Press Box
THE other players in our first league were Bob, two Davids and two Marks, all Average Joe American names. Rolling the dice in
life and baseballOfficially, we called ourselves the Cincinnati Reds, Texas Rangers, New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Pittsburgh Pirates and Los Angeles Dodgers.
You see, us young teenagers were managers of major league teams. It was 1974. Nixon was about to resign and in a real sense, the lingering youthful Spirit of America, 1960s-style, was about to die --driven by, what else?, a Ford.
All we needed to get us through that blazing summer were some dice, paper, pencils, treats from the ice cream man and a huge imagination.
There would be more players and teams to come as fall approached -- the St. Louis Cardinals (another Bob), Oakland A's (Mike) and Chicago White Sox (Dennis), to name a few.
One player switched to the Baltimore Orioles and a newcomer (Brian) took over the Yankees.
The pro baseball world was right there on our backyard picnic tables and in our family rooms, just a year or two before we would be faced with slightly tougher decisions than which players to insert in the lineup. Soon enough, girls, cars, high school sports, SATs and the temptation of alcohol and drugs would take up our time.
It's amazing how simple it was back then, in our innocence. And, oh, how fun.
By the simple spin of the dice, Pete Rose could leadoff with a double, setting the stage for Joe Morgan, Tony Perez and Johnny Bench. And, if they failed, you could rely on George Foster, Ken Griffey, Cesar Geronimo or Dave Concepcion.
But, those rival Dodgers were always hard to beat -- with Ron Cey, Davey Lopes, Steve Garvey, Jim Wynn, Bill Russell, Reggie Smith and Steve Yeager.
If you tried hard enough, you could magically will the dice to go your way. And you needed to be rolling your own lucky dice to win. No one else's would do.
Some games would get called for darkness, which happened when someone's mom yelled, "It's time for dinner, now!"
And, just think, all of this fun we had was before we ever saw a video game. It's amazing how we had such a good time without any electronic gadgetry.
This uncomplicated dice baseball game we invented could never hold the imagination of today's kids.
IN A SEVEN-GAME SERIES, my Reds beat the A's for our second league title. Of course it felt great, but isn't that what every World Series champion says?
One of the kids, instead of using a real pro roster, decided to use all of our names as players, and he named the team the Grace Circle Giants -- after the street we lived on. We were excited to see how we'd fare on an imaginary major league team.
And we enjoyed the Giants' first game, but soon the mundane reality overwhelmed us. Sure, we all vicariously did our jobs, but no matter how big our imaginations, our own names paled in comparison to the major league stars. And the game itself soon withered and yielded to real life.
Now, we're all grown up, rolling the dice of life.
And like "Charlie Hustle," us grown-ups try to scrap out a double and set the table for the rest of the Big (pick any color --Red, if you like) Machine.