Sunday, April 8, 2007 | 7:26 a.m.
At carefree times in my early boyhood I chose to believe that life was a kind of ballgame, but with a mix of years and perception I learned better.
The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn
And so it's started up once again, major league baseball, this tranquil game that occupies a slice of my attention for seven months a year and for the first 10 minutes of every morning as I pore over box scores before the kids wake up.
I don't really care who hits home runs, or who strikes out 12 before the flame thrower comes in to clean up. I have carefully avoided the temptation to join fantasy leagues. In fact I had to concentrate for about 20 seconds just now before recalling that it was the Cardinals who won the World Series last fall. I study the box scores, I guess, out of force of habit.
My mother would tell me as a kid, as I curled in front of the heat register in our home, "If you would pay half the attention to your studies as you do sports results, you'd get straight A's." A lot of parents could make the same point today, by substituting PlayStation or Xbox for box scores. In any event, I suppose I'll be reading those agate-type summaries until they plant me.
I'm glad we have pro baseball in Las Vegas, and I know there are a lot of kids who eagerly await the opening pitch for the Las Vegas 51s. Our team may not be in the Bigs, but it's just a small step removed, and those who follow closely through the season can pick out a dozen guys from the various Pacific Coast League teams that play here who will make it to The Show.
I attended opening day at Cashman Field in 1983, when the then-Las Vegas Stars made their debut in Southern Nevada, and I remember being impressed by a young center fielder named Kevin McReynolds. He had future big-leaguer written all over him, and sure enough he went on to spend 12 good years in the majors. Any loyal Stars fan who watched him earn his stripes here more than likely checked out his stats in the box scores for those dozen years.
My first memory of Triple-A baseball is from an April afternoon in 1958, when the Spokane Indians, the franchise that became the forerunner of our Las Vegas 51s, opened their season in a new stadium, which was called simply The Fairgrounds.
I was an 8-year-old third grader and my parents had given me the greatest treat of my young life: They let me cut school and go to the game with them.
I wore my Brooklyn Dodgers jersey with the number 3 on the back (The late Babe Ruth was my idol, the Dodgers my favorite team; it mattered not that the Babe had worn that number with the Yankees) and sat amid 10,000 Spokanites, all of them proud of the new franchise and jubilant over the first day of a new season.
Opening day, the National Pastime, then home to a family dinner, Wally and the Beav, Ozzie and Harriet, and Father Knows Best. At least for an 8-year-old, those were simpler times.
We got to the ballpark early to watch batting practice, and I remember standing behind the Spokane dugout, punching my fist into the well-oiled pocket of my Don Drysdale autographed glove and praying to catch a foul ball. I was especially pleased that there were almost no other kids in the stands that day. While my peers were back in the classroom practicing times tables, I was pounding the leather and hanging out with ballplayers who chewed real tobacco.
Two images stand out: Before the game started, a Spokane outfielder named Glen Gorbous performed an astonishing feat. He threw a baseball from home plate over the center field wall, 410 feet away. It took him three tries. On the first two, the throws fell just short and bounced off the Pete's Perma-Mulch sign.
But on the third, as he was going through a motion like a coiled shot-putter under attack by killer bees, Gorbous gave a grunt that carried all the way to our seats in the right-field bleachers. The ball exploded from his hand and hung suspended in the air for hours. With it hung every boyhood dream I'd ever had. Then, finally, it disappeared over the fence. The crowd erupted in a huge ovation. I didn't stand up; I would have been a small pine in a forest, but I couldn't have been more awestruck had I witnessed a spaceship land on second base.
The second image is of a ninth-inning home run that curved just inside the right field foul pole, no more than 50 feet from our seats, and the pandemonium that resulted when the umpire gave the fair ball signal. The blast, hit by the redoubtable Gorbous, gave Spokane a 6-5 win, and my parents and I stood and clapped and my dad hugged me and I thought, at that moment, my life was as perfect as a kid's could be.
I went to bed that night wearing my souvenir Indians cap on a head full of memories that are still vivid and tender some 49 years later. And I knew when I grew up I wanted to be just like Glen Gorbous.
For the fun of it, I Googled Gorbous' name as I was writing this column, and in this cyber age when you can find out nearly anything on anybody with a few quick clicks, I discovered a remarkable factoid that validated that long-ago memory. It so happens that Glen Gorbous, from Drumheller, Alberta, Canada, born on July 8, 1930, is credited in the Guinness Book of World Records with the longest baseball throw ever. On Aug . 1, 1957, he threw a ball 445 feet, 10 inches. It was just eight months later that he repeated the feat in Spokane.
I can't tell you how delighted I was to discover that little-known fact. I had wondered through the years when I would think back to that moment in my youth whether it was all just a pleasant dream. I know for certain now that it wasn't. And I'm delighted that my young children and other kids in our town have the chance to see similar heroics on a baseball diamond that they will treasure for a lifetime.
I only hope I live long enough to see a major league team call Las Vegas home. In the meantime, go 51s!
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