Note: Author Garret Mathews wrote the metro column for The Evansville Courier & Press from 1987-2013. Previously he penned articles for 15 years with the Bluefield (W.Va.) Daily Telegraph. Mathews has collected his favorite columns in a book, Favorites, which is available on-line and through Amazon.com.
Gail Harris.
Every kid should be as lucky as I was growing up.
The two-story brick dwelling next door housed a genuine, look-him-up-in-the-box scores Major League baseball player.
Gail Harris.
Courtesy: baseball-almanac.com
He bounced around the minors for several years before earning prime time with the New York Giants and Detroit Tigers in the late 1950s.
The coaching staffs never considered him an indispensable first baseman. They required him to share the job with players from other parts of the country … who perhaps also lived next door to impressionable 9-year-old boys.
In short, he was no superstar – just a good country ballplayer who could be counted on to hit .250 and not hurt you in the field.
The reality of his tenuous standing at the top never connected with me. He knew Minnie Minoso and Nellie Fox. He rode on big planes. He played under bright lights. What else was there?
I knew about Mr. Harris even before he moved next door. The English teacher at the high school was a frequent visitor to our porch. Someone brought up his name and she was reminded of a story.
Mrs. Witherspoon said the first baseman was less than a solid student in her class. She said he would never amount to much if he couldn’t learn at least the rudiments of the personal pronoun.
“I’m going to make the big leagues. I don’t need to know no grammar,” he told her. “I’ll buy the biggest car I can find and, when I do, I’m going to drive it to your house and blow the horn as loud as I can.”
“And you know what?” He did.
An uplifting story indeed to a third-grader who loved baseball and hated personal pronouns.
My dream was that Mr. Harris would knock on the front door and ask if I wanted to go outside and play. I let it slip one night at the dinner table, asking my father if big-leaguers ever played catch with people who weren’t big-leaguers.
Later that night, Dad went next door. He didn’t say why, other than to point out it’s polite to tell a new neighbor which day the trash truck comes.
Courtesy: artofmanliness.com
The next afternoon, there was a knock on the front door. It was a big man with a big bat and a big first-baseman’s mitt. He asked if I had a few minutes to spare.
“The season is almost here,” Mr. Harris said. He asked me to throw some balls at his feet so he could practice scooping them up. Then he asked me to pitch so he could practice bunting.
During a break, he told a story. It was the Tigers’ last game of the year, Mr. Harris said, and he was sitting on 19 home runs. Earl Battey, the catcher for the Washington Senators, was a friend. When Mr. Harris came up to bat, he told Earl he needed one more “long ball” to reach 20.
Earl knew Mr. Harris would probably never get another chance to hit that many homers again, so he gave his pal a chance. The next pitch will be a fastball, Earl whispered. You see what you can do with it.
Mr. Harris drove it over the right field fence. The pitcher never knew.
I was in heaven. The big man not only played ball with a little kid, he shared a piece of baseball lore.
Only a good guy does that.
RIP, Mr. Harris.
Editor’s Note: Gail Harris was the last New York Giant player to hit a home run before the team moved to San Francisco. “They happened to throw it where I was swinging,” he told a reporter (New York Times). Harris passed away in 2012 at the age of 81. Known as “a gentleman until the end,” you can read more about him at Baseball Happenings.
