My Big Game 1957

I grew up in Lafayette, Indiana in the 1950s. It was a baseball town in those days. In 1949 a Little League team from Lafayette played in the first Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. A Class D minor league baseball team for the Boston Red Sox was based in Lafayette.

I had a passion for baseball. My older brother Warren was an outstanding pitcher on a Lafayette little league team in the spring of 1954.  I was 8 years old and loved to play catch with my him and tag along with him to team practices.  Somehow, I managed to make the team but sat on the bench for all 20 games, except for one at-bat in the last game when I hit a single.  Warren went on the make the little league all-star team and I wanted to follow in his footsteps.  

After that bench experience, I determined to work hard and improve my baseball skills so I could play in all the games. Once the winter faded in 1954, I started riding my bicycle all over Lafayette seeking out pickup baseball games with older kids. I also started a whiffle ball league with like-minded kids my age. Playing on my own and the little league team over the next two summers lifted my game.

By 1957 I had grown and was a pretty good little league pitcher and third baseman. My team was supported by a sports store called Deckers. Deckers competed with three other teams in the Boys American League, while the other side of town had four teams in the Boys National League.

Game attendance was always noisy, particularly for Deckers. The father of our best pitcher was a former Purdue University two-time All-American halfback. He sat right behind home plate and seemed to scream the whole game, mostly berating his son’s pitching, calling him a loser, and not being in the game mentally. No one ever challenged him. As teammates, we cringed at the criticism but said nothing. Later in junior high his son froze on his first football kickoff return and never played football again.

The local Lafayette Journal & Courier newspaper had a reporter regularly check our 20-season games, writing weekly articles about the games, including box scores and key game plays. My mother read the sports page every day and kept clippings of any reference to my play.

On August 10, the paper announced the batting order and lineups for the city championship of Boys Major League Baseball that evening between Deckers and the Boys National League champ Savings. The August 11 paper article described the game as very close, with Savings leading 2-1 going into the bottom of the last inning for Deckers’ last at-bat. The first two batters grounded out. The next two batters doubled and tripled, tying the score 2-2. I then came up to bat and the article read ” Pete Smith then became the ‘man of the hour’ as he rammed a double over the centerfielder’s head to score the winning run.” I remember feeling an intense elation as my teammates hugged me, yelling along with the crowd.

                      Lafayette Journal & Courier Article About My Championship Game, August 1957 

I consider Lafayette my hometown in large part because of my big game, and later games in summer leagues and high school. Baseball gave me identity, focus, and good memories during my socially clumsy junior high and high school days in Lafayette.  Looking back deeper, the double itself mattered for only a few moments.  What stayed with me was the lesson that improvement comes from effort.     

 

Pete Smith at Murdock Park, Lafayette, Indiana, 1957