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Distant days at the old ballpark

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By Bill Wundram | Sunday, July 02, 2006 | No comments posted

EDITOR’S NOTE: While Wundram takes time off, we’re reprinting past columns that we consider “The Best of Bill.”

I remember Sunday afternoons when Cletus Dixon’s long-ago Blue Sox drank Iowana milk from quart bottles in their dugout at Davenport’s Municipal Stadium, and one steamy night when Herr John Jebens, the stately Germanic mayor of undisputed authority, stepped onto the field and ordered an ump to halt play.

“Why?” the umpire protested.

“Because the dump smell is so bad people are getting sick.”

That city dump was less than a block away from home plate.

The game went on, and the fans refused to leave because the Blue Sox had a 3-1 lead in the seventh.

Never mind, but I’m showing off my age, my comeuppance and devotion to the old ballgame, and the 75-year-old stadium that now is called John O’Donnell for the late, lamented sports editor of the Democrat & Leader. That was a predecessor of this sheet. John usually tossed out the first ball of the season and called everyone “coach” because he could never remember first names.

In the stadium’s earliest days, the old Blue Sox wore (what else?) blue socks, and I remember Satchel Paige wearing white socks when pitching an exhibition game for the Kansas City Monarchs against that strange bearded bunch, the House of David. Satch and teammates liked to play in Davenport because they could sleep in the grass at LeClaire Park rather than on the hot bus. No Davenport hotel accepted black patrons those days.

Baseball needs a certain amount of hallowed love and gushy admiration. I used to think you had to be an old guy to appreciate baseball. All the players looked old. They chewed tobacco and spit so much that the dugout needed a sump pump. Now, the players look so young, as if they had just slipped out of their Little League uniforms and into the minors of the Midwest League, on their hopeful way to the “show.”

Young or old, it still is the grand old game, and I can sit in dreamy contemplation behind the plate, listening to the same old call of the vendors, “Cold beer-r-r-r” and the same glorious smack of the ball into the catcher’s mitt. I think of my old Spalding Dizzy Dean glove, which I still keep oiled, and the wistful remarks of Shoeless Joe Jackson in “Field of Dreams” ...

“Have you ever held a bat or a glove to your face? The varnish, the leather glove. And it was the crowd, the excitement of them rising as one when the ball was hit deep.”

That’s what it’s all about, “... A line drive into center, the runner’s safe on first.”

Blessed be it, the game still is the same, with only a few new touches at the old Davenport ballpark. The players don’t chomp tobacco from a pouch, but now chew Bazooka or Dubble Bubble gum. When the organ isn’t pounding out something like “Da-da-dot-da,” the sound system has the Village People singing “YMCA” and the scoreboard is delightedly folksy. It offers birthday greetings to 6-year-old Kody and a welcome to visitors from Australia.

It seems more bottles of water than beer show up in hands. A woman off to the side of me has a quart bottle of Grey Goose vodka. When I take a second look, she laughs: “It’s just water.” It must be water, because she knocks off the bottle before the seventh inning and is still on her feet.

Through the screen behind home plate, I squint my eyes and recall childhood: Until reaching puberty, I had always dreamed of being a bat boy at the stadium.

Things come back into focus when I learn that there is, these days, such a thing as a bat girl.