Dad always wanted me to be a catcher.
The Boys and Girls of Summer
As you can see from the picture, my Dad wanted me to be a baseball player. There are two things that I can’t remember learning, but seemingly have known how to do all my life. One is playing baseball and the other is playing Euchre. We played baseball in the back yard, on the street behind our house, and on the front sidewalk. Since I had a brother only three years older than I was, I always had a playmate or in this case a battery-mate. Danny and I played catch with each other or went to the ball diamond which was only a block away and played baseball nearly every day all summer. He was always the pitcher and I was always the catcher as you can see in the picture, I had the catcher’s glove. We took chalk and drew a plate on the sidewalk and pitched a countless number of innings. We worked on every trick pitch imaginable that would get the batter out. When I got into high school, he was the pitcher on the team and I was the catcher. When he wasn’t around, I played baseball by myself. I would either throw the ball up as high as I could and pretend it was a pop fly or I would roll it up one side of the roof and run around to the other side to catch it before it hit the ground. The first place I remember playing baseball regularly was south of town at David French’s on what was called the Canning Factory Farm. David’s Dad worked for the Ladoga Canning Factory and they lived on one of the farms. The first field was just a pasture. We used gunny sacks full of cobs for bases and a barb wire fence in the outfield for the home run fence. In the summer, we played baseball all morning then went to a place called The Park on Raccoon Crick (Creek) and went swimming until it cooled off a little then back to the baseball diamond. It was not at all unusual for there to be 15 or 20 guys and two girls at the ball diamond from 12 to 16 years old playing. The girls were Maybeth and Sandy Todd and were every bit as good as most of the boys. We would put our money together and go to the hardware store and buy a ball and a bat and we were ready to play until we wore out the ball or broke the bat, then we nailed the bat back together and taped it up and taped up the ball and started all over again. Guys came from all over town and from out in the country. We never had to call people up to come play ball. If they were home, they knew the game started as soon as the dew was off the grass. As I said, we played until it got hot, then went swimming, then went back to the ball field and played until it got too dark to see. Then we all went home to eat supper and then back outside to play Hide and Seek, Chase, or Kick the Can until it was time to go to bed. There was no TV, no video games, no computers, and no trouble finding something to do to entertain ourselves.
I need to take just a few lines to describe to Ladoga Baseball Field. In the earliest days, there were two mammoth elm trees in right and right center field. The trees were close enough to home plate that many fly balls ended up hitting one of the trees. There were no ground rules. The fielder just played the ball. It was alive. They were killed by the Dutch elm disease in the 50’s and removed. There was also a large roller leaning up against the tree in center field that they used to roll the field and the track which ran around the outer edge of the field. There was an electrical line which ran from behind first base to behind third base with a pole just outside the field behind first and out to a pole behind shortstop and on to a pole behind third base. The wires and the poles were in play. If the ball hit the wire or a pole, you played it. It was a live ball. Max Todd remembers watching David French playing shortstop and chasing a blooper out into center field and running into the pole. The field covered a whole city block and was a part of the Anderson Estate. There was a railroad track just across the street to the west and a small canning factory on the west side of the tracks. When a steam engine (later diesel) came along, play was suspended because of the noise and smoke. There were no fences around the field. If a batted ball rolled into the street in left field, it was a ground rule double. If it hit the street on the fly or went over the street, it was a home run. Center field and right field were too far away to hit the ball to the street, so the ball was alive and you could run forever if you hit it to right or center. When I was about a freshman or sophomore in high school, the town of Ladoga removed the poles and wires from the field of play and erected lights suitable for night baseball and later football. Ladoga was the only place in the county, besides Crawfordsville to have lights on their baseball field. As I recall, there were no dugouts or bleacher seats at the field. Players sat on benches and spectators sat in lawn chairs and fathers yelled at the umpire who was either another father or someone out of the crowd who worked for nothing. Ah, you can’t beat fun at the old ball park.
If I had to guess, I would guess that David French is pitching and Keith Todd is playing SS
There was a group of boys and two girls who would gather at the baseball diamond when there was still dew on the grass, play all morning, then eat lunch and go to the park and go swimming while it was too hot to play ball; after swimming for a couple of hours, we would go back and play ball until it was dark. The list of people who played makes a wonderfully pleasant list of dear friends. Max and Mel Todd lived just down the street from me. I could have thrown a baseball and hit their house. Mel was my age and Max was two years older. Jon and Don Todd lived ½ block up the street. I could have stepped out my front door and hit their house with a baseball. Keith Todd lived in an apartment on Main Street and had two sisters, Maybeth and Sandra who could play as well as any of the guys. John Gott lived up in the east end of town. His parents were Fannie and Owen Gott. By the way, Max and Mel’s parents were Walter (Dobbie) and Marguerite. Don and Jon’s parents were Onis and Lettie, and Keith’s were Babe and Sandy. I felt as much at home in any of my friends’ houses as I did my own and I’m sure they felt the same way. The Kimmel boys, Mort and Charley came to town to play ball sometimes. Charley was my age and Mort was three years older. They had another brother, Bill, who didn’t play baseball, but was a good basketball player and a great track man. They lived on a dairy farm northeast of Ladoga. Their parents were Maurice and Lena Kimmel.
Wally Lewellyn played baseball with us all the time. He was four years older and threw the best curve ball any of us had seen. Wally had a brother named Jack who didn’t play much baseball, but was a good basketball player. Wally’s dad was also named Wallace. He learned how to restitch baseballs and bought a round needle and kept us in good baseballs when they came apart. David (Peanut) French lived on the Ladoga Canning Factory farm south of Ladoga. He came to town and played or we went to his house and played ball. His parents were Ernie and Garnet French. Larry Burnett was a late arrival to the town games. He was Jon Todd’s age. His cousin, Jimmy Myers played some before he moved away. Bill Strickler was also one of the regulars. He was my brother, Danny’s best friend and was the son of Ike and Chub (Miriam) Strickler. He came from a real baseball playing family as his dad, Ike (Harold) and Ike’s brothers Juicy (Warren), Tuney and Buren were all legendary HS and town league players. Dick Stull also played with us, but had a heart murmur or something and couldn’t exert himself too much. His older brother, Bob was one of the baseball and basketball stars of the late 40’s. They were the sons of Bruce and Ruth Stull and lived ½ block away from me on the way to school. Dick was the first in my graduating class to pass away. He was killed in a motorcycle wreck on 234 between Jamestown and Ladoga. I remember my Dad and Mom getting a call about another motorcycle wreck involving Tommy Davis and Joe Featherstone. I distinctly remember Mom taking the call and saying to Dad, “Joe and Tommy were in a wreck. Tommy is still alive; Joe didn’t make it.” Tommy was the only son of Herman and Sybil Davis. He died a short time later.
Sometimes the older boys came to the diamond and played with us, but they were so good that they dominated the game. I remember watching Jim Cross, Barney Staton, Bob Stull, Kenyon Roberts and Jerry Zachary play baseball. They were really good in the eyes of a young boy. Barney Staton was the best pitcher of his era and would have made the big leagues if he had played 50 years later. There were only 16 teams in those days instead 30 or 40 teams today. I remember that Barney always rubbed his arm with Lotshaw Lotion, which was marketed by Andy Lotshaw, the trainer of the Cubs. You should know that I had to have some of that magic stuff. If it was good enough for a legend, it was good enough for me. Harley Barnard was the same age as Wally and Mort as was Gerald “Red” Hart. They played with us also but had jobs and had outgrown us younger boys.
As I look back and count, there were probably 18-20 boys and two girls who might have been growing up and playing ball, going swimming and generally having a great time in Ladoga. We fished together, hunted together, camped out together, and generally grew up like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Any number of that group might gather at David French’s house south of town where the canning factory owned farm ground. Our first baseball field was in a pasture north of Dave’s house which ran downhill to our home run fence at the road. We would pool our money and buy a bat and ball or someone had one that they had gotten for a birthday present. We played until the cover was off the ball or the bat was broken. When we got too tired or too hot to play any more, we would go to the house and Garnet would make us some iced tea. We would then sit around the radio and listen to the Cubs play. Either Dave’s dad or granddad would always be listening to the voice of the Cubs, Burt Wilson, who started every broadcast by saying, “It’s a beautiful day for a ball game. The sun is shining at beautiful Wrigley Field.” It was almost as good as hearing Ernie Banks say, “It’s a great day. Let’s play two.” That was the way it was with the Boys and Girls of Summer. The sun was always shining and we were always ready to play two or three or four.
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