This card is here for no other reason than that it was front-and-center in my mind as a kid when I played baseball in the backyard. Even though Carbo is obviously taking a warm-up cut, I envisioned myself as Carbo in the photo. I thought he was admiring a titan blast.I grew up playing baseball behind my house, which had yellow siding and sat on a hill, at the corner of two streets. The dimensions of the improvised baseball diamond we played on weren't exactly drawn to scale.
Home plate was the walkway from the back patio to the street. First base was the near pole on the swing set. The trip from first base to second base was about half the distance from home to first. You ran from the swing set pole to the steps, which led up a hill to our driveway. Second to third was even shorter, from the steps to a tree at the side of the road. And third to home was about the same distance as second to third.
Strange dimensions or not, we wore ourselves out playing ball in the backyard. Like most boys my age, we had to be chased inside at night time because we didn't want to leave our makeshift diamond.
We were forced to play with tennis balls because home plate was right next to the house, and foul balls would often hit the house. But more often, balls would rocket off the garage, which was separated from the house and sat up a hill in "the outfield" behind the basepath from first to second. Those balls off the garage were doubles.
When I got to be 11 or 12, it was nothing to hammer the tennis balls over the garage for a home run. One summer, my brother and I kept track of how many home runs we hit and it was some insane number. I had over a 100 and my younger brother had 70 or 80.
But each time we hit a home run, we would have to go retrieve the tennis balls. And they weren't easy to find. The balls would land in the large yard of our neighbor, who lived on the opposite corner. She was an elderly woman and her yard featured a number of flowers and plants. They were all different shapes and sizes and sometimes the balls would get caught in the plants or sneak under them.
We were always wary of parading through someone's yard, especially a yard with such ornate plant life. Some neighbors yelled at boys trampling through their creations.
But not this neighbor. In fact, if she was out in the backyard and we came over the hill looking for a ball, she would help us look for it. This happened time and again. And we were always grateful for it.
My neighbor's name? Her name was Mrs. Ball.
I never knew her first name. But with a last name like that, that's all we needed to know.
Just for kicks, I looked up whether there were any major leaguers with the last name Ball. There have been four of them. Art, Jeff, Jim and Neal. All of their careers were finished before 1913. Neal Ball played the longest (1907-13) with the Highlanders, Indians and Red Sox.
Who knows? Maybe Mrs. Ball was the daughter of one of those players. It would explain a lot. But the only thing I know is years later that is my lasting memory of Mrs. Ball. And I appreciate what she did for us.
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