I would miss the little league all-star game that year.
When not sleeping I sat and laid on the cot like couch in the family room for several weeks while my knee healed. I remember a visit from a couple of girls from the neighborhood, one of my first memories of interest in girls or young women. I did not mind being the fallen warrior for the young women who visited. This (fallen warrior) was a new role for me, I could see the advantage and warmed to it. It eased my disappointment in not playing baseball.
After six weeks walking stiff-legged when the splint finally came off my leg I had a hard time walking and bending the knee. I was surprised and frustrated how long it took to walk normally again.
I was twelve years old. It was a sunny summer afternoon at home in Florida. Several of us boys from the neighborhood were at the baseball diamond for a pick-up game. I remember about five players to a team. There were no bases, just a mark in the clay or a spot where the base would have been placed were it a regular game and not pick-up. Second base was just the a bare stake sticking up in the clay.
I don’t remember much immediately before or immediately after the event, the memory like a compressed file. What I do remember happens in slow motion.
I remember the baseball floating up to the plate and I hit it hard where I usually hit it when I hit it hard, to right center field. There were just two outfielders but one had played me perfectly. I hit it directly to him. I remember the sound of the bat hitting the ball, that solid crack hitters love to hear. I ran hard for first, rounded the bag and made a crucial decision in a tenth of a second to try to made second base. This part of the memory is in slow motion. I saw the outfielder throwing the ball. I knew it was going to be close at second base. I slide.
I was never a fast runner. My position was first base and pitcher when I played ball. On this play, in slow motion I was Willie Mays swift and gracefully I slide into second base. I heard an unusual noise. SAFE! I stood up, felt a burning in my knee, looked down and saw a huge gash in my knee. When I stood up my memory of the events faded quickly like a fade to black. I don’t have a good image of what my knee looked like. I understood later that I had gone into shock, the pain and even the sight of my split open knee dull, faded or silent.
I remember someone from the neighborhood driving me and my mother to the emergency room, a huge eyedropper that squirted water into the wound to clean out the dirt, watching stitches, internal and external being stitched. My leg was in a splint. All of these memories are remembered as pieces or groggy fragments over several hours on a stretcher in the emergency room. A major nerve running down the side of my leg was nearly damaged.
