| Life 'n Times In Cowboy Country
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Stolen Bases
By Mag Mawhinney
Organization has stolen the freedom from our children's playgrounds. Kids are holding onto their creative thinking powers by a hair. This I recently discovered while watching a young girls' softball game. Nothing about it resembled the way it was in the 50s.
In those days, there were no coaches batting balls to a field full of nail biting, uniformed kids and barking orders to the ones who stepped out of position. In our school yard, Scrub rules--and I say that loosely--were yelled out by the kid with the biggest mouth--usually the oldest in our one-room school. And he or she could always be challenged.
To play this rotation softball game, you had to run when the bell rang to grab the base you wanted. Part of the fun was to argue over who tagged the base first, and sometimes, recess was over before the game started. Then the race would begin again at lunch hour, and more arguing, until the mouth settled it; or we finally realized the little kid holding the bat would be banished to right field in no time. That meant you could move one position closer to a batting spot, which, of course, was the most fun. As a base runner, you had to get home on your own turn at bat or by the hits of the two other batters; otherwise, you'd soon be the one yawning in right field. Therefore, it was always a good strategy to place the ball over the head of the kid with the dangling shoelaces. And since everyone was an umpire, if you felt you got a bum call, you waited until it was "pay back time". If someone stomped off to sulk because he was called "out", he soon discovered that he had nobody to play with. All but the first graders were playing the game.
Our softball uniforms were our school clothes. The closest thing to striped, skin-tight jerseys were last year's jeans, sporting patches running down both legs. You didn't get a bench penalty if they were dirty, because nobody cared; furthermore, there were no benches. You didn't get chastised if you left your jacket at home, because no sponsor's name was embossed on it anyway. Nobody owned $200.00 brand-named runners or boots with little spikes in the bottoms. If you were lucky enough to have sneakers, they were those canvas kind with rubber soles so thick they could have been used to retread the tires on Grampa's tractor. If there were holes in the toes, it was a bonus; you could grip the baseboards better for take-off.
Gloves? With two pockets and an aerodynamic grip? Forget it. Nobody owned a glove. In the classroom, if you didn't hold your pencil in a swollen, red palm, you weren't playing the game right. A sprained thumb or finger was your badge of honour. If the school was lucky enough to get a new ball for the year, we bashed it on a rock to soften it up. It had to be seasoned just right for proper execution. Besides, a slippery, hard cover was murder on the hands, regardless of your expertise at pulling back at point of contact. If you were the back catcher, you had to stand way back and grab the ball on first bounce. Your only padding was the pile of dust at home plate.
The diamond didn't have soft bags for sliding, so it was stand-up base running only. Usually, there was a board missing for one of the bases, so if the runner stepped on the baseman's foot before he was tagged, he was automatically "safe"--Rule #5. We didn't have a manicured outfield either. You knew where the gopher holes were located by the mounds of dirt routed up and became quite adept at jumping over them on a dead run. It improved your dexterity and became part of the game. Chalk lines were unheard of. We just followed the trail of tamped-down crab grass.
We played pick-up games on Sundays. If only four kids showed up, we played �500�, and if the kid who owned the bat didn�t come, we�d find a suitable hunk of cordwood. Sometimes, we could only play three-cornered catch. When we got bored, we changed the throwing order or moved farther away from each other.
So, you see, creativity and improvisation played a great role in kids' lives in the 50s. Part of the fun was to think for yourself and make up your own rules. But the freedom to BE--just to PLAY--was the greatest joy of all.