It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s great to come across someone who remembers when we played baseball without needing an instruction manual, and when we played with baseballs without covers. My dad wondered where all his black friction tape had gone before he saw the criss-cross patterns of my baseball \u00e2\u20ac\u201d one of the few in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
In a column a few years back, I wrote about how Railroad barrio boys of the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc40s and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc50s got by, using the natural terrain as our baseball field. The street that dead-ends on the east side of Columbia was a natural for baseball. The tracks (and sometimes the Super Chief) often prevented baseballs from crossing the tracks and rolling all the way to Pecos Street.<\/p>\n
Too many balls that our neighbor Don Archuleta sent over the tracks never returned, causing the majority of us to rule that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcover the fence\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 is out.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
One person who grew up in the neighborhood, Lawrence Sandoval, just last week validated my earlier description of baseball-playing conditions of our childhood. Lawrence recalls that most of our impromptu games were played on rocks and gravel. I visited with Lawrence\u00c2\u00a0 last week, and we discussed the unpaved status of our barrio.<\/p>\n
Lawrence is the youngest of seven, including Johnny, Vicky, Narciso, Chris, Alfred and Efren. Chris, an Immaculate Conception High School graduate, even played in a state championship baseball game.<\/p>\n
Lawrence remembered the baseball conditions, where first base was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that parked car over there\u00e2\u20ac\u009d; second was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the sleeping dog on the road\u00e2\u20ac\u009d; and third base was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that sharp rock over there\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that keeps tire-repair shops in business.<\/p>\n
It is true: Railroad remained unpaved for decades. But suddenly, only the 600 block of that street received a blacktop shortly after that block also got a councilman, with the rest of us needing to wade in order to navigate the streets. Today, all of Railroad Avenue is paved, but we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see too many kids playing ball there.<\/p>\n
Lawrence remembers having asked, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Who stole our third base?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d after road crews applied a smooth layer of asphalt on that street. And clearly, Lawrence was referring to a missing base, not a stolen base.<\/p>\n
And so it was: We fielders of the dirt-and-gravel sections of Railroad needed to make allowances for the dips, curves and rocks on the street in order to avoid having our temples serve extra duty as gloves. The first time any of us played at Lopez Park, which at the time wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t much more than a dirt field, we thought we were in Yankee Stadium.<\/p>\n
I felt instantly popular as a boy when neighbors suddenly showed up, inviting me to play ball with them. The real motivation emerged when one of them asked, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to play, can we still use your stuff?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d meaning my ball, bat and glove, which I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d bought with money saved from Optic sales.<\/p>\n
Don Archuleta, the hitter who usually sent baseballs on one-way trips across the tracks, relocated the fatter end of my bat almost as far as the ball when he took his first swing. It was split, and no amount of Dad\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s friction tape could save it.<\/p>\n
Some of the players themselves scooped up enough change to help finance a new one \u00e2\u20ac\u201d bats sold for about $2.98 at J.S. Torres Auto Supply on Grand. That bat lasted through the summer, and that was mainly because the pitchers usually gave Don a pass to first.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Last week, I ran into Martin Suazo Sr., an Immaculate Conception School classmate, who put on a workshop on improving one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s basketball shooting ability.<\/p>\n
Suazo credited Don, the baseball destroyer, with having shown Suazo the correct way to shoot baskets and, accordingly, to increase accuracy. My only issue with Don as a hoopster was that I knew of the young man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s skills only as a baseball player, his having been a starter for the Robertson Cardinals as an eighth-grader.<\/p>\n
Naturally, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to learn more about this copyrighted \u00e2\u20ac\u201d yes, copyrighted, 2007 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d technique Suazo has developed to improve basketball shooting. More later about what Martin calls The Missing Link.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 If your team loses the coin flip at the end of regulation, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a good chance your team will lose the game. That was the outcome of many games that went into overtime: The first team to score wins. Period.<\/p>\n
Some coach is likely to correct me \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d welcome that \u00e2\u20ac\u201d where I misstate things, but my recollection is that before myriad rule changes, if a high school football game, for example, ended in a tie, that was it. No overtime. And now in college, an elaborate set of rules requires that each team get the ball the same number of times in the overtime. And if a team scores a field goal, for instance, the other team gets the same opportunity.<\/p>\n
And scoring points in overtime comes fairly easily, given the fact that each team gets possession quite close to the goal line. That could lead to a 50-47 final score in overtime, even after the teams had tied in the low-20s to create the overtime.<\/p>\n
However complicated the new rules are, the overtime is an improvement over the teams\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 simply going home, or waiting for a team to score points \u00e2\u20ac\u201d any points.<\/p>\n
True, scores tend to climb in overtime, but by this much? On Friday, an Albuquerque TV station showed Durango\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s high school team having beaten Kirtland Central 42-7 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in overtime.<\/p>\n
Someone please explain how a team executes a 35-point play. Or maybe the TV station simply made a typo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s great to come across someone who remembers when we played baseball without needing an instruction manual, and when we played with baseballs without covers. My dad wondered where all his black friction tape had gone before he saw the criss-cross patterns of my baseball \u00e2\u20ac\u201d one of the few in the neighborhood. In a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1124"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1124"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1125,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1124\/revisions\/1125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}