Clark’s Ballgames and OK Corral

You’re an only child, and mercifully healthy so far. Peer play, for you, has usually meant play-dates with neighbor children, often singletons themselves, in which you romp freestyle around a house or playground while one or more adults keep watch. That concept, the “play-date,” didn’t exist when I was a kid, nearly a half century before you. Mostly, my siblings and I made do with each other’s company, with the occasional neighbor nearly randomly dropping in or out, and the permutations of play could get intricate in a family of multiple adopted and disabled kids, sometimes even a little nuts.

For instance, at least in theory we had enough siblings to play our own softball games, but the accommodations that we had to make of the rules to our various limitations were necessarily so baroque as to verge on the surreal. If it weren’t for my brother Clark’s obsession with playing ball, we probably would never have tried it at all.

Clark, adopted from Korea, first by a family in Florida who rejected him after a year, then by my parents, arrived at our house at approximately the age of eleven, his actual birthdate unknown, speaking little English yet but having already somehow acquired a fanatical fascination with baseball and the New York Yankees during his unfortunate Floridian sojourn. 

As an orphan in Seoul, Clark had contracted polio, which left him quite bandy-legged and prone to abrupt collapse whenever he attempted a walk more swift than a stroll. So, Little League was out for him, unfortunately. That fact did not prevent him from craving baseball gloves and vividly fantasizing about being an outfielder for the Yankees, whose games he listened to on a small transistor radio that my mother let him keep only because, unlike me, he could be trusted not to use it to listen to rock-‘n-roll. (In point of fact, Clark loved Muzak, although he forever refused to explain why.)

It was Clark who attempted to organize our all-sibling softball games, with that occasional, able-bodied neighbor kid added. A typical summertime configuration circa the mid-seventies might involve, of course, Clark, plus Peter, Jimmy, Richard, me, possibly Alleene or even baby Alice, never Kim. If he was around, Donny Murphy, who had really played in Little League, might join in.

We played in the back yard behind the old dog run and the boxy little greenhouse that served for a few years as a chicken coop. Donny might be the lone outfielder, out in the roots of the second-growth trees. He could cover ground. Alleene might be the infielder. Clark would be pitching while also calling his typically demented play-by-play, a  non-stop homage to his beloved Yankees’ announcer, Phil “The Scooter" Rizzuto, filtered through a thick Korean accent. Once in a while, one of us would yell at him to shut up and pitch already. He would pitch, then, but without a break in his commentary.

There were no teams, really. Batting and running the bases were done by duos. For instance, I, who could barely hobble, might pair with Richard, who had strong legs and a notoriously mulish disposition but was legally blind. Since he ran straight at the fielder, whom he could see, and not at the base, which he couldn't, Richard was a hazard to try to tag out at first. Meanwhile, Peter, who had spina bifida, might catch. Donny would have to come in from the outfield to run for literally legless Jimmy, who batted from his wheelchair, or perhaps to run for Peter, while Jimmy took Peter’s spot behind the plate. (Donny, who could actually play baseball, was rarely allowed to bat. We considered it unfair.) Since Clark’s pitches were often wild, Alice, the ultra-hyperactive toddler, might be coaxed into tracking down balls that rolled out of Jimmy’s grasp. Or not. She mostly ran around and shrieked a lot. 

I can’t recall a single game that ended with anything like a score, although play could go on for hours and was guaranteed to generate a lot of gleeful mockery plus more than a few hot arguments. Everybody but Donny and Richard got multiple turns at bat. 

Most of us didn’t try all that hard, but Clark competed furiously, aiming at whatever mysterious goal constituted winning in his mind and always declaring himself and the Yankees the victors, while Richard invariably muttered, “luck!”, as if that word were a curse expressing the nth degree of disgust. Clark was, in fact, desperately competitive over any contest—ping pong, table hockey, croquet. He was determined to win at all costs, and ideally underhandedly or wickedly. He was guaranteed to try to knock your croquet ball into the woods, preferably into a patch of poison ivy.

In 1980, my last summer before college, I brought my high school girl friend, a ferocious tomboy and natural athlete, home for a weekend visit. The siblings tried including her in one of our bizarro softball half-games, but it didn’t go well, as her softball prowess humiliated Donny, who was trying hard to show off his able body. Plus, neither Richard nor Alleene was there. Then Clark came up with something truly mad and actually dangerous.

Our mother was in the house sleeping off her night shift at the nursing home. Our father was running noisy table saws in the garage-cum-cabinet-shop. Clark fished out his entire collection of air rifles and passed them around. Time for war. Was my girlfriend in? She most definitely was. Donny didn’t dare back out then. We had added another brother, John, to the family a couple of years earlier. He was able-bodied except for juvenile diabetes and always game for any kind of mayhem. Jimmy almost chickened out, but then he got the best rifle in the draw. He rolled out of his wheelchair and quickly took up a nearly impregnable defensive position, using an overturned aluminum rowboat behind the house. Being slow and awkward but dead-eye myself, I headed into the woods to take advantage of the trees.

In the ensuing fire-fight, Jimmy and I both saw relatively little action, however, and we ended up with the fewest purple welts to show for it. Donny, John, and Pamela ranged all over the property on their nimble legs, dodging and firing on the run. Donny tried being chivalrous and ended up with a cheek welt courtesy of Pam. Shots at the head were technically against the initial, impromptu rules, as were any shots point blank, but once Clark saw Pam “miss” that shot that caught Donny in the face, he went full guerrilla commando, stalking and shooting up close from ambush to minimize  the disadvantage of his unreliable gait, until even Pam and John gave up for fear of actually losing an eye. Whereupon, Clark declared victory and strutted around the yard like a bandy-legged bantam, holding his BB rifle up in triumph, and refusing to shut up until all the shouting woke our mother up.

Then we were all, appropriately, in trouble. The air rifles were confiscated and locked up. Donny was sent home and punishments and warnings and “you-older-children-especially-should-know-betters” were doled out to everyone but Pam, the guest. Clark never stopped smirking and showed his battle scars off for a week. Speaking of scars, the best part of that foolish war game for me was the secret taking stock of injuries afterwards, when Pam hiked up her shorts to show me one welt she’d caught in the back of the thigh, half an inch below her bum. I was seventeen. As much as I could, I consoled her.

On the whole, recalling all this almost forty years on, I have to say as your father that I hope you stick to those supervised play-dates of yours for the rest of your happy, healthy childhood and never get too chummy with any family as lunatic as us.