A Hero the Mouse Once Saw

Not too many years ago, in a city not so far away, there lived a young man – actually, only a boy, no more than 14 years old – who was profoundly gifted in what some would call, a trivial art. He could hit a baseball. Folks of many different colors in that very southern and unrepentant city used to gather around on weekend afternoons to watch this young fellow take batting practice. His practice field was the school yard of the old Emerson Elementary at the foot of Palmetto Street. It was one of the older schools in the city, naturally segregated, naturally dilapidated, but for all that, still blessed with a yard large enough to hold the drives the youngster sent off his bat. Well. Not actually large enough. The leftfield “fence” – there was no fence – was only about 300 feet from the makeshift home plate. The backs of a row of shanties lay beyond that point, so the unwritten rule was that the boy was not to hit the ball into left field. Two very tall walnut trees stood in centerfield. To give you an idea of this boy’s skills with a bat, by the end of summer those trees would be leafless, their limbs scraped clean by the thousands of balls the boy had driven into them.

He was what sportswriters would have called a “phenom.” The Mouse, only a boy himself, would join those crowds who gathered there to watch the gifted batter prune those walnut trees. I remember sitting on one of a scattering of old wooden Coca Cola boxes, the kind that held 24 bottles, watching the “natural” do his thing. He didn’t seem at all self conscious. He just stood there at home plate, the bat tightly cocked, spring-loaded, as it were, held in a pair of hands that seemed too large for him. He was tall for a 14 year old, nearly six feet, but not fleshed out, nothing on his bones it seemed but wiry muscle.

He had a friend who pitched batting practice for him, a boy about his age that he called Fruitcake. This kid was good, too. Not phenom-good like the slugger, but good enough to pitch the ball exactly where the practice demanded. He could also throw a beautiful round-house curve, one of those great looping pitches that seems headed at your head, but smoothly bends across the plate, knee high, letter high, inside, outside – exactly where he meant it to go. To us mortals, that curve ball looked unhittable, but the boy with the bat in his hands never missed. Swat! Swat! Swat! Every pitch zooming into those trees . . . or so it seems now.

And it may have been. That young boy with the bat in his hand, grew up to be a real ball player. His name was Henry “Hank” Aaron, the greatest homerun hitter of all time. The city was Mobile, Alabama, where now the baseball stadium is named for the phenom, and a main street, too. The city that in those old days would not let Henry Aaron drink from the same water fountain in Kress’s dime store – the words “White” and “Colored” were set in tiles above the two fountains – now honors him as “one of theirs.” Let’s just say, times have changed, and let us hope that people have too. I suspect they have, for times cannot change unless people do.

But forget that. Today is not for social commentary. It’s for bragging. “I saw him when he was a kid!” “I saw him before he was famous!” He was one of me. There were others, too. Mobile is today more famous for its ballplayers than for that Yankee who damned the torpedoes. Willie McCovey played over at Choctaw Park, about a half-mile down on Washington Avenue, where I’m told black and white kids played together even when it was illegal. Billy Williams, the sweet-swinging Chicago Cub, grew up in the county, out near Whistler, I think. The three of them, Aaron, McCovey, Williams . . . they’re all in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and deservedly so. They were great players . . . all three of them, black kids who grew up within a few miles of each other.

Down the road from Emerson School – the other way – was McGill Catholic High School, famous also for its athletes, Vincent Dooley, Hall of Fame football coach, and Frank and Milton Bolling, all of them contemporaries of Aaron’s and the Mouse’s. Frankie made the all-star team in the National league, and Milton was shortstop for the Red Sox, his career cut short by an injury. Frankie and Aaron were at one time teammates on the Milwaukee Braves. Hard to believe. All those great athletes – from one medium size city in Alabama, in the same three year period.

Satchel Paige – another baseball Hall of Famer – probably attended Emerson School, too. He grew up in the neighborhood, but that would have been before Aaron and the Mouse were born, so I can only report Paige’s attendance in those hallowed halls as a rumor, one so good that if it isn’t true, it ought to be.

Aaron’s mother was a house maid. My mother owned and operated a domestic employment agency, and Hank’s mother was one of her steady clients. Those ladies worked to make ends meet, but I do not know how they did it on the $3 or $4 dollars a day they were paid. I suppose they were as diligent in their way as Aaron was in his. Think about it: how many swings of the bat a 14 year old would have to make to wear two trees bare that were always sprouting new leaves. He had to believe in himself. He had to know. But he was so calm, so unpretentiously good . . . .

And that’s how he still is, Aaron the man, calmly walking through life, and along the way, just incidentally, knocking the living daylights out of baseballs as only a phenom could.