This story is part of our ongoing series From the Ground Up, a collaboration between Narratively and ScottsMiracle-Gro exploring the lives, memories, and connections rooted in the yards, fields, and green spaces we call home.
In 1977, at the age of 10, I began to follow Major League Baseball with an almost religious devotion. Soon after, I found myself wanting to emulate the big-name home run hitters of that era like Reggie Jackson, Mike Schmidt, and Dave “King Kong” Kingman. Luckily, the backyard of my home in Casper, Wyoming, was an ideal place to imitate their athletic feats. I taught myself to swing a bat and make consistent contact with a baseball. Most of the time, I used tennis balls, as an airborne cowhide wasn’t friendly to windows. I eventually started to hit the ball long enough for it to easily cross over the ivy-covered, but unstable wooden backyard fence that resembled the outfield wall in my beloved Wrigley Field. Eventually, other kids from around the neighborhood, including my younger brother Raymond, started to gravitate to me whenever I grabbed my glove, bat and ball. They wanted to be a part of the fun, and I was more than happy to oblige.
The married couple across the alley would often yell at us because our home runs landed in their backyard on a daily basis during baseball season. They got really upset if a ball destroyed one of their bedded plants upon returning to earth. One spring evening, as the middle-aged gentleman grudgingly handed me back a batted tennis ball that came close to knocking him out, he suggested, “Why don’t you guys use Wiffle balls?”
Raymond and I took the man’s advice, using our $2.50 biweekly allowances. We soon found out that these hard plastic balls would start to tear apart after fifty good whacks, but they still managed to cross the alleyway and land in our neighbors’ flower beds and patio. But now they would throw the balls back to us without complaint. I think it started to become a bit of a fun ritual for them to spot a ball somewhere in their backyard haven and toss it back. I even began to visit them when they were outside; sometimes I was even offered a snack or a cold drink, and we’d chat in their well-maintained lawn. The man once reminisced about the baseball legends of his day like Bob Feller, Stan Musial, and Ted Williams. Eventually, we obtained permission to fetch the balls anytime we needed.
We didn’t just hit the ball around in my backyard on South Lincoln. Entire imitation baseball games were played. The middle of the yard made up the infield. First base was dwarfed by branches of a Cottonwood tree, which often kept batted balls from landing next door, where a ferocious dog lived. The top of a large, flat stone, which made up part of the rock walk from the back door of the house to the backyard gate, was second base. A large, prickly bush became third base. Many foul balls got stuck there. Trying to get a Wiffle ball out of that bush when it was caught in one of its inner branches could take what seemed like forever, and subjected us to more than a few scratches over the course of the season, beginning as early as mid-March and lasting until the end of October — or whenever the harsh central Wyoming climate would dictate.
Because there were just a handful of us, we used dodgeball rules. After making contact at bat, I’d run in my Kmart-issued Trax athletic shoes across the soft grass as if my life depended on it, hoping to not get hit with the Wiffle ball before reaching safety!
The home plate area in the backyard had really been grassy when my family first moved in. By the end of that first summer, it and the middle of the yard needed some TLC. My parents would often complain about this. They told my brother and me to quit playing in the backyard so the landlord wouldn’t have a reason to evict us. We didn’t listen, but surprisingly, the landlord never made a serious issue out of this either. Maybe he was a baseball fan.
We kids would really get into some bad spats over calls (we umpired ourselves via shaky consensus), as if our very pride depended upon getting our own way. Usually, it would be the older boys versus the younger ones, and we older guys got away with forcing our subjective umpiring through. Still, many games were stopped over heated arguments, resulting in contest delays of minutes, hours, or even days, especially on the rare occasions that the older siblings were getting beat late in the game.
We would eventually use our next-door neighbor’s backyard (not the one with the ominous canine) because their “infield” was more spacious. Home plate faced the home’s lush green exterior, and center field to the right field foul line imitated Fenway Park’s fabled Green Monster. To hit a homer anywhere over left-center field to the left field foul line, the ball would have to scale a series of trees and tall bushes that bordered my family’s backyard. I’ll never forget the milestone that our friend Richard accomplished on that ground. He once slammed seven consecutive pitches for home runs off of his younger brother, stoking the flames of their already heated sibling rivalry.
Games would even occur in the rain, our blue jeans and T-shirts so grassy and muddy after nine innings that Mom laundered our clothes separately from the rest of the wash.
I’d even bat a ball around when snow lingered on the ground during wintertime if I had the urge, anticipating when the yellow Kentucky Bluegrass would finally turn green again — when we’d again reenact the action to match the voices of Major League commentators Joe Garagiola, Keith Jackson, and Howard Cosell, as the scent of lilac mixed with the aroma of freshly cut turf — our turf.
The heroic actions of my favorite sports icons shone through our play in those fields of a long daydream. “Build it and they will come” was the rallying cry of the popular baseball film Field of Dreams. The sod in our Casper neighborhood had been laid decades before — and we kids had finally arrived, bats and balls in hand.
