Our Grandpa's Game

    They attended their big-league baseball games on the radio. Although they had never seen Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis, they imagined what it looked like. It was green and symmetrical, not unlike the converted pasture where they played on Sunday.
     Our ancestors had not seen Dizzy and Paul in person, but most knew someone who had. They knew Diz was tall and lanky, with a shock of unruly dark hair. His uniform didn’t fit quite right, and he had a quick country grin. Many young men in their community looked like that.
     They sat on green benches on the courthouse lawn and talked about Stan Musial. In their playing days, they had tried to emulate his stance. He batted left-handed, hunched in an awkward slouch, with his bat pointed straight up. They had seen it on the radio.
     Our grandpas told us about Musial’s heroics and Enos Slaughter’s mad dash from first base to score the winning run in the 1946 World Series. Some claimed to have met the great Lon Warneke, he was a county judge down in Garland County. They compared Bob Gibson to Ole Lon. Most thought Warneke was better. After all, they were there, listening on the radio when he pitched for the Cards.
     Most of our grandpas played. Many played better in their memories. Some told of playing some pro baseball, and many of them actually did. It was a way to make a living when a job playing a boy’s game was preferable to a coal mine or a struggling farm.