavez Ravine. Just more grown-ups, playing me like a fiddle. Working me, like an easy math problem.
I’m still relatively nimble for a man my age, only now it’s called spry. “You’re pretty spry for a man your age” I sometimes hear from a young person. I always try to return the compliment by saying “And your joints look to be brimming with cartilage!”
Honestly, what keeps me spry, is that I still approximate sports when no one is around.
Stephen, Be Nimble!