Thrower, the Pitcher
I was in the sixth grade in the West Columbia Elementary School. I loved to play softball, but was one of the worst players in school. I could barely run because I was pigeon-toed and knock-kneed. Besides that, I was just naturally clumsy. I had never been able to run the way other kids could.
We lived on the southwest edge of town. We had a cow, three calves and a pig. The cow was usually staked out in the daytime for good grass beside the highway that ran in front of our house.
I pretended to be a pitcher on an imaginary baseball team. I chose one particular board on the cow shed and pitched to it, with a natural mark on that board being knee-high and another about neck-high. For a long time I just pitched to strike the “batter” out. I got to be pretty accurate. With time I increased the speed of the ball until I had a pretty fast and accurate pitch. I struck out a lot more “batters” than I walked, and developed an underhanded fast spin on the ball.
That year the sixth grade classes had exactly 36 boys, just enough for four softball teams. For some reason I never understood the nine best players were put on “Team A” and so on until the worst nine were on “Team D.” I was natural “Team D” material.
We had a double round robin tournament. Team A had one boy who could knock the ball completely out of the ball park when he connected. We were all awed by his long hits.
I don’t remember which team Billy Richards (Slaven) was on. Slaven’s mother was my Cub Scout den leader. In the eleventh grade, Slavin and I went to school together at Brazosport High School, and later we were roommates at the University of Texas.
Anyhow, our round robin tournament took place as planned. Team D batted poorly, but other pitchers walked a lot of our players. So, we did make some scores. Also, my pitching kept them from getting hits. Few opponents could hit my fast ball, and the spin I had developed made the ones who did hit pop the ball up into the air for pop flies. Our players scrambled enough that we got most of the hitters out.
Beating Team C was a real feather in our caps. We had not expected to win any games at all. But, their pitcher could pitch only slow balls and we got a lot of hits. Team B was our next opponent and we beat them, too, for the same reasons.
We ended up in the championship game with Team A, with all their heavy hitters. But, their pitcher also could only pitch slow balls. I was the only pitcher that could pitch a fast ball. We won the championship undefeated, much to everyone’s surprise.