Pitch to me kid!

 

Pitch to me kid!

     Some of these stories are just molecules in the lives of a couple of South Gate kids who had the good luck to live on a sliver of the American Dream. Myself and a group of other healthy children were part of the true baby boom and on our suburban blocks there were lots and lots of youngsters with total freedom and a one hundred acre park to explore. The Park was the center of our universe and we spent countless hours over there just watching and listening to the world filtered through youth sports with adults trying to be part of the whole scene. There was an olympic-sized swimming pool called the natatorium, a spacious civic auditorium,  a girl's clubhouse, tennis courts, horseshoe pits, shuffleboard courts, two playgrounds, picnic tables galore and ten full sized baseball fields. In Summer, after dinner the local kids might wander over to the park and watch a baseball game under the lights and hear the sounds of the action as interpreted by the  boys learning to be grown ups. One of the common admonitions was from catcher to pitcher trying to get the hurler to just relax and throw strikes. The cool sounding "hon now...pitch to me kid!" stuck in our pre-adolescent brains and lingered on for two guys who became old grizzleds. Pitch to me kid! could be used to express any kind of encouragement when it seemed to be needed. If you were nervous about some life challenge or needed a shove over a hump in adulthood "pitch to me kid! would invite focus and confidence.