To Be or Not to Be

To Be or Not To Be . . .
A Sissy-Crybaby-Mama’s Boy
(or "This one's for you Albert (Gore)")
(Excerpt from "Red Bugs, Moonshine & the Book of Leviticus")

The Dixie League baseball teams had ended their season. These were the dog days of summer now, where the mercury would top 100 degrees many times before the start of the next school year. The Dixie League teams were made up of boys ages 9-12. The nine and ten year olds rarely got to play, but they were afforded an opportunity to practice and hone their skills with their more advanced teammates. They were also taught that patience and diligence would eventually pay off.

During the season, no kid under nine years of age could so much as touch a grain of dirt or a blade of grass on the playing field unless accompanied by a "real" league player. The penalty for such an infraction would likely be a sock in the eye or a kick right in the stomach from a much older kid. I didn’t take to pain very well. I figured that I’d just wait out the season at which time the place would be open to all.

It was the crack of dawn. The sun was not yet blazing. Little boy fists were excitedly pounding on our back door. I opened it, still half asleep. "Grab your glove and come on, we’re getting up a game," Jim Beau and Russell and Tommy were all instructing me at the same time.

"Hurry!" one of them said as I slowly walked back to my room to put on my clothes. They all followed me. "Come on, Kenny, kick it into high gear," Jim Beau said.

"You gotta make hay while the sun shines," Russell added.

"For Pete’s sake Russell, shut up!" Jim Beau responded.

"I ain’t going to shut up—it’s a free country!"

Just as the eight year old equivalent of a bar brawl was about to break out in my bedroom, my mother stepped into the doorway.

"Boys, boys, boys. It’s a little early for this isn’t it?" my mother asked.

Was she condoning the behavior and merely objecting to the timing? What if it occurred after cocktail hour? Would this behavior then be acceptable? Are a mother’s comments to eight year old boys really responsible for future bar brawls? I wish I had thought to question my mother about this at the time, but like I said, I was still half asleep.

We ran from house to house collecting other boys as we went. Timothy Philpot was the same age as us, but he had an older brother named Mark. Mark was a baseball legend, which brings us to the point of this whole thing. Mark was ten, we were only eight, and he had seen action in the last game of the season. He scored the winning run. The game was tied, but the coach had a winning strategy.

"Philpot!" The coach called to the dugout. "Get up here Philpot! You’re on deck!"

Mark looked around as if there were anyone else named Philpot there in the dugout.

"Philpot, I want you to get up there and crowd the plate." The coach lowered his voice, but it was still loud enough for us to hear every word as we clung to the fence. "Oates will try to brush you back. When he does, lean into the ball."

"What?" Mark asked as if he had misunderstood.

"You heard me Philpot. Now, get up there and take it like a man."

Mark trembled as he walked slowly to the plate. He looked back at the dugout, where the entire team stood watching him.

"We’re counting on you Philpot!" the coach yelled.

Just as he had been instructed, Mark crowded the plate. The first pitch was low and inside. Mark continued hugging the plate. The next pitch was a fastball, high and inside. Way inside. Mark turned just as if he was trying to avoid the pitch. He didn’t. Square in the back. Mark hit the ground and rolled in agony. The coach ran to his injured player, as if he were completely surprised at what had just occurred.

"Philpot, are you ok?" the coach asked as he knelt down beside him.

"I think so," Mark moaned, trying to hold back the tears. I could tell he wanted to cry, but his mama isn’t here, so, what would the point be? He had taken the pitch like a man. Don’t ruin it by crying now, I thought.

"Shake it off, Mark!" I yelled from outside the chain link fencing. "Shake it off" means; "this is a man’s game, don’t embarrass yourself and your whole family by acting like a sissy-crybaby-mama’s boy. This was a pivotal moment in the life of a 10 year old boy. What he did in the next two minutes would determine how he would be seen by others for the rest of his life.

Fifty years from now, one of the other players would run into Mark Philpot on the street. They would each have their grandsons with them. They would greet each other.

"Afternoon," they would each say. They would introduce their grandsons and talk about the weather. Depending on what Mark Philpot did right now, this minute, would determine the rest of the conversation. If he shakes it off, the old man on the street will tell the two grandsons the story of a boy hero. He will look at Mark’s grandson as he tells the story. "Your grandfather," he would say, "once took a 65 or 70 mile an hour fastball right in the back. I know that it must have hurt like the dickens, but he didn’t cry, he just shook it off and took his base." Mark would swell with pride as his grandson absorbed the story.

On the other hand, if Mark cried, the conversation on the street would end with no mention of the incident. As they walked away, the old man would tell his grandson how the Mr. Philpot that they were just talking to, had once gotten hit in the back with a baseball and cried like a baby.

"He probably is still a sissy-crybaby-mama’s boy," the old man would say.

The old man’s grandson would respond, "I expect his grandson is too, paw paw."

"Mark got up," the crowd screamed and applauded him.

His little brother Timothy leaned into me, breathed a sigh of relief, and said, "I thought he’d cry for sure."

"I knew he wouldn’t cry," I responded.

"I was just thinking," Timothy shared, "If he’d started squalling, I was going to ask your mother if I could come and live with you. I wouldn’t eat much and I could sleep under your bed. I would tell everybody at school that there had been a terrible mix-up in the hospital and that I wasn’t really related to him at all."

"Take your base!" the homeplate umpire screamed. Mark took second on a wild pitch, and scored on a double to right field. The crowd went ballistic. I was happy for him. I know his grandson will be proud, too . . . someday.