The big Schnitzel

By Steve Smith

This epistle, the third in my series: Army days, is not an important, earth-shaking, stomach-churning document. War and Peace it is not. It is a relaxed sort of romp through the peacetime Army with comedic overtones as nothing of immediate martial consequence was happening despite the ever-present cold war saber-rattling. We spent more time brandishing mops and brooms and dodging detail poachers called NCOs than we did wielding M1s.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Smith
• Release date: Jun 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201647698

Book preview

Storybook Kitzingen am Main

The Tipsy Tower, Kitzingen's fabled landmark,

above far side of bridge, center

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Kitzingen coat of arms

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KAB coat of arms

Sonata in J sharp minor

for Sousaphone and Louisville Slugger

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Smith, show some life out there. You're not tooting a flute in the damn band anymore. Show some hustle.

—Sgt/Coach Carlos Santos

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Chapter 1

Harvey Barracks, Kitzingen, GY

Home of the Kitzingen Red Sox

Each year in mid-April, dressing in a flannel uniform and jogging out on the luxurious green turf of a ball diamond always sent a rush of excitement through me. Though there was still a nip in the air, Spring was on the horizon and the competition to come stirred me to the core. Nothing in life could match baseball for the sheer animal pleasure derived from using your major muscle groups to their maximum—form and execution, grace and power, eye and brain, quickness and accuracy in response—all one’s physical and mental attributes were engaged and tested, sometimes riskily, and the kid in me exulted in the challenge.

Sgt Carlos Santos, the coach, was a lefty pitcher/outfielder and good hitter. During a tryout in Puerto Rico, Carlos had been offered a professional contract with the Washington Senators, but had opted instead for the security and travel of military life.

Practice was twice a day, at ten and two for a total of four hours. We eight pitchers trying out for the team were put on a strict running regimen—ten to twelve wind sprints of forty yards each for the first two weeks. I soon found myself running alone because it was hard to sprint when laughing at something fellow pitchers Eric Reickel or Jim Robinson said. And then the group would slow down having run thirty yards or so.

Knowing that leg conditioning and good lungs were what helped a pitcher keep his stuff through nine innings, I didn’t stint on this part of practice. And I knew Santos was watching. As a veteran NCO he was familiar with all forms of shirking and knew when we were only going through the motions.

Having finished our wind sprints, we pitchers positioned ourselves about ten feet apart and flipped baseballs to each other using only our wrists to propel the ball. We were not to throw at all for the first week and after that only gradually in a program that would have us throwing light batting practice in two or three weeks. We would not throw hard until after four weeks. This was to counter the tendency to develop sore arms or shoulder problems while it was still fairly cold, setting one’s conditioning regimen back a few weeks.

Before closing off the afternoon workout, Santos clustered the pitchers at shortstop. Taking us one at a time he hit ground balls to one side that we had to chase down, though they were usually past us as we neared them. Before we collected ourselves he hit one far to the other side that we ran for and usually missed as well. This was repeated until we were unable to whistle. Santos knew when we were faking exhaustion, so the drill continued until we moved with a rubber-legged stagger. He had watched us running wind sprints and knew who was dogging it.

The workouts were far more grueling than anything I'd ever experienced and put basic training to shame. Yet I was filled with a quiet exhilaration to be readying myself to play baseball in an organized venue where I might get the most out of my right arm, which I had long felt was the single natural gift that defined who I was and set me apart from my peers . . .

Behind my lifelong passion for the game and the hopeful notion that I was destined to be a ballplayer lay my dad's own shelved dreams of a baseball career. A muscular five-ten, he was hitting the ball with power from both sides of the plate in a semi-pro league in Central Iowa when love detoured him into early fatherhood and gainful employ.

When I came along four years later, he was a devoted husband working for the El Paso post office, where he labored for twenty-eight years, retiring as a day-shift supervisor. When I reached ten he was playing church league softball and hitting towering left-handed shots over the right-field lights that disappeared into the deep gloom beyond while still rising. At such moments, Mom and I, watching from the bleachers along the third base line, would lunge to our feet and shriek with excitement. After the game Mom would tilt her head against Dad's shoulder and say, Ken, that was just splendid.

While Dad drove us home wearing a smile, Mom would caress his arm with a rueful expression. I learned much later that this was her way of sympathizing with him over giving up his dream of becoming a professional baseball player to make a life with her.

Maybe Dad had hopes that I might pick up the baton where he dropped it because he became a fine coach, patient and encouraging despite my slow development. Upon coming home from work at the post office each day he would scoop up our gloves and say, C'mon kid, let's throw a few. Following this evening ritual, we'd check the box scores of the previous day's major league games to see who had done better, my idol Stan Musial, or Dad's favorite, Ted Williams.

Even at supper, to Mom's sighs of dismay, the topic of conversation usually turned to baseball. One evening while forking a slab of breaded liver onto his plate, Dad said, Three fifty-six.

Ken, no, snapped my exasperated mother.

Shoeless Joe, I answered offhandedly. Lifetime BA. Too easy, Pop.

Growing up in the twenties when Ruth, Sisler, Gehrig and Goslin were hitting the ball all over the lot, Dad kept scrapbooks of their exploits and knew the statistics of all the big-name players. I studied his scrapbooks behind his back and eventually knew players' numbers almost as well. To stump him I memorized stats for such unlikely players as Shags Horan, Pickles Dillhoefer and Footsie Blair. Then I'd spring them on him.

Okay, Dad, what was Doc Ozmer's lifetime won/loss record.

"Doc Ozmer. Where'd you dig him up? Who'd he play for?"

The A's in '23. He pitched 2 innings. Went O and O lifetime. And Dad would chuckle about that for hours.

Once I fed Mom numbers on the sly. Then at supper, while Dad had a mouthful of liver and onions, I said, Mom, 147-89.

After a thoughtful pause, she said, Firpo Marberry. Lifetime won/loss. Got any hard ones?

Dad almost choked. He coughed up the contents of his mouth in his napkin, then laughed hardest of all.

Every few weeks those Iowa summers before I turned twelve, Dad would take me to see our hometown Waterloo White Hawks of the Class B Three-I League (Iowa, Indiana and Illinois) play at their home park. We got there early to watch the teams take batting practice. Then came the rapid-fire choreography of infield warm-up, which primed us for the action to come.

Watching the play from the shaded grandstand, I hissed with excitement at the physical poetry played out on the field below:

—at the sweeping arc of a powerful swing driving the ball deep with a resounding crack;

—at a quick stab of a hard grounder by the third baseman, followed by a low slingshot throw across the diamond from deep behind the base;

—at the flat blur of an overhand fastball before it slammed into the catcher's mitt;

—at the balletic moves of a shortstop going to his right to snag a bouncer before leaping into the air to fling it across his body where it was scooped on the short hop by the first baseman doing the splits, beating the runner by half a step.

And to play the game was to experience the purest form of physical joy. Saturday afternoons we walked the three blocks to Irving Grade school in Waterloo for batting practice. The baseball diamond there had been used in the late twenties by Dad's own high school team, the West Waterloo High Wahawks, for their practices.

Once we had warmed up, Dad hit some fly balls to me, teaching me to spot the landing and head for it full tilt, glancing at the ball every so often to adjust my approach. Then, in a bit of intriguing coaching strategy, he'd station me under a huge willow tree in deep center field and hit pop flies that plunged through the branches.

This always got me excited. What other kid had a dad who would do neat, risky stuff like this. To avoid a beaning I had to stay focused and not flinch, which became a point of pride for me. Dad was both amused and concerned when a branch-deflected ball bounced off my shoulder or knocked my hat off. But I could tell he was impressed that I didn't duck out of the way or wince from the pain.

Just don't tell your ma, he always said.

Baseball practice as character development.

When I'd had my cuts from both sides of the plate, I'd pitch to Dad and watch as he poled left-handed drives so far down the right field line that I screamed with excitement watching the ball shrink to near invisibility. He owned the sweetest inside-out power swing I've ever seen. And just before contact he grunted and gave a wrenching twist with his torso that produced more distance for his hits, something that he once learned from watching Joe Jackson take batting practice before an exhibition game in Iowa City.

It was natural while watching Dad swing a bat to believe that I inherited some of his ability and might someday be the hitter that he was. But my retarded physical development through junior high in Hobbs, New Mexico—having moved there for mom's health—kept me a second-stringer.

After two years we moved to El Paso. In my sophomore year, trying out for the Austin High baseball team, I was cut with a dozen others, but kept coming out during practices, standing in deep left field where I shagged flies and errant throws. After two weeks of this the coaches found me a beat-up uniform and told me I was on the team. Later I overheard the coaches talking about me, using the word tenacious. I had to look it up and felt a boost of pride when I understood what it meant.

In the season-ending playoff game between Austin High and Ysleta, we were down by a run with a man on second, and two out in the last inning when Coach Harris told me to get a bat and go out there and just try to make good contact. I was astonished—me, an untested kid sent out with his sling to face a grinning, self-confident Goliath to keep the team’s hopes alive?

Martinez worked me to a count of 0 and 2, whereupon I backed out of the box to consider my options. I never guessed what a pitcher was going to throw, preferring to trust my reactions. But I had no doubt Martinez was going to use his drop so I stepped back in and set myself. Without pause he delivered. I timed the pitch and swung under it, feeling the impact of ball with bat. I dropped the bat and goosy with excitement ran toward first. After a few steps I glanced to see where the ball was headed and saw it curving earthward in shallow left field near the foul line. It was going to drop in safe on my first hit in my first at-bat in the season. Then the left fielder flew out of nowhere to snag the ball at his shoe tops and sprawl forward clumsily in the grass. He righted himself and came up with his glove help high. Game over. Shit.

When I jogged Back to the dugout, Coach Harris gripped my shoulder and said, Good effort, young man. You’ve proven yourself. You’re my first baseman next year.

In my junior year weighing 120 pounds and standing just under six feet, my slender frame and ten-inch biceps lacked the strength or quickness for my bat to catch up with my peers' fast balls. Consequently, I managed only one hit in nineteen at-bats, a season’s record that still stands in West Texas sports record books as a living monument to futility.

As I trudged back to our bench after striking out for the second time in a game, I heard an old timer in the stands say to another, That kid couldn't hit stink in an outhouse, an offhand remark that rattled around in my head for years. I compensated for this by becoming a decent fielder at first base—nicknamed Scoop by our shortstop Dudley Swofford, whose throws often came with sand and bits of dirt shoveled up in his oversized glove and unleashed along with the grass-stained ball. Amid the approaching cloudy gray mass I had to focus on the spinning pellet to collect it in my mitt while my face and neck were pelted by the miniature shotgun spray pattering audibly around me. Trying to catch popups falling through the branches of a willow tree was good training for this.

And being skinny and perpetually self-conscious about it drove me to risk my skeletal cohesion by trading collisions for tag-outs on bunt plays—largely to show I could take being rammed by a guy twice my size tearing down the first base line. Left fielder Robert Delgado, wise to my shaky confidence and the rash moves it urged me to make, said, What are you trying to prove, Smitty? You get hurt and you can't play. Be smart out there, man.

As a senior, I went 0 for 12 before the coaches replaced me with Harrison Brock, a guy who could actually hit and was twice as fast. Coaches K.C. Brown and Charles Red Harris­—the latter the Austin High football coach—liked my displays of seeming fearlessness, but finally had the good sense to bench me for my pathetic hitting, bringing an end to my embarrassment and possibly saving me from a stay in a hospital. My Austin High Baseball career ended with me being the team’s batting practice pitcher.

Though I was never to lose my fascination with the art of hitting, both Dad and I could see that I was never going to be much of a hitter. But I always had a pretty good arm. In sixth grade I once threw a softball a measured 140 feet, beating the city grade school track and field record by nineteen feet. Now that I was out of high school, the games of catch became serious coaching sessions on the rudiments of pitching.

At nineteen, as the result of an overdue growth spurt, I shot up over two inches and gained twenty pounds, some of it even muscle. Dad was now using two sponge pads in his catcher's mitt during our games of catch. When I asked why, he grinned and said, Cause that damn fastball of yours is starting to hurt. You're developing quite an arm, kid.

A smile bloomed inside me. Coming from an athletically-gifted man this was more than praise, it was a kind of validation. If I was throwing hard enough to make my Dad wince, maybe it was time to consider changing positions. I'd never wield a bat the way he did, but as a pitcher I had a chance to stand out and have more impact on the game. And I still had some growth ahead of me.

That was then.

Chapter 2

Triceratops

A week after Spring training had begun, I was awakened by the sound of the band (Kitzingen Area Band, see book two of this memoir, Close Enough for Jazz) playing in the street outside. I yanked on my clothes and jogged from the ball team's billets to the Harvey Barracks PX snack bar for breakfast, and found the place humming. From the serving line I lifted my tray of eggs, toast and orange juice and looked for a place to sit. A waving hand drew me to a table where bandsmen Ron Stannard, Tom Langdon and Earl Covington greeted me with smiles and handshakes.

I hadn't seen them since I left the band for the baseball team a month earlier. As I hadn’t been on a field exercise since Basic Training, I plied them with questions about their week long stay at Wildflecken back in April, listening raptly while the anecdotes rolled forth.

When Ron began recounting his story of a metaphysical experience while pulling guard one night, I put down my fork and got out my pocket spiral notebook . . .

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At Wildflecken the band was sent to guard a segment of HQ Battery's perimeter on the left flank where no attack from the aggressor force was expected and where the inept band, whose members prided themselves on being un-soldiers, could do little harm. Armed with M-1 Garand rifles and two clips of blanks, four bandsmen were stationed at guard posts at 100 yard intervals. On the two a.m. shift Stannard and Ken Singleton were among the replacements. Driven by jeep to their stations, Singleton was let out next to last.

Don't we get flashlights? he asked. This was ignored as a bit of wry humor, but Singleton was serious. It was a pitch black moonless night. You could walk into a ravine or a nest of boa constrictors without ever seeing it.

Stannard's post lay at the end of an uneven dirt road. The jeep's headlights revealed a steep bluff rising some fifty feet above the turnaround and overgrown with shrubbery and stunted trees. He reluctantly climbed out of the jeep with his M-1.

"I'll be back in