The Day God Played Baseball

By John Henry Hardy

Will the underdog Cherokees finally beat their rivals, the Creeks? That's what everyone in the small town of Pineville, Pennsylvania, wants to know as the championship game for the Bucks County Youth Baseball League approaches.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Henry Hardy
• Release date: Nov 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9798869010124

Book preview

The Day God Played Baseball

John Henry Hardy

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Copyright © 2015 John Henry Hardy

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 979-8-8690-1012-4

Chapter 1

Alex Sardinski anxiously looked across the ball field as he had done so many times since becoming head coach of the Cherokees baseball team nearly fourteen years before. In spite of its aging wooden bleachers, food stands, and concrete restrooms, this was a field of legends. For more than eighty years, folks from all over the county had gathered here at Richie Field each Fourth of July to see which team would be crowned the Bucks County Youth League champions and hold the coveted Richie Trophy for an entire year.

Baseball was Alex’s love and passion, and his team, the Cherokees, had lost only one game this season—that was to the Creeks. And those two teams would again face off in a few days to determine which one would be crowned the league champions. Tina Cramer, a Bucks County Times reporter, would cover the momentous event.

In the distance, Alex could make out the cross on the steeple of Saint Andrews Catholic Church, the only house of worship in the town of Pineville, Pennsylvania. Less than a block from the church was the Pineville Country Store, owned and operated by Tom and Gretchen Miller. The store boasted a small soda fountain, where students of the Pineville Elementary School usually gathered after class to socialize and talk about the day’s events at school. Many of them played on the teams registered in the Bucks County Youth Baseball League.

A small back room of the country store served as the town’s post office, but it was a full-service postal facility, and Tom Miller was its postmaster as well as the town’s mayor, an office he had held for the past twelve years. The hallway leading from the store to the post office was lined with small mailboxes with little glass windows and combination locks. Every day the mail truck from Doylestown, the county seat, arrived to pick up outgoing mail and packages and to make similar deliveries. Mr. Miller left a note in the mailboxes to let patrons know they had a package, which he stored behind the counter in the food store.

Almost directly across from the store was Tom Ford’s Pineville Tavern. It was open seven days a week, and the kitchen served hamburgers, hot dogs, and philly cheesesteak sandwiches from the grill on weekdays. However, on the weekends the tavern also served dinner, and folks came from all over the district to wine, dine, and dance the night away to the music of the four-member local band known as the Country Cats.

Mr. Ford was also the chief of the Pineville Volunteer Fire Department, which had one small pumper engine and seven volunteer firefighters, who received on-the-job training once a month from Mr. Ford. He was a retired fireman and paramedic from Philadelphia. In spite of the numerous fireplaces and central-heating systems installed in most houses, there had been nary a house fire in Pineville in the last ten years, although the department extinguished several grass fires each summer.

Mr. Clem was the town’s mortician as well as the chief of police and received a salary of $200 a month from the town council. There was no jail, but speeding tickets and other fines were paid at the courthouse, which was located on the first floor of Judge Phillip Biven’s home at 12 Main Street. A sign posted on the front lawn read Pineville Court House. Judge Phillip A. Biven, Presiding. Anyone placed under arrest was driven by Chief Clem to Doylestown, where he or she was held in the county jail pending a hearing or trial.

Another sign, marked Town Hall, was posted above the entrance to Judge Biven’s rather large basement, where the mayor and six town-council members met once a month. The first-floor courthouse and the town hall located in Judge Biven’s basement were the only municipal offices in town.

***

Alex shifted his gaze to Beamis Enterprises, which his baseball archenemy owned. It was the largest building in Pineville, selling new and used farm machinery such as tractors, reapers, harrows, and plows. But the crux of the business was the factory, with its long rows of looms that weaved burlap bags for animal feed and cotton bags for flour and various other grains for human consumption. The cotton bags were emblazoned with colorful floral designs that the farmers’ wives tailored into colorful blouses or sundresses. A blue ribbon earned at the arts-and-crafts exhibit at the annual Bucks County Fair for this sewing skill was a real conversation piece whenever the recipient hosted a social gathering at her home.

Conrad Beamis, the owner of Beamis Enterprises, was the wealthiest man in town and served on the town council, the school board, and the baseball commission. Baseball was his love and passion too, and it was rumored it was the only thing he loved. Several hundred of the twelve hundred citizens who lived in Pineville and the surrounding communities worked on one of the three shifts in his factory, which garnered him tremendous community support. The parents of several children who played on the team that he sponsored worked at Beamis Enterprises.

Even though Conrad ruled his business with an iron fist, there was a waiting list of potential employees. The current employees were not unionized and feared his wrath, and he sometimes fired employees at what seemed to be his slightest whim—depending on his mood at the moment and how much he had to drink the previous night. His ironclad rule was that if you lost your job at Beamis Enterprises—for whatever reason—you could never work there again. Those who were fired or quit their jobs had to drive forty-five miles to Philadelphia or take the early-morning train out of Doylestown to seek employment elsewhere. The long commute and expense were a strong incentive for the bullied employees to remain loyal to the testy martinet.

In spite of his being a tyrant and the sexual innuendos he sometimes directed toward the young women manning the looms, his popularity and business appeared to be booming, although he had applied for a loan of $7 million with the Pineville Bank, the only financial institution in town. That loan had to be approved by Alex Sardinski, the bank’s chief loan officer, and Todd Martin, the bank’s president, as well as the bank board.

***

The review of his loan application had been scheduled for one o’clock, but Mr. Beamis had arrived a few minutes early, and when he entered Alex’s office, he was rather annoyed. It didn’t matter that it was not yet one o’clock. He wasn’t used to waiting for anyone, because he was always late for appointments and the other party always waited for him to arrive, but not today. Beamis Enterprises desperately needed an infusion of cash in spite of the successful image the owner’s living habits portrayed.

The crux of the problem was his lavish lifestyle and playboy habits of spending on luxury cars and parties, not to mention his infamous philandering. He also owned a yacht, Summerfield, which was berthed at the Sundown Marina on the Delaware River. The marina was just outside Morrisville, and he used the vessel to entertain prospective clients who owned and operated large feed mills or shopping malls throughout a five-state area. He was also looking to expand overseas.

***

Conrad plopped down into a chair and yawned in spite of his anger and then reached down and tugged at the glitzy but irksome belt buckle that continually disappeared below his rotund paunch. Then he brushed aside the long strands of hair he used as a comb-over to disguise his thinning brown-and-gray locks, which had been blown about by the wind. He