♦♦♦♦

The ritual count-off alone was worth the price of admission. Mr. Fitz gripped the junior sized bat and practiced his tee-shot, as he followed the count down the line, only stopping to point at kids unable to eek out their number correctly. For the time being, he was the drill sergeant and the kids were his first day recruits. The counting started, as the kids belted out their numbers.

“One!”

“Twoooo.”

“Tree.”

“Fo-werrr.”

“UNO!”

“Two!”

And on down the line the counting continued.

“Three.”

“Me four.”

“Five.”

“Hey, he said ‘five’ Mr. Fitz!” my brother Doug, a stickler for procedures and rules, instantly complained.

The count, however, continued on like a runaway train.

“One!”

“Two, two got to pooh!”

A chorus of laughs and giggles bellowed out from the older boys.

Doug escalated his displeasure. “Hey Mr. Fitz! Moon said ‘five’! He said ‘five’!”

Mr. Fitz interrupted, stopping the count dead in its tracks.

“Okay! Okay! That will be enough of the poetry Mr. Cruiser! Next one who feels like they have to be a comedian can laugh all the way home!”

He had a way of squelching idiocy before it became reckless. He hunted down Moon Muller, the object of Doug’s objection.

“Mr. Muller, pay attention. You aren’t FIVE! You are ONE!” Mr. Fitz, using the bat, pointed at the next kid in line.

“Okay. Pick it up from there.”

“One,” the next kid yelled incorrectly.

“No, he’s ONE, you’re TWO. Come on guys! Let’s listen up and pay attention. We’ll do this all night long if we have to. I know your parents won’t mind. They might even get a full night’s sleep without you guys around for a night.”

He was a master, as he milked the parents sitting along the wall for a few laughs and barbs.

“You can keep mine, Joe!” one slightly inebriated father yelled out. Mr. Fitz smiled back.

He pointed to the next kid to speak his number.

“Three?” the kid asked timidly.

Mr. Fitz nodded his approval. The kid for some unexplainable reason pinched his groin and started hopping around in circles like the Holy Spirit filled him or something.

“Fo! Or!”

“One-zeees!”

“Two,” a shy, shallow voice proclaimed. It was Paula or better known as “Miss Park”, the only girl brave enough to play with the riff raff. I was probably eying her at the time because she was really cute. Unfortunately, she had an older brother who was protective of her, which explained why none of us ever had the nerve to approach her—probably not a bad thing for all involved.

Anyway, Mr. Fitz had the train back on the track, that is, until it got to Rick, another one of my younger brothers. He was scratching the back of his throat with his index finger, drifting off into his own little dream world. Once again the train came to a grinding halt, as it almost always did when it got to Rick’s station.

“Ricky Crane! Oh Ricky Crane! Earth to Ricky!”

“Twelve!” Rick yelled out. Some of the parents laughed.

Doug smacked his own forehead with open palm in disbelief and embarrassment.

“No Ricky. You are TWO. Remember that! You are TWO!”

I think in the three years that Rick participated in these drills he got it wrong all but twice, not because he was stupid but because he floated in and out of consciousness.

The count miraculously found its way to conclusion.

“Okay guys! Listen up! I want the ONES and FOURS …”

He was temporarily drowned out by a chorus of simultaneous moans and cheers as kids immediately sized up their strategies to see who they would be playing with. There were always some winners and some vocal losers.

“Hey quiet down!”

The groans subsided as the kids prepared to storm the field and lay claim to the position they wanted to play. They immediately started searching for their gloves—some to tie their sneakers. A couple of kids paced. Itchy Nick, and a few others, nervously plucked at their crotch as they rocked side to side on their feet, acting as if their bladders were about to explode. Others knelt down into a sprinter’s position waiting for the sound of the starting gun. They were all poised for the next command to get this thing going—even Rick had removed his finger from his mouth in full concentration.

“Okay, TWOS and THREES—” he paused as a teaser, feeling a certain amount of joy knowing that this was one of a handful of moments he, or anyone else for that matter, obtained the rapt attention of fifty kids between the ages of six and ten.

“Are—”

Even Johnny Alder’s nose stopped running.

“BATTING!”

And like a truckload of squirrels let loose on a chestnut tree farm, twenty five “ones and fours” scurried out onto the field to lay claim to their favorite positions, while the twenty five “twos and threes” scrambled to line up to bat.

Mr. Fitz took his place at the pitcher’s mound. My dad got behind the plate. Legions of locals lined up their lawn chairs along the sidewalk, tall tonics in hand, protected behind a six foot high hurricane fence.

It was time to play a little ball—a little Band Box Baseball.

To this day, I am not sure who actually dreamed up this game. I am equally puzzled by the name, “Band Box Baseball”. It really doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t believe it was a sponsored township activity, in the same way the little league was. It just may have been a few dads who wanted to have a little fun while giving first, second and third graders a chance to learn the game they so loved.

It was always played on Tuesday and Thursday nights at our local grammar school. The field itself was a paved playground. The only signs of grass were random clumps of weeds that somehow managed to grow through cracks in the asphalt. The part of the playground we used was in the far northern corner, the furthest from the back of the school. It was actually carved into the ground in order to make it level. The perimeter was defined by a four foot high cement wall that reached up to street level. Running along the top of the wall was a six foot high hurricane fence. The bases were painted right on the blacktop. Home plate was tucked into the corner where the street side of the playground, which became the right field foul line, and a property line boundary, which became the left field foul line, met at a right angle.

When you stood at home plate with bat in hand, you could see the looming backside of Linden Avenue School. The old, “L” shaped, burnt-orange brick building towered ominously like the Green Wall of Fenway Park. For some of the long ball hitters, the school windows were in play. They were large targets that beckoned, almost to the point of teasing the batter to swing wildly. It was the only time a kid had a shot at breaking windows, school windows no less, without punishment. And there were a few legendary ballplayers who came real close. For the rest of us, it was more about the dream.

Some kids brought their own bats but most of us used one of the five bats Mr. Fitz lugged up to the playground in a large dark green canvas bag. A good number of kids didn’t have gloves, so gloves had to be shared. As sides switched from fielding to hitting, kids coming off the field to bat would throw their gloves up into the air. The kids coming onto the field would run around catching the gloves as they plummeted to the ground.

I was fortunate enough to borrow dad’s softball mitt. It was huge. When I opened that baby up at short-stop to taunt opposing batters, it looked like a giant 10 foot clam yawning with a miniature human appendage attached. And I shared it. It was probably the only time I remember sharing anything with anybody so willingly, but this was Band Box Baseball. It was the right thing to do!

The ball that was used was a soft-coated rubber hardball. It was the same size as a baseball, but it had this white rubbery skin that had fake stitching pressed into it. There were two kinds. One was a dense and heavy ball, making it harder to hit further and more painful to catch. The preferred type was lighter and seemed to have a hollow center. It had this nasty “english” when its spin met the pavement, causing it to take some wild bounces. It made fielding one-hop grounders to short-stop, my favorite position, virtually impossible. However, as a batter you could crunch it, which meant the windows to Mr. Rice's classroom, a rather universally despised teacher, were in jeopardy, and that made it the official ball of the Band Box Players Association.

The game had some modifications to the standard rules of baseball. Well actually, it might be more accurate to say that it had only a couple of rules and they had little to do with baseball. One of the more prominent rules was that a batter could not strike out. Kids swung away at every pitch until the ball was hit into play. Sometimes “in play” had a rather broad interpretation.

Mr. Fitz pitched underhanded. He was real good at figuring out where and how fast batters swung the bat so he could pitch the ball into their swing zone; after all, he was an engineering professor at Steven’s Institute. He’d do anything if it meant getting the ball “in play”. Sometimes that took some real “doing”, like walking to within ten feet of some kids to pitch the ball into their stationary bat.

Another rule was that a team was done batting when everyone on the side had been up to the plate. That eliminated the need to keep track of outs. The remaining three rules were: hitters had to run the bases in the right direction, no swearing, and all final scores were 62 to 62.

One time, just to mix it up a bit, Mr. Fitz proclaimed the score to be 63-62 without identifying the winning team. It caused Doug and a few others great consternation. Doug tagged behind Mr. Fitz as he retreated to his station wagon with his green canvass equipment satchel in tow.

“Hey Mr. Fitz! Which team had 63?”

“Hey Mr. Fitz! I think we had 63!”

“Oh Mr. Fitzgerald? I have a question?”

“OH MR. FITZGERALD! WHY AREN’T YOU PAYING ATTENTION TO ME?”

To his credit, Mr. Fitz just kept moving ahead, paying little heed to Doug’s barrage. He had five kids of his own at home. Doug’s incessant cackling was small potatoes. To Doug’s credit, he was vigilant, like a dog on a bone. The next time we played, Doug waited at the curb. Mr. Fitz pulled up and Doug continued where he left off.

“Hey Mr. Fitz! Remember the last game?”

“Who won? Who had 63?”

To which Mr. Fitz brilliantly replied, “The winning team had 63, Dougie Crane, that’s who won!”

“All right! Thanks!”

Doug was satisfied for the moment while he chewed on the statement’s worthlessness. Mr. Fitz bought enough time to start up the game’s count off. Perplexed, Doug reluctantly let go, as he moved into a calculated position for the countdown.

There were several types of batters: the power hitter, the power runner, the powerless, the bat carriers and the bat throwers. The more renowned power hitters were: Oatey-ka-Boatey, Chucky, and Rye Bread. Whenever one of these guys got up, Mr. Fitz would adjust the outfield to block the gaps. He’d send three or four of the fastest players into the right field hinterlands to keep the ball from running out onto the street. Then he’d position a battery of kids in left field to keep the ball bouncing into thick hedges. The school walls covered center field and a large portion of left-center and right-center fields, leaving only the corners vulnerable to ball chasing injuries.

Short of losing a ball or a kid, there was one other thing Mr. Fitz was concerned about when the big bats were up. He didn’t want any of the dozen infielders or himself to get whacked in the head by a screaming line drive. He usually talked it up to the infielders, while he directed the gloves in the outfield. Satisfied that the infielders were alert and the gloves were in place, he’d turn his attention to the batter to start a little dialogue and get the action underway.

“Well look who’s up? If it isn’t the incorrigible Mr. Oates.”

“Hey Mr. Fitz, you better take your false teeth out. I don’t want to mess up that pretty smile.” A chorus of “oohs” rang out from fielders and batters alike.

The spunky Oatey was always good for a clever one-liner. He was a muscled squat whose crooked nose proudly displayed what happens when used to catch a pepper shaker rifled by an irate older brother over a slight dinner misunderstanding.

“Hey Mr. Fitz, don’t let him get away with that! Brush ‘em back!” screamed Chucky, standing in deep right, demonstrating he knew the subtleties of the game. Mr. Fitz smiled and pitched away.

BAM!

Oatey cracked a deep one over the tossed gloves of the five left fielders. The race was on. The bare pawed hounds chased the ball, disappearing deep into the hedges. A few seconds later the ball flew out of the brush like a roused quail. Oatey was already rounding second and on his way into third. A kid pounced on the wayward ball and whipped it, rolling to the ground from the effort—ball distance trumping ball aim. The streaking orb zoomed over the outreached gloves of three first basemen and smashed into the fence. Oatey raced home, clearing the bases, and met dad at the plate. Dad gratuitously executed his patented fake tag maneuver. Chucky, who started out in another zip code, somehow found his way to field the ball at first base. He winged it home about ten seconds too late to dad who was standing gloveless. He snagged it before it smacked an oblivious kid taking practice swings in the batter’s box.

The play was finally over. Gloves were thrown to the ground in disgust. Another big batter had just had his way. Another kid’s life was spared by dad’s lightning quick reflexes. Such was the chaotic action of Band Box Baseball when the sluggers batted.

Other than the slugger, the bat thrower was the other type of hitter that raised the alert from yellow to orange. But this was usually taken care of by moving the line of upcoming batters as far away as possible and asking them to curl up in balls like we had learned in the event of a nuclear attack. It was something we had become quite comfortable with.

The “bat carriers” insisted on taking the bat with them down to first base, as if it were a baton in a relay race. A few actually carried the bat completely around the bases, using it as a weapon to clear the base path.

Even more entertaining were the power runners. Doug was such a player. It didn’t matter where the ball scattered. He was determined to run the bases until one of two things occurred: he was tagged unconscious, or he ran out of bases. He was also known to occasionally pass one or two other runners in the process, launching the play into complete pandemonium, while giving fielders a chance to practice their throwing skills.

Last, but never least, was the kid who was powerless, the one who had to wear special shoes, the one who had to take a special bus to a special school, the one who was incapable of hitting a pitch and running the bases without assistance. Usually dad would help with his swing by standing behind him, reaching around, placing the batter’s small hands in the proper grip, and enveloping them with his own hands. Mr. Fitz would lay one in the strike zone. Dad would direct the bat to hit the ball back to Mr. Fitz and the choreography began—

Mr. Fitz knocks it to the ground barehanded. Dad reminds the kid to run to first base, sometimes chasing him down the third base line to do so. The kid, grinning from one jumbo ear to the other, runs to first base, sometimes stopping at the pitcher’s spot by mistake. Mr. Fitz bobbles the ball while fielders scream and carry on like wild banshees. The kid, churning his tiny short stride with head down, eventually arrives at first. Just as he steps on the base, Mr. Fitz launches the ball over the heads of a sea of first basemen who are screaming, “ME! ME! ME!”

A chaser grabs the ball and hurls it into center field, caroming off the school wall. The law of “distance over aim” applies once more. Our runner is waved into home as he steps on third base. He rests a moment for a little underwear adjustment and nose cleaning before he bolts for home. His face is lit with determination. After four relay tosses, Rye Bread has it at short-stop and wings it home. Dad bobbles the catch. The kid jumps with both feet smacking down on home plate. Dad makes the tag too late. Mr. Fitz declares, “SAFE!” Bedlam breaks out. There are town parades the next day.

Although the batters and runners were amusing, the real entertainment value came from the field.

One breed of fielder staked out small pieces of turf in some remote area of the outfield and planted themselves like squatters. They played their own game. Their “ready” position was usually to place their glove on top of their head like a hat while they squatted down to study an ant scurrying across the tar with a gnat in its clutches. When they heard the crack of the bat, they would snap to. Once assured the ball was not coming into their space, they would launch their bodies skyward in spastic response, poking their gloves at empty air, snagging an imaginary ball, and throwing it to some make-believe place, possibly robbing Roger Maris of his 61st.

Should a ball actually come within arm’s reach of their position, mysteriously, the mitt would remain on the head until it safely passed them by. Once cleared, they’d toss their mitt at the ball and make chase, only to be squeezed out of the play by another interesting fielding variant—the ball chaser.

The ball chasers were like a pack of wild desert dogs in predatory pursuit of a panicked wildebeest. From the time the ball left a bat until it found its way to the completion of the play, the ball chasers ran. Some scurried to the ball’s anticipated resting place, while some followed its route. My guess is that in the course of a normal night, they ran about thirty seven miles. They loved the sport of the hunt. Today we might say they have ADS. Back then they were just ball chasers.

Finally, the infield, and in the infield lived the chatterer, and when I talk about chattering, I have to talk about Moon Muller. He loved first base and he loved to antagonize batters.

Let me just start by saying, “Hey batta batta! Hey batta batta! Soo-wing batta batta!” was his. And to Moon it was small potatoes. His real talent was unleashed when a slugger came up. He took great pride in getting inside a big bat's head.

“Everyone in. Batta can’t hit! Everyone in!” Moon screamed to the thirteen outfielders.

“Oh yeah Moon. You’re gonna need Mr. Fitz’s false teeth, when I hit it down your throat.” Oatey announced while pointing his bat at Moon, ala Babe Ruth.

“Oh I’m scared! Oooooh! I’m shakin’ in my pants!” Moon countered, while knocking his knees together in feigned fear.

“It’s comin’ turd brain!” Oatey snapped.

Moon had gotten to him.

“Hey Mr. Oates, there are little kids around!” Mr. Fitz warned.

“But Mr. Fitz he started it.” Oatey complained.

“Mr. Muller, we know you can’t count but could try to play a little baseball and stop yakking down there.”

“Okay Mr. Fitz, but he still swings like a girl!” It was a cheap parting shot that struck a raw nerve.

“I’ll come down there and we’ll see who the girl is four eyes!” Oatey had lost it. Moon did it again.

Eventually, peace would be restored, until the next batter and then Moon would stir up the hive all over again, unable to contain his need to yap. Being the quiet type, I always had a strange respect for the “Moon Mullers” of Band Box Baseball. They gave it a harmless grittiness that tickled me for some reason.

Mr. Fitz carried on Band Box Baseball a year or two after I moved on to the more organized and serious little league. At some point he left to coach little league but only after getting smacked directly on the ear by a smoking line drive off the bat of Doug, possibly payback for not telling Doug who won that game. He actually was injured quite severely, permanently losing some hearing in that ear. But he continued to help out nightly, although he turned the pitching over to Moon Muller’s dad and my dad.

I have heard the game still goes on today, carried into the next generation untainted by the cry for T-ball. That doesn’t surprise me. It had to survive. It’s Band Box Baseball after all. It was a game that reached beyond the legions of loose toothed kids and doting parents. It actually gave life to the lifeless, even if momentary. I wouldn’t say that unless I had witnessed it with my own eyes.

Otto Vanderbeek lived several houses down the street from us and was the neighborhood troll. He perpetually guarded his precious little postage stamp piece of lawn from birds, squirrels, cats, dogs and kids. Even his living room furniture was arranged so he could sit shot-gun at a window. His disdain for boys, especially the Crane and Fitzy boys, was the catalyst for many calls into the police, as documented by four or five entries in the weekly police blotter of the “Glen Ridge Paper”. It was also the reason he was the number one target on Mischief Night.

He was a cantankerous, angry old man whose fury I suspect came not from our occasional trespasses but rather from being married to a woman named “Gertrude”. No disrespect to the hundreds of “Gertrudes” out there who I am sure are perfectly fine people, but when I hear the name “Gertrude”, I get this unexplainable shiver up and down my spine, as if someone stepped on my grave.

To Otto’s credit, his lawn was the envy of all on the block. And it should have been! Hell, he cut each blade individually with mustache scissors and watered them with an eye dropper. Most of the folks on the block raised three or four kids or spoiled a dozen grandchildren. Otto raised and spoiled ten million seedlings. The truth is the Vanderbeeks were not unique on the street. Every block had a few “Otto and Gertrude” types, older couples who traded in raising offspring for the chance to grow Kentucky Blue and Rhododendron. I suspect that holds true today as well.

As bad as he was though, mom instilled in us to be respectful, to be courteous and to be glad we weren’t like him. Being the sensitive type, I felt sorry for him truthfully. If he could have just lightened up a bit, he would have been fine. But I was sure Gertrude had an iron-clad grip on him.

In my mind, people come in two types: the miserable and the truly miserable. Otto was truly miserable—with the exception of two hours every Tuesday and Thursday night in the spring. Those nights he’d walked five blocks to discreetly stand behind the hurricane fence that protected deep right field at Linden Avenue School. I’d see him sometimes from short-stop—usually while the game was delayed as the chasers were trying to convince the Schneider’s German Shepherd to stop gnawing on the ball. He’d just stand there and watch.

By game’s end he would vanish. I was always fascinated by that. He came and went, standing alone, gripping the hurricane fence as he leaned forward to watch us play. Never a smile. Never a peep.

One night I managed to hitch a ride home with Mr. Fitz. After piling out of his family wagon, I started the trek up the street to my house, which rested at the crest of the hill on the opposite side—the Vanderbeek side. Dusk had settled in. I didn’t notice Otto crawling around on all fours talking to his blades in some foreign language. I crossed the street too soon and found myself on the sidewalk that passed his front yard. The same sidewalk he guarded like a centurion. Had I known, I would have stayed on the other side to avoid upsetting him by my mere presence. It was too late though. I was committed.

I kept my head down as I walked by quietly.

“Bobby Crane!” he squawked.

Damn.

“Hello Mr. Vanderbeek,” I acknowledged sheepishly, keeping my head down to avoid eye contact, awaiting some angry warning.

“Nice double play tonight son,” he said.

I stopped to look at him.

A hint of a grin seemed to grace his face. Not a big one mind you because his facial muscles were not trained for that but it was a grin nonetheless. I was shocked.

“Gee … thanks Mr. Vanderbeek!”

He nodded his head and returned to watering. I was dumbfounded.

“Good night,” I said as I turned to make my way home.

“Good night.”

He continued on with his lawn.

In the short time it took me to get to my front porch, I had realized maybe Mr. Vanderbeek wasn’t so bad after all. As I had guessed, he just needed to lighten up a little.

And that’s why we will always need Band Box Baseball.