Dale Murphy once again failed to earn a plaque in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. Murphy was an exceptional center fielder for the Atlanta Braves. He hit 398 home runs, had a career batting average of .265, was twice named National League Most Valuable Player, was selected seven times as an All-Star, with five Gold Glove and four Silver Slugger awards. But the committees that selected new inductees, including the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee that voted Sunday, have repeatedly left him disappointed.
I never followed Murphy’s 18 year career from 1976 through 1993. As a New York Yankees fan, I didn’t see National League players except when they played the Bronx Bombers in a World Series. There were no inter-league games back when Murphy played. The Braves never played in the World Series during his career.
I bring up Dale Murphy’s career because a few weeks ago I officially ended my seven decade softball career, most of which I played wearing a Dale Murphy signature mitt. With pickleball encompassing my active sports time, I transferred to my son Dan my Dale Murphy mitt and my softball cleats. It has taken me these several weeks to accept the reality my softball days are over.
I started playing softball my first summer in sleepaway camp, 1956. I was seven.
Before heading off to Camp Massad Aleph in Tannersville, PA, my father took me to a sporting goods store on Kings Highway in Brooklyn to buy a softball mitt. My father had little knowledge of the game, so he was more than a little “farmisht” when the Bobby Shantz glove model I had chosen priced out at $20. Reluctantly, after more than a little begging on my part, he paid the asking price. I played with that glove for the next 20 years, replacing it only when the inside padding disintegrated in the palm of my left hand, about 40 years ago.
Dale Murphy replaced Bobby Shantz. Bobby Shantz was a pitcher, a southpaw. Still alive at 100, Shantz pitched for the Yankees when they beat the Milwaukee Braves in the 1958 World Series. As a Philadelphia Athletic, he was named the 1952 American League Most Valuable Player.
I pitched softball in pick-up games and organized leagues. A few friends from work at Lebhar-Friedman formed a team in a Bronx league. Named Loco Focos after a radical group from the 1800s, the team played Sunday mornings in Van Cortland Park, Allerton Avenue park, and fields along the lower Bronx River Parkway. We were not good.
Then I played for Lebhar-Friedman’s business league team in Central Park, on a field at 110 street next to the FDR Drive and on a field under the 59th Street bridge once the tennis bubble was taken down. We named our team The Chain Gang after Chain Store Age. One of the teams we played was from a police precinct. The cops thought our name meant we were ex-cons.
We were competitive but not unbeatable so our Hispanic players recruited a player, Jose, a much better pitcher than I. Lebhar-Friedman required all team members to be company employees. No problem. Roger Friedman green-lighted his employment in our mailroom.
Jose worked for L-F for several years but the baseball gods were less kindly to another mailroom denizen. Victor (I think that was his name) played left center field. In the bottom of the last inning of a game against another publishing company we had a three run lead. But they were rallying. They narrowed the score to a one run deficit. Two outs. Bases loaded. Jose got the batter, the president of their company, to hit a sinking line drive directly at Victor. He did not have to move. He reached down for the ball but it sank below his glove and flew right between his legs for a game winning hit.
The next day Victor lost his mailroom job.
After our second child was born in late 1981 I decided to join the Brotherhood team of Temple Israel Center, part of the Westchester Hebrew Softball League. I was enthusiastically welcomed by all but the pitcher I replaced. Michael protested that the team was still losing. He dismissed the argument that though we were losing the scores were much tighter, single digits instead of double digits when he pitched.
Michael took his beef to the TIC Brotherhood committee. They sympathized but advised him to hang up his spikes. Instead he changed temples.
Within a few years the TIC team played in the league championship game against Jewish Community Center (now called Kol Ami). That year we had three first basemen. One broke his elbow earlier in the season. Two others were returning from travel when the game began. A player of lesser quality started in their place. JCC’s first two batters hit ground balls to our shortstop. His throws were mishandled. Instead of two outs, JCC scored three unearned runs.
One of our veteran first basemen showed up in the second inning. JCC managed just two more runs over the final eight innings. Facing JCC’s ace pitcher, Joel, TIC scored three runs. We lost 5-3. I’ve always said we won the last eight innings, but softball is a nine inning game.
Some years later JCC/Kol Ami’s team disbanded. Joel joined the TIC team. He started most games; I played Mariano Rivera closing out the last few innings. In 2006 Joel pitched us to a championship against the team from Greenburgh Hebrew Center in a game marred by a fight at home plate started by Greenburgh’s catcher after one of our runners slid home, successfully. Both combatants were thrown out of the game.
A week later I was confronted by a past president of the Brotherhood. He vehemently asserted our team had disgraced TIC because of the fight, that we should give back our trophy. As he wasn’t at the game I asked who told him about the incident. He said his daughter was there.
I told him she was wrong. For the next three years we never spoke, until he approached me one day to apologize. What prompted his change of heart? Seems his daughter no longer was married to the catcher!
Joel left our team a few years later. I went back to being the starter. But my fastball had lost some, perhaps lots of, zip. The team had regressed offensively and defensively. But the real reason I stopped playing at 65 was that I no longer enjoyed the burden of waking up at 7 am every Sunday from April through October for a 9 am game. My pickleball games usually start at 2 pm.
