When The Game Was Pure

The American pass time, played by the boys of summer, its been an American treasure
for over 150 years and now played in many countries around the world. Today baseball
is facing some hard times with many players being suspended for drug use as the game
try's to take back its heritage. But the truth is the game as always had players that would
cheat to get an advantage on the other team, all the players know it, the teams know it
and we the fans know it. From pitchers who would doctor the balls to batters who would
doctor the bats. Somehow we the fans have excepted it as part of the game.

But I remember when the game was pure, where there were no doctored bats or balls
there were no performance enhancing drugs and their were know adults in sight to screw
things up. All across America on sand lots, parks and places big enough to play a game
we loved. It was summer time and school was out, we would get up eat some breakfast
and we were out the door heading for our local ballfield on foot or on your bike with
your glove a bat and ball if you had one.

I grew up in a small town in New Jersey named Dunellen, and this was a lot of my
summer time from about 9 years old to about 12 or 13. There were a couple of places
in town where you could play baseball and I would go to a field we called weed
stadium. When I was about 9 it had a chain link back stop and some base lines, later
the town put up a little league field with fences and dugouts and the hole 9 yards.
We would meet at the field and pick teams, we rarely had enough kids for 9 players
on each side, so we would adapt. Sometimes we would only have four players on a
side so two players in the outfield center and left and two infielders third and short
stop. Each team would pitch to themselves sometimes we would run bases and
sometime not depending on how many players there were. With just 4 players on
a each side, we could not hit the ball to right field, on the fly or on the ground. If
you ever played like this, well you no the rules you made up for the amount of
players you had.

I also remember a player who was always there a girl by the name of Evelyn
Charmer, she could play ball as good or better then any of the guys. Yea, that
was a time when baseball was pure, it was played for the love of the game. Now
I wonder if I was to go back to my old home town if there were kids still doing
that, still playing for the love of the game with know adults in site. Well I kind
of dough it, it was a different time when life was much simpler.