LETTERS FROM HOME: FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE KID WHO BATTED 1.000

April 5, 2001

Dear Julie,

Now that baseball players are all millionaires, now that I am skeptical enough to wonder how second basemen are hitting homers with half swings, and now that I am deep in the mysteries of the game of golf, the baseball season begins for me with a big yawn now. It wasn't always so.

As a kid, I watched and read the reports from spring training, evaluated each team's chances for the coming year and hoped the Cardinals came out on top.

Each spring, baseball was the question and the answer.

One of my favorite boyhood books was a baseball yarn titled "The Kid Who Batted 1.000." It told the highly fictional story of a rookie Major Leaguer whose odd talent was working pitchers for walks. Every at-bat, he'd foul off strikes until the frustrated pitcher finally threw four balls and awarded him first base.

In baseball, a walk doesn't count as a time at bat, so for most of the season this kid was batting .000. As walk after walk accumulated, the pressure grew. When would he make an out? When would he get a hit?

In the final game of the World Series, when his team needed more than a walk, he blasted a game-winning home run that bounced off the foul pole into fair territory. Nothing the players and owners do to baseball can rob the game of its drama.

Baseball terminology is magical to a kid. What little boy wouldn't want to be a slugger or a hurler? Fair territory, foul territory. The ballpark is a country unto itself bounded by fences, where a mysterious mound rises in the middle of a perfect diamond shape flanked by sunken dugouts where the players and coaches watch and wait and plan their opponents' defeat.

This kid who batted 1.000 must have appealed to me because I wasn't much of a hitter. But I could understand that a player who reaches base every time he bats was invaluable to his team, even though statistically he was batting nothing. I also realized that fouling off every third strike took great skill. Good eye, coaches are always yelling to batters. This kid had to have one.

The book insisted that there are many different ways to make a contribution.

As a 10-year-old who couldn't hit, I took a cue from the kid who batted 1.000 and found a way to get on base anyway. I taught myself to bunt. Ten-year-olds being 10-year-olds, the pitchers and catchers and infielders usually were caught flat-footed by a bunt. When they did react, the throw often flew past the first baseman, in effect resulting in a double.

Probably few of those bunts were legitimate hits, but I didn't care, and neither did the manager. Getting on base and helping the team mattered to me most.

Our team, the Bears, won the pennant and faced the Royals in the World Series. The Royals were managed by a star player at the university, Corky Weiss. His college coach, the late Joe Uhls, required all of his players to coach boys teams. How many Major Leaguers do you think have managed boys teams?

The Royals were well-trained and talented and beat us easily.

I knew the catcher, Hollis Headrick, from summer band camp. At band camp, we talked about baseball, of course.

The first time I came to the plate Hollis yelled, "He bunts!"

Never trust a drummer.

The next year I started learning how to hit. It took awhile, but nobody bats 1.000 without learning how.

Love, Sam