When The Oklahoma Kid Did Not Infest My Childhood Dreams-Complete With Reasons

By Sam Lowell

Recently on an airplane ride of some duration I did a little light reading to pass the time. The book I was perusing by the well-known late crime novelist Robert B. Parker was a fictionalized account of the trials and tribulations of the legendary baseball player and heroic breaker of the color-line in Major League baseball Jackie Robinson-and his white bodyguard. That later part carrying the bulk of the fiction around the story. One of the subplots in the story is the utter devotion of a young male baseball fan who whiled away many hours dealing with players, their statistics and their teams. That dedication to task got me to thinking about others whose spent their lonely or forlorn childhoods in that manner. The great Beat novelist Jack Kerouac even had imaginary leagues and all kinds of statistical materials. Others, some well- known, some not had similar stories.

Not me. Not me despite growing up in one of the golden ages of major league baseball when it was for all intends and purposes the dedicated national pastime. This before the endlessly boring football fouled the airwaves and our Sundays and other television nights. I grew up in the 1950s, in the post Brooklyn to Los Angeles and New York to San Francisco times when the leagues reached nation-wide levels despite the crying, the continual crying if I hear right about the diehards, of the Dodgers and Giants leaving the town bereft. My time was the time of New York Yankees run when they were almost unstoppable if healthy. And maybe that is why I was nonplussed by baseball, by counting major league players and their stats and whatever else was going on in that world.          

This was the time of stand-out star Mickey Mantle, the Oklahoma Kid who could hit homers, bring in runs and hit for average like nobody’s business. But let’s look at it this way even though I was no homer for the then horrible Boston Red Sox how could a kid from the waterfront projects relate to such athletic prowess from out in dustbowl Oklahoma. Funny, because I loved to deal with numbers too. Sorry Jack and cast but your devotion leave me cold.