The Fungos Of Our Fathers

Once at Fenway Park during batting practice

I watched Don Zimmer standing behind

the home on-deck circle hit fungoes to outfielders. 

Left field, right field and center.  Boston is

an ugly city when looking straight ahead,

but in the green confines of Fenway watching

the arc of a white baseball against a blue sky can

be mesmerizing.

Zimmer, who would later be a manger of the team,

was a  tobacco chewing  Shrek precursors. 

The Red Sox then had a wonderful centerfielder

with movie-star good looks named Freddy Lynn.

But in the hands of a master, the fungo bat is a thing

of effortless ability.  In between pitches Zippy

would, with a flick of the wrist, hit a ball to left,

right and center.  But when it came to center he

would put the baseball arcing through the

sky to the furthest  part of the ball park.  Lynn

would turn and retreat to the warning track

420 feet away (probably more from where Zippy

was standing) and leap against the wall where

the ball would ricochet no more than two feet

above his glove.  I saw Zimmer do this three

times in a row until Lynn put his hands on his

hips and walked into the bull pen.   

Once at Fenway Park with my father I saw

Ted Williams play deaf and dumb to a fly

ball hit towards him in left.  Part of the left field

lower seats had been roped off because Williams

was in the habit of spitting at fans who were not,

well, fans of the splendid splinter. He also wore

his first baseman’s mitt which at the time caused

controversy, too. 

Well, as the fly ball wended its way toward the

score board, Williams, of all things, had his hand

outside of his mitt and was  cleaning his fingernails.

Jackie Jensen, no major league slouch in his own right,

comes running at Williams from right-center – maybe

250 feet away - yelling at Williams whom he suspects

hasn’t seen the ball.  At the last moment, Williams

takes a step forward and effortlessly catches the ball

and flips the ball to Jensen who, red in the face from

running, gripped the ball as if he were going to crush it.

My father spent endless hours teaching me

baseball in our back yard.  We’d play catch,

or he’d hit me grounders.  I’d field the ball

and pitch it back to him as if I were throwing

to first base.  If I threw it behind him, he’d

nonchalantly swing the bat one-handed

behind him and hit it back to me.

He was also a master of the fungo.  He’d

hit a ball straight up in our backyard so

that it would come down no more than

a few feet  from where he stood.  These

were massive elevator shots, straight up

and straight down.  Even on a windless

day trying to catch a ball falling straight down

from two-hundred and fifty feet or so

requires enormous concentration.  Depth

perception is useless and the predicting

a rainbow arc of a ball’s flight is easy

by comparison.  During this time, my father

would look at his finger nails or be lost in

thought as if he were waiting for a bus. 

I’d pound my glove, circle this way or that,

and at the last moment have to make a flat

out lunge for the ball.  I’d get to my knees

and flip him the ball and then . . . upsidaisy again.

These fungo shots came to an end one day, though.

Our backyard on Spring Street was not large and

whether my father put too much muscle in his

swing or the wind took the ball at its highest

point, I first backed up and then sort of line

danced south of the house, bumping into our

birdbath before breaking into a too-late-too-

catch it-run.  I watched as the ball hit the road,

took one super bounce and ricocheted of a limb

directly through Stan Gordon’s parlor window.

I looked back at my father who had come

around the back of the house to see where

I had disappeared to.  He looked the culprit

with the fungo weapon still on his shoulder.

He flipped the bat to the ground the way

homerun hitters sometime do with a twirling

baton flourish and scampered past me and

into the Gordon’s house.  Luckily they were

away for a couple of days and my father had

the parlor cleaned up, retrieved the ball and

repointed and puttied in a new pane before

they got home.  

I know the mind plays tricks with certain memories

that are over sixty years old, but I’m sure my father

was laughing as he scampered by me to break into

the Gordon’s house. 

I am sure he was laughing.

FG  4/9/2015

The construction, destruction and reconstruction of human lives is best seen is sports.  My mother knew what my father had done and probably spilled the beans to Violet Gordon saying something like I hope you don’t walk barefoot in your parlor.  Violet no doubt took this as a snub and railed at Stan “Do you know what that Polly Greenwood just told me!”  Stan, I like to think, put X, Y, and V together, saw the unpainted putty on the window outside, and I hope, chuckled.