Once the fall arrived, it was ours.
For reasons no Brookline residents ever understood — or will ever understand — a 600-acre slip of gorgeous lakeside property was sold in 1940 to a Jewish group from Boston, Massachusetts for a summer camp that was to be called “Camp Tevya.”
It was easily the most beautiful access we had to our freshwater Lake Potanipo. But for the summers, it was off-limits to us Brookliners as young people from the city filled the summer campgrounds and used that beautiful beach.
Once school started and the camp emptied, we took it over. At least, we took over the fields, the beach and the tennis court. Especially the tennis court.
Not to play tennis! Heaven forbid. For tennis ball.
In the middle of the Tevya grounds, there was a softball-sized field with the tennis courts running from left field through centerfield and a fence that ran alongside. Having a fence to take aim at for us baseball players was pretty cool. So when we could, we’d play our games there rather than the fence-less Brookline Ballpark. Something about seeing that ball soar over the fence.
In centerfield, there was a rectangular wooden scoreboard painted a heavy dark green. I never saw anybody actually use the scoreboard side. But on the reverse of the scoreboard, which looked out on the tennis court, someone had used masking tape to mark out a perfect rectangle for serves. That rectangular area also just so happened to be just about the same size as a perfect baseball strike zone.
So, with tennis ball in hand, it wasn’t much of a leap to see that as the ideal backstop for us. Since there was a metal staple in the ground, maybe 30-35 feet away, we used that as the pitching rubber, there was a fence behind that, part of the tennis courts, so we had our own imaginary one-on-one ballpark.
Since we rarely had enough players for a full game on the softball field, we discovered something more enjoyable, something we spent so many spring and fall afternoons playing — Tennis ball.
To play, you needed a tennis ball, a glove (just in case there was a popup or one hit back through the box) and a smaller bat. Because the pitching distance was so much closer, maybe 30-35 feet, the tennis ball came whistling in a high rate of speed and just making contact was a challenge.
The good news was, because we were playing on a tennis court with a fence on the other side, one that wasn’t all that far away — if you could find a way to make solid contact with a zipping tennis ball — you had a good shot at a home run.
Best of all, those tennis ball duels were one-on-one, you against somebody else. For more years than I can count, that was where you’d find us in the cool fall afternoons. Tennis ball, especially in the fall, was our World Series. And the setting was perfect.
Behind us, a small rocky cliff, we called it Rock Raymond, rose amid a wash of beautiful foliage behind us. The only sound was the constant thump of a tennis ball echoing across the camp, along with alternating shouts of joy and disappointment, depending on how the games and at bats went.
Generally speaking, the tennis ball lineup was me, my friends Bobby Hall, Joey McInnis and Kevin Denehy. We’d pick a major-league team — usually the Red Sox or maybe the Cincinnati Reds, then The Big Red Machine — and we’d bat the way their lineup actually would, lefty and righty. We’d play game after game until darkness — or the chill of winter approached.
Joey, a few years younger than us, was a natural lefty so he was playing up, you might say. Kevin, Bobby and I were all right-handed so having to bat left-handed sometimes at key moments in the game could be challenging. Every once in a while, luck and a good swing would find one another and the tennis ball would go a-flying. I still remember a long home run I hit left-handed as Bobby Tolan, who had this wild hoist-the-bat-in-the-air stance that made it seem impossible to get the bat around against fast pitching. Somehow, I did and the ball went a soaring over the fence, halfway across the field beyond. We laughed about it for weeks.
Looking back, I’d have to admit that because I actually had some experience as a pitcher (I pitched in Babe Ruth, high school and American Legion) and had the best and most accurate arm out of the bunch of us, I had a considerable and as I look back, maybe an unfair, advantage in tennis ball. I only lost three games. Period.
It might be my greatest athletic achievement that in the dozens, if not hundreds of games we played, I only lost once to Joey (we let him use a wet tennis ball, which added about 20 MPH to his fastball), once to Bobby (who threw hard but always managed to hit me about 8-10 times per games) and one to Kevin, a terrific athlete, an excellent hitter and my former American Legion teammate.
And it was Kevin who came closest to beating me a second time, heading into the 9th inning, holding a 3-0 lead over me one beautiful fall afternoon, no-hitting my Cincinnati Reds’ lineup thus far.
We both knew the import of the game. The stern look on Kevin’s face — he was throwing seeds that day — made it clear. There wasn’t much banter between the two of us. I was bearing down and so was he.
He managed to get the first two outs as I was at the bottom of the order, batting lefty. Then, batting as Pete Rose, I fought to a full count, fouled off a couple pitches, barely and earned a walk.
Joe Morgan, a lefty, too, was next, and it was the same case with him. With two strikes, there was a foul tip and a brief argument ensued. When his next pitch was low, there was two on, two out.
Back swinging righty, Kevin next got two quick strikes on Tony Perez. He was just one strike away from a win and bragging rights forever. Then hit next pitch hit me in the leg. Bases loaded.
Johnny Bench was next, another righty. Kevin’s first two pitches were high and hard and I swung through them. 0-2. A foul, a ball, a foul, a ball, a foul, a ball. Full count.
I stepped out for a second, took in the beauty of the fall foliage unfolding behind me. Gotta be quick. Gotta be quick, I told myself. Kevin didn’t want to walk in a run, that would lead to disaster.
So he wound and fired and this time, magically, I caught up. Whack! The ball soared over Kevin’s head, he let out a yell, throwing his brown glove straight up in the air as the tennis ball soared over the fence, a game-ending grand slam!
What a thrill! Then, geez, I thought for a fleeting moment how Kevin must feel as he walked out to retrieve my tennis ball home run. But only for a moment. I wasn’t that sensitive back then. I just had to win.
Thinking about these games, remembering so vividly as I do — and I know Bobby and Joey remember them, too — it makes you wonder about all those games in our backyards among our friends, all the kids we grew up with.
Those games meant everything to us. More than they should have, probably. We didn’t really know any better. Or maybe we did.
This, of course, was in the days before video games and Call of Duty and Madden Football when kids actually went out to play and did. And when we played, it was if our entire world hung in the outcome. We weren’t playing just for fun. Every single pitch mattered in tennis ball. That was what was fun about it.