Baseball and Red Dog

As a youngster, I never lacked for friends, thanks to being born during the baby boom. We very often had enough kids of a similar age to play a full game of baseball. Thanks to living away from any town, I also never lacked for fields on which to play. We had a great baseball field carved out of an empty lot a few yards over from my house. The field was started by the kids around my brother’s age, so that by the time we took over, the field had the base paths nicely carved out and beaten to hard clay. The bases were marked by whatever we could find around the field, usually bricks or pieces of wood left from the building boom that created the neighborhood in the mid-50s. After a few years, we even managed to piece together a backstop made of leftover plywood and fencing that we purloined from various backyards. That saved us from many a chase down the hill when a foul-tip sent the baseball in a high-speed roll down the red dog road.

Never heard of red dog gravel? It was used pretty extensively in our area as a road material. When the coal mining companies (the entire area was once pretty much a giant coal mine) would remove the slate to get to the coal, they would pile the slate in big mounds. The pressure of the slate would ignite the bottom, and the pile would burn for years. The result of the slate combustion was red dog-basically a bunch of flint rocks colored from pink to red with razor- blade edges. It was broken up and hauled away. It packed nicely and so was used for roads and driveways. Unfortunately for a kid running after a baseball, if he fell on the road the stones acted like thousands of little knife blades. You may have seen how early American Indians would strike flint and create a razor sharp edge on it for arrowheads—that’s a pretty good description of the qualities of the red dog if one fell on it.

The other problem of red dog roads was dust. It turned out later that the dust was a silicate, which of course causes severe respiratory problems. Every year, at about the middle of summer, the township would try to keep the dust down by oiling the roads. This was a gleeful event looked forward to by every kid on the hill. The giant oil truck would spray gallons upon gallons of hot oil on the road, some of which then ran onto the sides in giant rivers of black goo. The rivulets were a temptation that a saint could not resist, and we were no saints. In spite of our mothers’ threats, we would dam up the rivulets, creating our own miniature La Brea Tar Pits; we could put things in the lakes, from sticks and stones to pesky insects; most of all, we could step in it. Oiling day was the bane of every mother on the hill. The Keds’ imprints would lead directly from the road, down the grass, and right onto the linoleum floor. The floor that Mom had just diligently cleaned and waxed (this was no small feat at that time). The tar incidents probably accounted for at least 50 percent of my punishments (which I’ll discuss at another time).

Back to our baseball field: the field turned out to be a good indicator of age. When you broke a window on my uncle and aunt’s house in right field, you were too old to play on the field and you had reached a milestone. Otherwise, getting the ball to the house meant a home run. Homers in the other directions were measured by the road that covered center and left field. Of course, we lacked any sort of indicators of home runs and foul balls. This left the call to the judgment of the opposing team in the field, which led to arguments that would have made Lou Pinnela proud. Most arguments deteriorated to the debate-team level of “Did to, did not” and usually ended with a do-over. Unless of course one of the arguers owned the baseball, in which case the argument was over quickly, along with the game.
One hit that was the most detestable, most heinous, and most likely to get you a good drubbing was a foul ball hit sharply to left field. Most kids tried to play any other position than left field. This was because if you missed the ball and it crossed the road, it inevitably landed in the yard of Mike Fascikas.

Let me say up front that as an adult, I completely understand the nature of the problem with Mr. Fascikas. You see, he grew prize-winning roses in his yard, and kept his yard in Eden-like condition. All that was missing were frolicking deer and an apple tree. Mr. Fascikas was never too pleased when our baseballs collided with his roses. He was also none-too-pleased when we would tramp through his hedges searching for the balls. It wasn’t like we could just ignore the ball and get a new one. Most of us were basic mill-Hunky kids—that meant that we lived with layoffs, strikes, and a host of other circumstances that kept us in the lower portion of the lower middle class. We weren’t poor, as in no shoes and hunger-pangs poor, but let’s just say that baseballs were not on the priority list in our parents’ budgets. We used baseballs until the covers peeled off, which made catching fly balls an acrobatic exercise: flapping skins made a mockery of aerodynamics, and the balls tended to move in very strange ways while in the air. Most of our baseballs had at least one layer of electrical tape wrapped around them. At times, the crack of the bat was replaced by a dull thud and the ball was lucky to leave the batters box before the batter.

A new ball was an Event on the hill. We gathered ‘round in rabid anticipation as the owner would reveal with great pride the pure and brilliant white orb. Oh, the mixed emotions of elation and jealousy. The only problem with a new baseball was, of course, that it had a better-than-average chance of making the one-way trip into Eden. What a sinking feeling it was to watch as that beautiful, new, brilliantly white ball slipped through the black hole of Mike Fascikas’ hedges.

Then came “The Decision.” Which intrepid explorer, brave soldier, courageous youth would take on that Medal-of-Honor-level suicide mission into that hell-hole? Strained glances would shoot back and forth, like a bad Italian western, until a volunteer would come forth to prove his manhood, or, lacking a foolhardy volunteer, until the youngest, smallest, or weakest among us would be selected. I took that plunge more than once in my short career. Like a Navy SEAL, except without the black clothing, MP5, and stealth training, the unlucky “volunteer” would cross the road and hit the dirt; getting as low as possible, lower than an earthworm looking for a tunnel. He would slip through the hedges, following the last known path of the ill-fated ball. The rest of the gang would congregate and whisper-yell: “No, that way…no to the left!”

The worst possible sight as the unfortunate broke through the final layer of hedge-defense? The sight of Mike Fascikas’ shoes. Your eyes slowly scanned up, past the ankles, up past the trousers, the shirt and neck. Upwards to that grimacing visage—a bald head and large black mustache. He was the very image of the man we would all know later as the architect of the Watergate break-in: G. Gordon Liddy. The same shiny head, the same menacing, full moustache that hid the upper lip, but accented the sneer of white teeth as he held the ball aloft and exclaimed, “It’s mine now.” His motivation was clear enough, but his seeming pleasure in holding hostage the one item that we needed more that any other, crossed the line for us. That man’s basement must have been overflowing in baseballs.

Fortunately or unfortunately, at that time, neighbors were allowed to discipline kids if they thought the kids were doing something wrong. That meant that there was no use complaining to the folks about the lost ball. The best we could do was wait for a trip to Murphy’s 5 and 10 and hope to come up with a good reason we needed a new ball.

I don’t know where Mike Fascikas is nowadays; or if he still walks the planet. He moved many years ago, but when I visit my mother and pass his old house, now devoid of roses and shrubbery, I still feel a little pang of fear, and a large dose of nostalgia.