OBSERVER Photo by Patty Hammond
There are home plates like this one and then there are home plates like the one featured in today’s column.
I loved to travel with my dad when he went on basketball or baseball scouting missions in the 1950s and 1960s.
Brother Tom and I would tag along to Buffalo Memorial Auditorium, for example, to catch the Queen City Invitational basketball tournament. The annual event was a four-team, two-night affair featuring host Canisius College and three other teams.
After learning how to chart shots and keep rebounding and assist statistics by watching NBA games on our new black and white television set, we would sit in the Aud’s cheap seats and dutifully mark our stat sheets.
Meanwhile, dad would diagram and analyze plays and take note of players’ tendencies (can’t drive left, jump shot only, poor passer) for his scouting report.
We’d be rewarded with popcorn, peanuts and soft drinks at halftime and between games.
Bill Hammond
On the way home we’d invariably be compensated for our work with mouth-watering cheeseburgers and shakes at Curt’s Stop Inn near the Ford Stamping Plant in Woodlawn. We always got a cheeseburger to go for my mom.
Other times I’d be the lone traveler with my dad when he scouted baseball prospects across WNY, northwest Pennsylvania and parts of Ohio.
On one such adventure, we took a $1 chance on a raffle drawing. The locals were surprised and probably more than a little annoyed when the young stranger from Dunkirk won the top prize, walking away with a new baseball bat. Nice perk.
On another trip I experienced the weirdest thing I ever saw on a baseball field. By far.
We were at a small minor league stadium, not sure which one, but it had a metal roof. I remember that because foul balls that flew above the section of grandstand behind home plate landed with a loud bang. You could then hear them slowly rolling down the sloped roof until stopped from falling to the ground by some unseen barrier.
Minor league teams operate on shoestring budgets and baseballs aren’t cheap. Foul balls were routinely tracked down by fleet-footed youths employed by team management.
I had a great seat this day and was enjoying a good view of the field when a wild pitch was delivered.
The ball appeared to catch an edge of home plate and then trampolined up and over the batter, catcher and umpire.
But it didn’t stop there. Remarkably, its one-in-a-billion bounce took it above the screen about 30-feet high and onto the roof. Baseballs just don’t bounce anywhere near that high.
Unsurprisingly, the crowd erupted with “oohs” and “aahs,” then some laughter and finally, a smattering of well-earned applause. We all thought we had witnessed a historic wild pitch.
By the way, that’s Associated Press Stylebook guidance on using “a” and not “an” before historic. Force of habit, I guess.
There I go, digressing again. It could be worse, I suppose. I could be doing some variation of “the weave” for my base of elderly, couch-bound, former athletes, coaches and officials. And maybe, just maybe, some wives.
But to finally get back to the weird bounce story, then came the very next pitch.
Yup, you guessed right. It was deja vu all over again.
This time, when the errant toss again defied all the known laws of gravity, chance and physics to land up on the roof, the crowd reacted quite differently.
Stunned silence was followed by more than a few gasps and “Oh, my gods.”
I vividly remember the ball slowly rolling down the roof to deafening silence.
Both team managers came out to investigate the area around home plate, found nothing and the game continued without further incident.
Dad and I couldn’t wait to report this high strangeness when we got home.
“Let me get this straight,” they said. “Two pitches in a row bounced 30 feet high and landed on the stadium roof? Riiiight!”
Without having seen it for themselves, our listeners were pretty darn skeptical.
For all I know, you may be, too. I understand. It was weird.
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Bill Hammond is a former EVENING OBSERVER Sports Editor.