December 8, 2005 Joe Severns Allegany Magazine
The cleanest uniform in the history of the game.
The one thing you don’t want when you are a boy on a sports team is a clean uniform. And that is just what I had. Week in and week out, I impressed the mothers of Mt. Savage with my brightest brights and whitest whites on game day. It was not a badge of honor, trust me. Although my mother did beam quite often when the other player’s mothers would remark on how nice my uniform looked. Almost as if it was dry cleaned and pressed. It looked that way even after the game ended.
I was such a geek.
My first foray into organized sports was for Coach. Burkett’s Mt. Savage Indians little league team. During an afternoon stroll in my new home town I wandered "downtown" to see what was doing. The sound of hit balls and kids playing baseball echoed through the small valley that cradled Mt. Savage. I recognized some of my new friends and neighbors, and I wanted desperately to be noticed by my new classmates, to be invited to play, or even yelled at. Anything that would get me attention. I pretended not to notice the practice taking place, and examined the scores of oddly shaped rocks (coke, from the brickyard furnaces) that I never saw in my home town of Baltimore. The sharp grey and black "rocks" were everywhere, and I hoped that my scientific examination of the millions of useless pieces of Earth would warrant an inquisitive kid to ask me what it was that I was doing. No dice. I walked around and around the field, pretending to be an explorer on a very important mission, or a police detective, or a rogue double agent, or something to that effect. I was a deeply disturbed child. A middle aged man (Coach Burkett) wearing a yellow and white t-shirt approached and asked if I wanted to play. Of course I did, and I was sure to lie my tail off about how much baseball experience I had (of course I had none). As far as my new coach knew, I was a seasoned athlete. He sent me home with a permission slip that would allow me to play for his team, and the promise that I would be the next Cal Ripkin, Jr. I had my parents sign me up. I was very excited. So was my father. Proud papa once had a very dirty uniform, as did my older brother, so naturally, I was next in line to carry on some sort of Severns tradition of baseball greatness.
With a borrowed glove and good intentions, I made my way to the next days practice. The coach was eager to see "what I had", so he let me bat first. Oh, boy. Guffaws and the howling of little boys and the adult coaching staff could be heard for miles around as I swung twice at one pitched ball. Baseball was hard stuff. And I was now the team’s laughing stock. Oh, joy.
But because Mr. Burkett was such a generous man, and because I was so good at taking snack bar orders for the rest of the team, I earned a spot on the team. Prone.
When the team was ahead by about 300 runs, I was sent in to button it up in the final inning, where I could usually be counted on missing catches, throwing wild, missing the cut-off man, and striking out every time I stepped to the plate. It was some sort of league record I think.
Joe Severns, whiff king of Mt. Savage
Most games I spent on the bench, talking strategy on how to improve my game. Usually this was just a couple of my "friends" threatening to beat me senseless if I didn’t at least catch the next routine pop-up that would eventually come my way. I found these sessions informative and inspiring. I especially liked it when I was in charge of getting everyone’s sno cones and sodas to them during the break. That was how I earned a living back then. Tips.
Now, being the best dressed, and cleanest player (and I use that term very loosely, I was actually more of a model for a boys line of baseball uniforms) meant that I played right field if I was ever put into a game. There aren’t a lot of lefties in little league, so my chances of actually getting to field a ball were pretty slim. This is good, because I would probably not be able to make the throw to the cut off man anyway. Some things are best left unsolved.
So next time you see a short, fat, tall, skinny, kid in a clean uniform have a heart, and let him to the front of the sno cone line. He is in a hurry, and God forbid any sno cone juice actually spill on his ultra clean uniform. He might be going for his own personal record.