July,
2013
Dear Family and Friends:
A couple of nights ago I watched the Major League baseball All-Star
Game. What’s so interesting about
watching a ball game anyway? Well for 36
summers I worked at Goldman Union Camp Institute and for 10 or so summers
before that I worked at Olin- Sang-Ruby Union Institute. Both are summer camps and when you work in a
summer camp, days blend into one another, the time between one Shabbat and the next is just an
instant, and who (at camp) even knows when the All-Star game is even happening?
This game brings together the best players in the American
and National leagues. They are the best
baseball players in the world, (I dare say) and most American baseball fans are
excited about it. When I was a kid, I
was too. That was before all of those
summers at camp with no TV or time to even think about the sport I loved so as
a boy.
So, here I am, retired, at home in the summer and able to
once again tune into the game. You know,
I really am not very interested in All-Star games. Nowadays the game is important because the
winning league gets home field advantage for the game of games, The World
Series. I’m a National League
person. But I know that even if the NL
pulls off a victory, the World Series will not be played in a “Field” (as in Wrigley) but most likely in a “Stadium”
(as in Busch), or a “Park.” This
troubles me. Nevertheless I watch, and the American League
wins anyway.
So I’m up in my lair, watching the game and I flashback to a
time long ago when All-Star games were so important to me. The year is 1958. Believe it or not, in those days I’m a
Chicago White Sox fan (that would last until the mid 60’s…it probably was a
rebellion. My dad was avid Cubs fan). So, it’s 1958 and some unbelievable players
are in the game. To start with the Sox’s
second baseman, Nellie Fox; and shortstop Louis Aparicio (later to become
Nellie’s son-in-law, but I digress) one of the greatest double –play combinations
in all of baseball history (or at least the history of baseball in my
lifetime). Joining these heroes of mine
was another all-time great, Mickey Mantle.
Mantle played center field for the much hated (because they were such a
powerful and winning team) New York Yankees.
I hated the Yankees…but I had a picture of Mickey Mantle in my bedroom. Some of the best ever played for the National
League, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, Henry Aaron, Ernie Banks, and Warren Spahn to
name a few.
So I’m watching the game here in 2013 flashing back to ’58 but
not thinking about these historic names, or even thinking of the game itself at
all. Rather, I’m thinking of the setting
in which I heard the game. That’s right,
heard the game on the radio, as did millions in those days. But when one listened to such games announced
by outstanding sports announcers who painted pictures with their words, you
really did see the game, in your head, that is.
In 1958 I was twelve years old. It was my first summer as a camper at Union
Institute in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. I’d
been a camper for four years already at other camps because our Reform Movement
camps in those days did not take campers younger than twelve. Funny, I didn't know that it would be the
first of fifty-two summers I would be spending in our Reform Jewish summer camp
programs.
I remember the night of that All-Star game. We must have been listening to a rebroadcast
of the game as baseball was pretty much an afternoon sport back then. I was a camper in one of the small white cabins
on the Big House lawn near the lake (we didn't know enough Hebrew then to call
it the Bayit, as it is called today). I
can see it in my mind. It’s late at
night, dark in the cabin while ten or twelve of us twelve-year olds huddle
around a bottom bunk at the back of the cabin, ears “glued” to a small transistor
radio. We had to listen quietly so we wouldn't attract the attention of the counselors on late night “OD.” I remember
nothing of the game. I remember
everything of the excitement of sneaking around, like thieves in the night,
outrageously listening to baseball when we were supposed to be fast asleep in
our bunks. How dastardly. What rebels we were. How delicious to have such an innocent
adventure in the dark with cabin mates.
Such “secret” times still happen in cabins in camps around
the world. Times that kids will think
back on when they are retired and something triggers a memory. In 1958 it was my time, my cabin, my All-Star
game. I loved remembering it the other
night. I watched baseball but thought
about kids at camp making memories. Our granddaughter,
Zoe is a camper at this moment. I know
she’s having those secret times. Good
for her.
Ron
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