EAST BRIDGEWATER 1980 - REFLECTIONS ON BASEBALL
This column originally appeared on Wicked Local.

Each year as the weather becomes more spring-like, I am taken back to 1980 in East Bridgewater, a memorable end of the school year with an extremely competitive little league season.  Baseball was the highlight of our spring.  There was no internet.  There were no AirPods.  There wasn’t even such thing as a Space Invader yet, unless you were talking about the ones that arrived on the big-screen in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.   

All players marched in the annual East Bridgewater Little League parade, and for the first time in what would become the norm, I opened the season at second base for the Lions Club team coached by twenty-one year old Terry Kingman.  Eamon (Terry’s little brother) was a fixture at shortstop.  Eamon Kingman and I were close friends, so we worked well together on and off the field like Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker, the duo that held down the middle of the infield for the Detroit Tigers at the time. 

Terry, Eamon, and I would all travel down to games together in Terry’s 1978 Ford F-150 and park down behind the old yellow town building that abutted the New Diamond, a field that would otherwise require some walking in order to get to, and usually with a heavy bag of team equipment.  By taking this shortcut, we could simply jump over the little wooden fence separating the parking lot and the baseball field complex and be right behind the backstop of the New Diamond.   Terry’s truck had a Pioneer cassette deck that blasted Bad Company’s Desolation Angels, songs from the Eagles’ Long Run album like In the City and Those Shoes, and hits of the day on the radio like While You See a Chance by Stevie Winwood. 

As opposed to past seasons playing baseball, the 1980 season helped me become a real ballplayer.  I learned what sanitary socks were, gained knowledge of Piesco Sporting Goods in Brockton, and learned how to wear my stirrup socks really high like the major leaguers of the day.  (This was at the close of the 1970s.  Baseball socks were important.)

The atmosphere and the competition at the New Diamond in East Bridgewater was palpable. The night air smelled like popcorn.  The little brick-red snack bar just off the first base line between right field and first base was always crowded with a long line of kids.  On any given night, talented young players like Teddy George and Steve Dias, Mark Mason and David Brew, Mike Dalto and Michael Feroli, David Edwards and George Austin took the field against each other.  Teams named Forni Oil, Country Convenience, East Bridgewater Savings Bank and Kiwanis Club all battled for wins every week, but the two biggest rivals in 1980 were Superior Pool and Lions Club.  Both teams were stacked with talent.  Superior Pool had Tommy Williams, Timmy Griffin, Peter Dutcher, and the up and coming Bruce Deneen who was slowly rising to prominence behind the plate.  Lions Club fielded Sal Barbetto, Cary Whitmore, youngsters like John Capachione and Sean Salisbury, with Eamon Kingman and/or hard-throwing Shawn Connolly at shortstop.  When they weren’t manning shortstop they were trading places on the mound.  In a game that still draws attention from its participants nearly four decades later, both teams managed to survive into the late innings courtesy of highlights like the somewhat miraculous grab in right field by Tim Tully of Superior Pool to maintain the score in late innings and a completely improbable home run by Michael Brennick off of an Eamon Kingman trade-mark change-up in a pivotal Kingman relief appearance deep into the game.  The late Mike Brennick was embarrassingly fooled on the pitch, but managed to somehow get his bat on the ball lifting it high and deep to the opposite field – with the ball eventually drifting over the right field fence.  To their credit, Superior Pool defeated Lions Club on this night, but the purple and gold Lions Club team eventually went on to earn the coveted first place trophy in 1980. 

 As a coach, Terry Kingman preached fundamentals while being extremely nurturing and patient.  He made sure that every kid on the team knew how to sacrifice bunt and we practiced endlessly, catching the ball with the bat.  We learned the importance of hitting the cut-off man, of staying down on ground balls, being smart on the base paths, and learning how and when to slow down the game.  Eamon always found the perfect time to step out of the batter’s box to re-tie his Puma cleats, sometimes repeatedly in an effort to assert mental control over the pitcher. Terry taught us Billy Martin aspects of the game, that first base was only 60 feet away at this level as opposed to the 90 feet on a regulation field and that we could expect to beat out any ball hit on the ground if we ran hard.  We knew how to take pitches and steal bases.  We were taught to understand hitter’s counts and how to keep the opposing team mentally on edge.  Our line-up was put together with a purposely strategic mission.  Eamon led off, and being essentially a .500 hitter, he was usually on first base when I came up to bat second.  My job was almost always to sacrifice bunt, whether that meant Eamon was on first or he had already swiped second.  As Terry had instructed us, a bunt would normally result in a base hit.  By the time Shawn Connolly stepped up to the plate, Eamon would have already arrived at third base and I would be standing on first.  Connolly was a typical 3-spot hitter – good bat, good speed, and good power.  If he didn’t reach base and drive in a run, Sal Barbetto, our catcher, usually would.  The law of averages meant that we would typically score at least one run by the end of the first inning of every game.  As a result, we were tough to beat. 

Even with our tough line-up, however, the 1980 Lions Club team was really built around pitching and defense.  Terry Kingman understood and taught pitching mechanics.  He coached his young pitchers working carefully on arm angle, stride, grips, release point, and deception.  He taught pick-off moves and where to stand on the rubber.  He taught his pitchers how to change speeds employing a strategically used change-up, a rare pitch at this level yet perfectly safe to throw.  Terry taught us tenacity, attitude, control, and how to win - and we were just 12 years old. 

Times were simpler back then.  As kids we did not have phones with us, time at school (6^th grade in the spring of 1980) was largely spent learning to be independent of parents rather than remaining in constant contact through text messages and notification of daily school occurrences, and although we behaved like kids, we were never really preoccupied with anything that made us too inattentive to listen.  Had I been too distracted to pay attention, I fear that I would have missed, and that kids today are potentially missing, the valuable observational lessons that I was able to internalize just by being with someone who was a coach, a friend, and a mentor.

Thanks Terry.  I listened to every word.