Amateur Baseball can have Gordie Howe Moment
By John Gilbert
It was my personal Gordie Howe Moment.
There are those who think Gordie Howe was the greatest hockey player in history, and his achievements as a no-compromise, tough, determined and high-scoring right wing with the National Hockey League’s Detroit Red Wings is the stuff that makes the Hall of Fame work. Gordie, however, just did what he wanted to do on the rink. He played by his own rules, his own code, and anyone violatimg it would pay swiftly and surely.
But Gordie Howe would be just as quick to say that all his accomplishments were fun, and nice to be stored in his memory, but his greatest thrill came after he retired from the Red Wings, when he came back to play in the rival World Hockey Association for the Houston Aeros, only because of the opportunity, at age 50-something, to play with his two sons, Mark and Marty. They were good players in their own right, Mark an outstanding winger and Marty a very capable defenseman.
I had the opportunity to write about Gordie Howe in both incarnations, when he played in that red Red Wings jersey, and when he played with his sons with the Aeros. I thought it was really neat what he did, particularly that he was capable of being a solid player at age 50, and that he could play on the same team with his two sons, sharing ice time, sharing the bench, the dressing room, and the trips to faraway cities.
Impressed as I was, it took a lot of years before it truly hit home how big a deal it was until, on a different level, in a different world, I got to experience something similar.
My lifelong love of baseball started as a youth player, long before my long and acquired affair with hockey, as a writer, came to be. The baseball connection was from my dad, of course. He had played third base for the Brooklyn Dodgers and Cincinnati Reds long before I was born, although he was never pushy about trying to make me play.
When Jack, the first of our two sons, came along, I couldn’t wait to play catch with him, and to toss rubber balls to him that he could swat back at me with a tiny bat. I made sure he felt comfortable swinging left-handed. I like to hit left-handed, but, like my dad many years ago, I’m right-handed. My dad always said he regretted I didn’t swing from the left side because he thought I had a naturally fluid swing that way. My urging of both my sons, Jack and Jeff, was more pragmatic. Probably 90 percent of the pitchers you face at any level are right-handed, and their curveballs are much easier to hit if they’re breaking toward you than sweeping away, out of reach. And left-handed hitters get a two-step head start to first base, which might make the difference in turning 10 percent of all ground balls into singles, or at least into threats.
It also was an objective of mine to push every player on all the teams I coached to play defense in a fundamentally sound manner — two hands on every catch, turn to the inside when making a double play, leave your fingers inside your glove rather than the faint-hearted trend of poking a finger outside the back of the glove for protection from owies. And, even short tosses should be overhand. Also, I was a senior in high school before I became confidently aggressive swinging, so I stressed being aggressive to these players. Starting at age 9 and on up — don’t take strikes; if you swing at a head-high pitch, you might be surprised how far you can hit it; and I won’t criticize you for swinging at a ball out of the strike zone, but if you take a strike, we’ll talk.
Both Jack and the younger Jeff became good baseball players, and solid hitters, but they also were very good hockey players — clever and creative playmakers and also tough, when the situation demanded it. It left some indelible memories, because I coached those teams.The first team I ever coached in hockey, in fact, was an “in-house” Bantam team after Jack had gotten cut from the traveling team tryouts. So did a neighbor kid named Joe DeLisle. Whenever they played together, they happened to fit together like a hand in a glove, and while I always balanced lines, I played those two together because they scored in amazing quantities and both could score and they enjoyed setting each other up.
We surprised everybody, including ourselves, by losing only one game that whole season, and I remember that loss better than most of the ones we won, because it was a bitter, nasty game played outside on the opposing rink. It started snowing, hard, and our foe wouldn’t clear the rink. So I directed our dads to shovel off from the blue line in, but only on the end we were going to shoot at. Then the other side’s parents thought it might be a good idea to shovel the rest.
We lost that game by a goal, and the main reason was because Jack set up Joe DeLisle for a good scoring chance, and one of the opposing players cross-checked Joe from behind, dropping him to the ice. Jack didn’t hesitate, charging to Joe’s aid and flattening the kid. Typically, the young kid refing had missed the first play, but he couldn’t miss Jack’s steam-rolling retaliation, so he threw him out of the game. Sorry, but I couldn’t have been prouder of my kid issuing the proper amount of justice, even though we lost by a goal. After the season, we faced the same team on an indoor rink in the league playoff championship. game. We beat them 8-3. Once again it was a rough and nasty game, especially after we got ahead. At one point, we were two players short, and Joe DeLisle scored two short-handed goals while we were two men short. Funny how you remember such things, 30 years later. (Yes, it was that Joe DeLisle, who later played and became captain at UMD.)
Because both Jack and Jeff loved hockey so much, they let their baseball go, which I understood, although I was disappointed because both of them were better hitters than I ever was, with awesome hand-eye coordination. By around then, I had found this 35-and-over senior men’s league and resumed playing myself. Great fun, and when you’re nearing 50 and you hit a fastball square on the barrel, you’re 18 again. We had some good teams, and some great teams, and a few bad teams, but I always tried to make sure we had good guys on the team, cohesive and united in playing hard as possible, but for fun.
Even though I hit well on those teams, it was a definite thrill when Jack got old enough to play with us. He’s now one of our best hitters and plays third base in a manner that would have made his grand-dad proud. My play is tapering off, and it’s a battle to get in any kind of shape, and to get my arm back to strength after I injured it. I’ve shifted to second base for the shorter throw, and often I realize our team is best off if I do my managing from the bench while younger and quicker guys fill my position.
Younger son Jeff is living out in Washington state these days, although my wife, Joan, and I still hold out hope that he’ll get serious and move back to Minnesota. He does visit, and this summer he said he’d love to play on our team. I made the move of putting his name on our roster and when he came to visit, he did reserve one Friday night for us. He put on SeaFoam Hawks No. 22, and a new pair of spikes, and rode with us to Waconia for a game.
We’ve had a tough year, although when we have the right players, we’re solidly competitive with most teams. Waconia has a very good team, and after thinking about the options, I put Jeff, who hadn’t played for over a decade, at first base, I played second, while Jack was at his usual third base. We got behind 5-1, but we battled back, and we played solid defense. Jeff caught a ball and doubled a runner off second. And later, looking as good as he had ever looked as a 15-year-old when his team won the championship, Jeff smacked a single to center to drive in a run. We lost 5-3, but it was a good game. Jack and I failed to get a hit — rare for him, not for me — and Jeff got the only hit for the Gilbert Clan that night.
Later, Jeff said how big a thing it was for him to play a game with us, and how he might not get many more chances to play with his ol’ dad, ever.
I thanked the team for a great effort, and especially for allowing me to indulge myself for the chance-of-a-lifetime to experience a “Gordie Howe Moment.”
It was heartfelt from me, and it was actually pretty emotional. The spell was broken, though, when one of my players honestly said: “Who is Gordie Howe?
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About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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