Mortality

It was a Friday, June 15th, 1962. The day before, my father came home from work at Wesco Spring with news we were going to the White Sox game the next day. This would be my first game ever. In my house, you dressed to make a good impression, so, Friday afternoon my mother made sure I polished my shoes. She also insisted I take along a jacket because, “The ballpark is close to the lake,” and she didn’t want me to catch a chill in case the wind blew from the east. This was a work outing for my dad, everyone going to the old Hickory Pit, in Bridgeport. I remember having cannoli for dessert. I don’t remember any other kids being there. I also remember walking into the ballpark’s main entrance on 35th Street; from the concourse, I could see the field at the end of a short stairway, just a few steps leading to the lower deck. Never in my life had I seen anything so rich a color green as that field was. The arches that framed every inch of the ballpark registered a little later, probably by the time we got to our seats between home and third base in the upper deck. If I’m not mistaken, this was in the loge section. My dad took one look at the starting pitcher and declared, “Well, we’re gonna lose.” Indeed, Early Wynn was having a tough go of it; he would finish 7-15 on the season, his twenty-second and next to last. Wynn couldn’t hold a 4-1, but it didn’t matter. The Sox scored two in the bottom of the ninth on a walk-off triple by Floyd Robinson for a 7-6 win over the Angels. I went home a very happy nine-year old. I can’t say I remember the triple, unlike the homerun Charley Smith hit for Sox in the second. I also distinctly recall the first major-league baseball player I ever laid eyes on, the Angels’ leadoff man, Albie Pearson. And that made all the difference. Pearson stood a mere 5’5”. In a couple of years, I’d be that tall, if not taller. The fact that someone grade-school sized could play in the majors showed me baseball was everyone’s game, as long as they were men. When the time came, I told Clare about Pearson. She was his size, playing baseball just like he did. According to baseball-reference.com, Pearson died on February 22nd, at the age of 88. Someone else who played that day in 1962 died three days after Pearson. That would be Dave Nicholson, then with the Orioles, to be traded to the Sox in 1963 along with Hoyt Wilhelm, Ron Hansen and Pete Ward in the deal that sent Luis Aparicio and Al Smith to Baltimore. I rooted for Nicholson, who was sixty years ahead of his time. The man could hit a ball the proverbial mile (and in one instance, over the roof of Comiskey Park) while piling up a ton of strikeouts. Too little contact put Nicholson in Al Lopez’s doghouse, from which there was no escaping. Nicholson was 83. I can still name most of the White Sox roster from 1963 and 1964, only now it reminds me of people gone: Nicholson; Gary Peters in January; Joe Horlen last September; and Ward two years ago this month. Time flies, or we do.