Returning to the sandlot, 50 years later, and honoring the friend who died

Here we are, from left: Mike Bass, Howard Shapiro, Sanford Cherney, Laurence Cohen, Bob Blinick.

Note to Coach’s Box readers: This is my weekly column for the Cincinnati Enquirer and Cincinnati.com.

By Mike Bass
mbass@mikebasscoaching.com

We are missing Gary today. “Glob,” everyone used to call him. Glob so loved playing ball with us, the story goes, he would walk to our old primary school and shovel the infield when he thought it was time for “spring training.”

A group of us are reuniting today to play baseball together for the first time in some 50 years. This is Fourth of July weekend 2021, and this could just as easily be 1971. We come with gloves, baseballs, bats and whatever we feel like wearing. Same as always.

Except Glob is not here.

Gary Glochowsky died last year.

Pancreatic cancer.

The Glob baseball

In many ways, Glob is with us. Sanford brought one of Glob’s old baseballs, a National League model inscribed with Charles S. Feeney’s signature. Chub Feeney became NL president in 1970. This is perfect.

The ball shows wear. Then again, so do we.

Five of us are here today. We parried COVID-19 isolation together, Zooming on Sunday nights and messaging when our teams were on TV. Now we can reassemble. This had been easier when we grew up in the same village, but I moved back to the area for good a few years ago, Laurence is visiting from Georgia, so it’s Play Ball.

We came in cars instead of by feet or bicycles, but we came to play. We always came to play back then, too.

Those days were some of the best of my life.

Up to six or eight of us might show up, or as few as two. We would create fair sides and rules. We had just enough gear and imagination to concoct some version of any sport. Baseball. Football. Basketball. Hockey. We could play Home Run Derby using a basketball court across the street from me, Wall Ball using a strike zone painted on the side of our primary school.

There were no coaches, no parents, no politics, no trophies. Oh, we cared who won or lost, we argued and fought, but eventually we got over it. Eventually.

Sometimes, we just hit fungoes. Or took “infield practice.” Glob loved infield practice. We’d take turns hitting ground balls to each other, then maybe try to throw out an imaginary runner at first. We lived “The Sandlot.”

I loved sports. I loved to play them, and I loved to watch them. I played Little League baseball until I was overmatched, but kept playing pickup games with my friends. I enjoyed both versions, but if it were all about organized sports, as it is now, my childhood would have been emptier. I needed this then.

I need this today.

COVID fatigue is real. Being outside and playing alongside my friends again is a joy. It is not just the nostalgia. It is the experience.

We decide to play catch and hit fungoes instead of playing a game. The thermometer is pushing 90, and though we all try to stay active, we are not stupid.

I already did stupid.

Three years ago, Sanford and I hit fungoes to each other. I lunged for a ball, tumbled to the ground and sprained my AC joint. My left shoulder is not 100% yet.

OK, I do a little stupid today. I reach too high for one throw, and my shoulder barks at me. I wince. Otherwise, I am smart. I try to protect any other ailing body part. Bob goes out of his way to cover for me on any errant balls.

I am playing shortstop, barely on the outfield grass. One line drive heads toward me. I amble a step to my right, open my glove and feel the ball smack into the pocket. It stings that familiar sting. It hurts so good.

Our gang

The others cheer. This is what friends do, 50 years later. We understand the drops. We appreciate the nice catches. We support each other.

When it is time to stop, we stop. This is smart, because the coming days would bring the soreness and bruises expected from a layoff and age. But first, someone laments how our performance has deteriorated since the last time we did this. I offer a different perspective.

“If you had told us 50 years ago that we could come out here and do this now, at this age,” I say, “we would have been pretty darn impressed.”

Glob would have, too, I am guessing. I did not know him as well as some of the other guys, so I enjoyed hearing their stories about him later, including Howard’s about Glob shoveling the field. If Glob could not join us today, we are glad one of the baseballs we used was his. 

“Maybe,” Sanford wrote later, “he really was looking down on us that day.”

Remember to email Mike Bass at mbass@mikebasscoaching.com or reach out to him @SportsFanCoach1 on Twitter if you want to be included next week. His website is MikeBassCoaching.com.