This is a story from “The Domino Years.”
1969 was the year after I woke up to baseball. It was just one year after Bob’s 1.12 ERA, the mayhem of Paris, urban chaos everywhere, the tanks in Prague, and the police riots in Chicago.
It was just one year before the “four dead in Ohio.”
It was the year of the Amazing Mets.
And it was the year I became obsessed.
This is not a ghost story. At least I don’t remember it that way. But, there was a thin layer between worlds that year and it was a placque tournante (a “pivot point”) in my young life.
I was nine.
Baseball was everything that year. So was winning.
I don’t know how to describe it all—it comes in a rush each time I think about it. It was the year I made the team and caught my first fly ball in an actual game.
And, it was the year I got a taste of pitching. I never knew that that taste would lead to an addiction; but whoever things their first drink will lead to AA?
In Bowmansville, the demographic odds were apparently suspended, and our parents produced only boys for about three years in the late 50s and early 60s so that by ‘69, we had a full baseball team and then some. And we all worshipped the game.
Yes, baseball was our liturgy, our hope, and our devotion. Some of us even thought it could save us from the smallness of our hometown.
We scoured the land for level spaces to play the game. We explored backyards, fields, and all manner of grassy spaces to create our diamond. We had only one criterion: We needed a fence at one end (preferably left field) where we could launch home runs like the big leagues. We required that fence. We yearned for it, and we finally found it.
Our game was wiffle ball, a game with a plastic bat that we traded for wood only for league games. The plastic ball was wrapped in glossy electrical tape until is was as hard as a rock and sailed off the plastic bat like a rocket.
In those days the best way to get a runner out was to throw the ball at him. If you hit him between bases he was out. And we gloried in the pain of hurling a rock at soft legs and bellies.
How many games that year were halted due to a crying player? I can’t count. How many times did we go home with glowing welts on arms, legs, backs and stomachs—welts that would bruise purple and black? (If CPS had shown up at any of our homes, we would have been placed in foster care on suspicion of abuse.)
We sadistically hurled the rock as hard as we could to inflict not just pain and bruise, but to garner an out that would bring us to bat so we could “crank out homers” and dream of bigger things.
The “field” we found was down the street at the Pine Grove Mennonite church. And the fence was a rusted wrought iron relic around an ancient cemetary on the church property.
Now, we all had a code. It was code spanked into us by our dads: You don’t walk on graves. We knew that, and we respected it. We didn’t know why, but we knew it mattered.
So when we decided to make that one lone tombstone—outside the fence—first base, we talked it over and made sure that we would only step on the edge of it and never go behind it to the grave over which the grass had grown. We couldn’t avoid the thing, but if we did it right, it could funciton as first base without disturbing the grave’s occupant.
That particular, lone, tombstone belonged to Lester Stoltzfus.
We knew nothing about him (at the time), and few of us noted that the dates on the stone indicated he had died as a child—the same age as us.
The iron fence was perfectly placed on an open field that sloped only slightly uphill and we set up the field so it would stretch, in a straight line, from left to deep center field. Perfect.
If you pulled the ball hard, a homerun was an easy reward.
We started playing down there on an early summer day just after school let out and the homeruns came in droves. All was well. The skinny teenager who mowed the grass between the tombtones was a local kid who never said a word. He did not care that we used Lester’s tombstone as our base.
About two weeks into our daily, day-long games things changed—and quickly. I still don’t know who he was. He was an older man who simply walked down through the graves and came to a stop—in the middle of our game—on the pitchers “mound” (there was no mound, but you know what I mean).
He looked grave and simply shook his head. After a drawn out moment in which we all stood with heads hung, he said “No. You don’t do this here.”
And then he left.
He made his way back across the graveyard and meandered up the hill beyond where my dad’s boss later owned a home and he continued until he disappeared beyond.
We got the message.
We hung our heads, picked up our bases, and left. And we never used that diamond again. We knew. Our feet had touched the stone, and all of a sudden it was perfectly clear to each one of us that we should not have done that.
We were ashamed.
For about a week afterward we stayed home. There was a drizzle that covered our guilt and we stayed indoors and read, or watched tv, or teased our siblings until our moms threatened us with oblivion.
When the weather cleared, we found a new, less desirous space—without a fence—and continued our game.
It was during that interregnum that the dream came.
I shared a room with Dar, my older brother to whom I was never close (another story for another day.) We shared a bunkbed, and I was up top.
One night, I woke up to find a kid sitting on our desk chair next to our dresser. He looked upset—not exactly mad, but certainly not happy. I was scared, but not terrified. Dar sighed in his sleep below, but I saw the boy and, like you sometimes do when you are scared, I decided to fill the silence with talk.
“What’s wrong?” was all I could think to say. “Why are you mad?”
He looked up at me and my breath caught as he pierced me and held my gaze.
“They won’t let me play,” was all he said.
Then he got up, walked over to my bed and touched me on the left shoulder. Not the top of the shoulder, but on the scapula (I learned that word later)—the shoulder blade. I never feared him. I knew he would not hurt me, and his touch left no pain, just a tingle.
Then he moved to the door, and left.
I resumed my slumber, and while I remembered and pondered the dream the next day, I was not afraid. I was puzzled.
I suspected it was Lester…
That was the beginning of the obsession.
Pitching had been interesting to me before the “touch,” but afterward, it was a necessity. And so was winning—at everything.
But beyond pitching, I just needed to throw the ball—throw it hard, throw it often, throw it far. Just throw it.
A typical morning started with me hurling a hard rubber ball shaped like a baseball against the barndoor out back. I drew a rectangle on the smooth wooden door and that was the strikezone. I would spend an hour or two right after breakfast throwing ball after ball as hard as I possibly could at that door. I won every game I played out in my mind—always with a no-hitter—striking out the side in the bottom of the ninth.
Later in the morning, there would be two or three of us playing “batty out” a game that allowed you to bat if you caught a pop-up, two bouncers, or three ground balls. I never batted—ever. I stayed in the field and caught balls so that I would throw them back in.
After that I would routinely meander down to Jeffrey Sprechers and we would stand as far apart as we could and still get a throw on the fly to the other. The key was to throw it so that it 1) did not hit the ground, and 2) not require the person catching the ball to move. We would throw until Jeffrey begged mercy because his arm was aching.
Then it was on to wiffle ball, where I insisted on pitching (overhand).
Late afternoons would find me looking for Larry Klassen—four years my elder—to go to the diamond to throw balls at each other as hard as we could. I was proud because I could catch his hard stuff. I was prouder because I put a hole in his glove’s pocket. In contrast to the rules in the Jeffrey Sprecher toss-off, this one had us standing a mere 40-45 feet apart and throwing hard and straight.
The days ended with my mom calling me in in the twilight from more time spent at the barn.
Rainy days were agony.
And then I started pitching in real, hardball games. I experimented with all arm angles and windups—always returning to a Bob Gibson-style wind-up and delivering at three quarters side arm that gave my pitch a natural tail.
And I was good. And I won.
The world loves to see lefties and I was (am) one and so people would come to watch this skinny kid sling the ball.
Barry Hoschauer was my catcher. He was a lefty too, and in those days it was impossible to find a left-handed catcher’s mitt. So he used a regular glove. But I threw so hard that I bruised his hand and he almost had to quit until he swiped a bra pad from his mom and inserted it into the glove.
We would play a full game and then I would pitch some more in the twilight. He never tired catching me.
That was a summer of very big dreams. The first of maybe three during which I believed—really believed—that I could be a big league pitcher. And I never stopped throwing.
As fall came on, we kept playing and I kept throwing. I feared the coming of snow and weather that would put an end to the throwing.
Fortunatley, in 1969 we discovered football. It was a brand of tackle football (our parents objected, but we played for keeps and tackled hard without pads or protection) that had no running plays—only passes.
And, yes… I was the quarterback. I did not want to lead the team, I just wanted to throw. And win.
Football sated my obsession, but when the spring of 70 rolled around, it was back to baseball. That was the year I threw at the barndoor with abandon and not even a thunderstorm could stop me. I threw. I threw. I threw.
That was a year of no-hitters and one-hitters and endless days of throwing a ball to whomever I could convince to play catch with me. My dad bought a catcher’s mit and caught me after work while the bakery employees on smoke break huddled next door to watch me throw.
1970 was when we left Bowmansville and the Pine Grove Mennonite Church to move to Fivepointville about 3 miles away. There was no smooth barn door, and not enough kids to make a game, so I begged for a bike and rode the back roads to Bowmansville to feed my need.
And for several more years, all I cared about was throwing something. And winning.
My game moved from Bowmansville to Adamstown and then to Terre Hill as I moved into adolescence. I pitched everywhere and I threw hard.
The monotony of it is not worth telling. But a few things are.
I started playing other sports that involved throwing and shooting balls and I loved them all. I also started injuring myself in these games.
A broken elbow from a hard-core game of capture the flag. A broken thumb playing baseball in gym. A broken ankle playing basketball. A kneee injury playing football. And, later, a deep thigh bruise playing basketball and IT band problems from running.
The curious thing is that every one of these injuries occured on the right side of my body. The more curious thing is that I started to lose my ability to do things with that same right side.
I used to bat right-handed, but sometime in those years I simply couldn’t do it anymore. I wrote with my right hand, but my writing slowly deteriorated until I had to teach myself to write with my left hand. I couldn’t make a right-handed lay-up in basketball. My right side felt weak.
It still is.
But my left side—my left arm—stayed strong.
In 1972 I was invited up to the “midget” league where the mound went from 45 feet to 60 feet 6 inches—the big league size. I didn’t expect to pitch at that distance, but was called upon to do just that due to a lack of pitching on the team I played for (back in Bowmansville).
And I hurled the rock with abandon.
I tossed a two hitter against Glenmore in my first win and the future looked bright. I could do this.
And so I kept throwing—hard, often, with abandon. I tried to come up with an offspeed pitch but my brain wouldn’t let me do anything but throw hard.
I can’t explain it—I really can’t. Just like I can’t explain why I just can’t do things with my right hand. All I can say is that my brain won’t let me. Does that make sense?
Toward the end of that season I tossed a seven inning game against Morgantown (we won) and for the first time, ever, my arm hurt after the game. I don’t mean my arm—I mean my shoulder. I couldn’t sleep on my left side and my arm hung limp for two days after the game.
I was scheduled to play left-field in the next game and was all set, but during warm-ups I threw the ball home and the pain flared. I told the coach I could not play…
And that was it.
Oh, I played a few more years, but it wasn’t the same. I couldn’t control anything I threw. I couldn’t throw more than about 30 pitches before the pain made me chew on my glove. When I was 15, I walked off the mound in a game, walked off the field, got on my bike and rode home, and I never played again.
My right side wouldn’t work, and my left arm couldn’t throw.
As I write this, there is a dull ache in that same shoulder.
This is not a ghost story—at least I don’t see it that way. Years later I found a story in the Ephrata Review (the internet is an amazing thing) that dated from the winter of 1968/69. The Ephrata Review was one of those local weeklies that was a kind of lifeblood of rural PA communities in those days. Barry Hoschauer’s mom wrote a column about Eastern Lancaster County for the Review. It was a glorified gossip column that we read with great attention.
Sometime that winter she ran a very short story about a child who had been found dead in an abandoned farmhouse up on Silver Hill outside of Bowmansville. Very little was known about the boy, and there was no family to claim him. There were no records of him in the local schools. Hoschauer wrote that the Lancaster County coroner named the cause of death as “neglect.” The child’s name was Lester Stoltzfus—and his tombstone was paid for by an anonymous donor who felt no child should die unremembered.
Neglect.
No, this is not a ghost story.
Unless the ghosts are all my own.
In those baseball years, in those pitching years, in those obsession years, I cared not at all for the kids in our town who could not play ball: the kids we picked last, if at all. And as I grew in esteem and stature in my baseball circles, I was relentless in making sure my team won. I told kids to just go home, rather than pick them for my team. I scoffed at those who had no sports’ skills. I made fun of those who did not know how to hold a bat. If they could not help me win, I wanted nothing to do with them.
Sure, I wasn’t the only one. Those of use who had the skill ruled the game with a relentless commitment to win. The lost kids who didn’t have the requisite skill were not our problem.
Yeah, that was me.
We neglected them.
I neglected them.
I sometimes think that I was given exactly what I desired—an unquenched thirst to pitch, to throw, to win. I was given a yearning. I was offered an obsession. Maybe Lester offered it. I don’t know.
And I embraced it.
But even young bodies are not designed to handle the stress of such an obsession. And old bodies pay the price.
Traveling at the Speed of Bike 