Boys, Baseball, and Beginnings

By Janet Moore and Bill Moore

Dickey Wells is a high school baseball catcher in Strugglers Cove, New York, and idolizes Yogi Berra. He says, My life is baseball, but if I find something more important than baseball . . . Through many adventures, he discovers how important friendship, Boy Scouts, mentoring, character, and love are in shaping a persons life. The story shows how plans in dreams dont always become plans in life. Have fun reading Boys, Baseball, and Beginnings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543437829

Janet Moore

Bill Moore played second base and pitched baseball in Ohio in the 1950's. He played against future Hall of Famers, Phil Niekro, in American Legion baseball and Pittsburgh Pirates' star, Bill Mazeroski. He attended West Virginia University on a music scholarship, and ultimately had a career in computers with The Prudential Insurance Company. He never lost his love for baseball, but his adult participation was playing and coaching softball. He and his wife, Lois, live in Bucks County, PA. He studied creative writing under the tutelage of Dr. Chris Bursk and James White at Bucks County Community College

Book preview

Boys, Baseball,

and

Beginnings

Bill Moore

Copyright © 2017 by Bill Moore.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2017911303

ISBN:       Hardcover       978-1-5434-3780-5

                 Softcover         978-1-5434-3781-2

                 eBook              978-1-5434-3782-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 07/24/2017

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 The Beginning Is a Great Place to Start!

Chapter 2 It Doesn’t Take the Sharpest Knife to Cut Butter!

Chapter 3 Let the Games Begin if the Weather Clears Up!

Chapter 4 Dickey Meets Lori by Mistake

Chapter 5 You Can Get the Boy to Math, but You Can’t Get Math into the Boy

Chapter 6 Hard Work Is Easy When You’re Having Fun

Chapter 7 Bottom of the Ninth

Chapter 8 Why Is Commencement the Beginning When I Just Finished?

Chapter 9 One Day a Boy, What Next?

Chapter 10 Don’t Be Too Oblivious to the Obvious!

Chapter 11 We Didn’t Know It Was Going to Be a Surprise

Chapter 12 You and I Are We!

Chapter 13 Lori Sees Dickey’s World on Their Honeymoon

Chapter 14 If Friends Are Friends, Why Can’t You Trust Them?

Chapter 15 If You Are Here, It Must Be Home

Chapter 16 Love Is Like Ice Cream – It Comes in Different Flavors

Chapter 17 If I Hit a Triple, Would They Give Me a Job?

Chapter 18 Yogi Would Say Fun Is Winning and Fun Is Sinning but not Both on Game Day

Chapter 19 If Love Is a Bed of Roses, Why Are There So Many Thorns?

Chapter 20 Dickey Would, If He Could

Chapter 21 The Jackers Try Again

Chapter 22 Dickey Attends the Yankee Tryout Camp

Chapter 23 You’re a Catcher; Why Not Become a Catcher in the Rye?

Chapter 24 Derrick Uses Magic for Fun and Profit

Chapter 25 Dickey Hears the Fat Lady Sing

Chapter 26 Wedding Anniversary

Chapter 27 Little Robbie Catches Cereal Thief

Chapter 28 Dickey Tells Derrick, I’ll Tell You the Truth Whether I Know It or Not

Chapter 29 It Ain’t Over Till Yogi Swings

Epilogue

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my father, who would have loved the story; to my friend Robert Lawyer for ideas and helpful comments; and to the memory of Yogi Berra, that great Yankee catcher, without whom this book would have been unnecessary!

Acknowledgments

I am the luckiest man on earth because of my wife and friends. Thanks to my wife for encouraging me to keep writing; to my friend Robert Lawyer for great ideas and comments on the story; to Jean Meyers, who read the final story; and friend Norma McGlothlin, grammarian par excellence, who is the only person I know who reads the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary and truly enjoys it, and who meticulously corrected my errors and retyped the manuscript. Without everyone’s help, this would have been a piece of ill-literature instead of a piece of literature. Sincere thanks to all of you.

During the writing, I heard several comments to the effect that I should have paid better attention in bonehead English class.

Chapter 1

The Beginning Is a Great Place to Start!

Dickey Wells, the birthday boy, sat on the squeaky porch swing wearing his genuine NY Yankee baseball cap and his high school varsity jacket. The spring snow, soft and wet, covered the hills and ran down to the shores of Lake Otsego. His aunt from Pennsylvania would call this the onion snow. Sure, he had a Boy Scout merit badge in gardening, but how would he know? He never planted onions! The brisk northwesterly wind spun the snowflakes into swirls and made his ears tingle. No baseball today, but the Yankees start spring training tomorrow, on his birthday, and his high school team would begin indoor drills in the gym.

Dickey softly pounded his right fist into the perfectly formed pocket of his new catcher’s mitt. Wow! He looked down lovingly at the meticulously crafted leather mitt, and a feeling of joy flooded his entire body. Holy cow, it was a Spalding professional model with a double-hinged pocket. The hinges made it flexible enough to catch a baseball one-handed. As Dickey read the inscriptions on the mitt, the thing that gave him an uncontrollable thrill was the scrawled personal autograph…Yogi! Yes, it was a Yogi Berra signature mitt. His father had arranged to have Yogi autograph it. In the box was a handwritten note: To Dickey, best of luck, kid. The beginning is a great place to start! Yogi

Hey, wait! I’m going to use this mitt and it’s going to get dirty, scuffed, and worn, and it’s not going to look as beautiful as it does today. Yeah, but it’s always going to be mine! And I’ll always remember how beautiful it looks right now.

For a long, quiet time, all one could hear was squeak, pat, squeak, pat, squeak, pat, and the wind making little whistling noises. Dickey drifted off into a daydream…When I get to be a star with the Yankees, I’m going to build my parents a brand-new house on this property. They can live on the first floor, and my bedroom will be on the second floor. My bedroom will have these beautiful French doors like the ones I saw at Thomas Jefferson’s house at Monticello leading out to a balcony. When I come home in the off-season, I can look out over the view of the lake. As his imagination created his dream of the future, he spied Rob Royer walking up the path to his house. Rob had a brightly colored box in his hand.

How did he know it was my birthday today? Dickey thought to himself. I know this guy too well. He probably mixed up some chemicals and put them in that beautiful package. When I unwrap it, I’ll be smelling the most awful smell known to man!

Rob, Dickey’s best friend, was the school’s resident chemist. Rob’s friends held him in high esteem for his attempts at making nitroglycerin and other sorts of irritants causing grief and panic to his neighbors. He was much in demand at Halloween by his friends seeking revenge on someone. If he had been successful making nitro, he and I might be writing this story from another dimension, but thankfully we lived to truthfully tell you how this whole saga happened.

Hey, Dickey yelled to Rob, how did you know it was my birthday?

Rob shouted back, Your dad told me what he was getting for you.

Rob trudged up onto the porch, took a seat on the swing, and said, Here, happy birthday. He handed Dickey the present and said, Open it! I think you’ll like it.

Did you mix up some awful-smelling stink bomb to trick me? Dickey asked.

No, I’m sure you’ll like it; go ahead, encouraged Rob.

Dickey ripped off the bright paper wrapping and could see the red box. Inside was an official American League baseball signed by Yogi Berra. Rob said, Do you remember when I got that at the Hall of Fame game? Yogi had just started with the Yankees in 1946 and was wearing No. 35. He autographed that ball for me, but I knew it would mean more to you, so I wanted you to have it."

Dickey was a bit overwhelmed with emotion and said, This is really generous for you to do. Are you sure about it?

Rob was solid and replied, You love Yogi more than anyone I know, and I definitely want you to have it. Someday you’ll look at this baseball and at that mitt and remember all the great things we did and the great fun we had with your dad.

"By the way, that was some scorching day in Cooperstown when