So Here's To You, Joltin' Joe, But Who's The Rookie Leaning On The Bus?
In the fourth grade, a boy named Willie McTavish moved from Scotland to Auburn California, which was my home town. Miss Arbortree, our teacher, appointed me to show him around the school grounds, and to make him fell at home. I don’t know why I was selected, unless it was the plaid shirt I was wearing that day. Willie was a very nice boy, but very curious, and with hundreds of questions asked in his thick Scottish brogue, I spent a lot of time stuttering and asking him to repeat the question. It became apparent shortly that he was in love – really in love – with American baseball. Whether he knew of it before he came to the states or not, I never found out. But love it he did, and the balance of my 4th grade year consisted of memorizing batting averages, ERA’s, fielding percentages, and the like. Willie was relentless. He knew the figures not only of Joe DiMaggio and the other stars of the day, but also of the utility men whose names were hardly household words. Looking back, I believe I learned more math from Willie than from Miss Arbortree that year, as he required me to compute batting averages not on paper, but in my head (writing averaged is not very practical when you are whispering during music or social studies.) And speaking of Joe DiMaggio, Willie and I got the chance of a lifetime to see him when the Yankees were on a barnstorming tour, and stopped for a game against the Sacramento Solons of the Tripe-A Pacific Coast League. Sacramento was just 30 miles from Auburn (I understand it is somewhat closer now, thanks to Interstate 80), and we finagled either his parents of mine, I don’t remember which, to take us to the game. It was a thrill to see not only Joltin’ Joe in the flesh, but also all the other Yankees, such as Scooter Rizutto, Whitey Ford, Billy Martin, Johnny Mize, Yogi Berra, Hank Bauer, Gene Woodling, and all those names that struck terror into the hearts of the other teams. The Yankees thumped the Solons real good, much to the delight of us locals. We loved our Solons, of course, but they were bush league compared to the mighty Yankees, with all the tradition of the Babe, the Iron Man, and all those immortals. The highlight of the game came in the 8th inning when Joe jolted one over the left-center field fence. We all went bananas, later immortalized by Paul Simon and his Mrs. Robinson, who would much later haunt our memories about the nature of our heroes. After the game, Willie and I and a dozen other kids stood in the parking lot by the door we figured the Yankees would emerge from, and after 45 minutes of making our parents wait, we were rewarded by the sight of Yogi, Whitey, and then finally Joe as they exited the clubhouse toward the team bus. (Yes – they traveled by bus and train back in those days.) Virtually all of us kids crowded around Joe, paper and pen in waving hand, hoping for the treasured autograph of baseball’s ruling king. Willie and I got ours rather quickly from a weary but friendly DiMaggio, fortunately, then looked around to see which of the other Yankees was still available for autograph signing. By then all the others were in the bus, and the door of the bus was guarded by a stern-looking man in an official looking uniform, so we decided it would be unwise to try to board the bus. There was one kid, however, who looked to be 18 or 19 years old, learning against the side of the bus, waiting for Joe to finish his autographs. We didn’t know if he was the batboy or what, but we thought we might as well get his autograph too, so we did – on the same little scrap of paper the immortal Joe DiMaggio had just signed. When I got home, after showing everyone in Auburn who would look, including show-and-tell at school, I pinned the little paper up on my bedroom wall, right next to a framed copy of Joyce Kilmer’s poem entitled “Trees”. “I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.” Many nights as I lay in bed, I looked at that little slip of paper, and visualized myself in pinstripes, backhanding a fly ball off the center field wall, throwing a strike to the plate, and hitting homer after homer after glorious homer, surpassing the records of Joe, the Babe, and the Iron Man. Sometimes in my drowsy state the words of the poem right next to my treasured slip would mix in my mind with baseball dreams, and the poem would sometimes read “I think that I shall never see and outfielder as great as Shinn”. Terrible and vain poetry, but I would often fall asleep with these daydreams turning into night dreams. But each new morning burst the bubble, and life went on. That little slip of paper stayed faithfully on my bedroom wall year after year, turning yellow with age. Then one day when I was a freshman in high school – probably 3 or 4 years later, I looked carefully at the slip, and found the signatures of both Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle side by side on the same slip of paper! The kid leaning on the Yankee bus! “I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.” Or a scrap of paper with two names on it, one of them previously unknown. Unfortunately, when I was away at college, Mom took all my stuff off the wall and put it in a box. I have spent the rest of my adult life looking for that box, but in vain. I don’t miss Kilmer’s poem that much, but I sure do miss that little scrap of paper.
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