How valuable were those experiences? Priceless.
I have photos of me holding a bat when I was three. While that doesn’t compare with Mickey Mantle’s dad putting baseballs in his crib, my dad loved baseball, and, at a very young age, so did I.
My first foray into organized baseball in my hometown of Hackensack, New Jersey, was in the Pee Wee League for seven and eight-year-olds. I remember the tryouts in the gymnasium where the Pee Wee League coaches watched us perform and made their selections. I handled every grounder they hit me. I loved fielding.
My 1963 Little League team. That’s me on the far right, bottom row. Coach Bassano is in the center behind our team. His son Butch is the tallest kid to his right in the top row. (photo courtesy of Matt Sieger)
I moved on to Little League for 10, 11, and 12-year-olds at age ten. At our first practice for our team, sponsored by the local 7-Up factory, I missed the ball swing after swing, my first time up. I thought I was doomed, but Coach Anthony Bassano kept throwing until I started to hit. He retained that faith in me and made me the starting shortstop. As I recall, I hit a respectable .390 for the season.
Our team boasted an excellent pitching staff, led by Butch Bassano, the coach’s son. Having finished first in the National League, we faced the American League champs for the title in a best-of-three series. We lost the first game. A couple of speedy runners on the opposing team hit routine grounders to me at shortstop, but beat my throws to first.
Before our next game, Coach Bassano showed me I was taking several hop steps before releasing the ball. He hit a bunch of grounders and showed me how to anchor my right foot and release the ball without additional steps. That paid off in games two and three, when I could throw out every runner who hit a ground ball to me. We won both games to become the champs!
So much of getting an edge in baseball is mental. In my third year of Little League, I noticed one game that when the opposing pitcher threw ball four, which escaped the catcher and rolled to the backstop, the catcher walked lazily to retrieve the ball. After the game, I asked my dad if it was legal for the batter to keep running to second base. He told me it was.
Hackensack had two Little League fields. Field #1 had a long distance from home plate to the backstop. Field #2 had very little distance. I executed my plan the next time we played on Field #1. I took ball four, which was way off the plate and skidded toward the backstop. As I headed toward first, I looked over my shoulder and saw that the catcher was lollygagging in retrieving the ball. So I went into a full sprint, turned the corner at first base, and sped into second. By the time the catcher noticed, I was standing on second base.
These lessons on using my head in baseball came in handy as I advanced to play high school baseball and Connie Mack baseball the summer after my senior year. In a high school game against Englewood, a team in our league, I was on second base with less than two out. The batter lofted a soft fly not very far back of first in foul territory. The first baseman pursued it with his back to home plate. I tagged up at second, figuring his main focus would be catching the ball. I lit out as soon as he caught it. Perhaps he forgot that it is just as legal to tag up and advance on a foul ball as with a fair ball, but I easily cruised into third base.
Similarly, I was on second base in the summer North Atlantic Regional Connie Mack tournament with no outs. Coach Howard Shaw called on the batter to lay down a sacrifice bunt to move me to third. As he squared to bunt, I started toward third, but not too far, to ensure the bunt was down. As the batter lunged at the ball, I took several more steps toward third. But he missed the bunt!
There I was in no man’s land, closer to second than third, but still ripe for the picking. In that situation, the catcher should have run at me to force me to go one way or another. Had he done so, I would have been a dead duck. But he made the mistake of throwing all the way from home plate. He threw toward second base since I was closer to second than third. But as he uncorked his throw, I lit out to third base and made it easily.
During that tournament, I played mostly third base but also had a few games at shortstop. My lesson from Coach Bassano had stuck, and I had a very quick release on one grounder that just beat their fastest runner to first.
Speaking of picking someone off base, I played second base for my high school team. We had an all-county catcher named Art Sarro. We played the team we would eventually defeat for the league championship, Wayne Valley, on their field. We were leading 5-2 as they batted in the last inning. They had a man on second base with two outs.
Art and I had a signal. If I saw the man leading too much off second base, I would gently tap my glove on my right thigh several times. Trailing by three runs, there was no need for the runner to take a big lead, but he did. I flashed the sign to Art, and on the next pitch, he rifled a perfect strike to me, and we nailed the runner as he tried to dive back into second base, ending the game.
To me, baseball has always been a thinking man’s game. That’s one of the many reasons I love it.
