Black Bats

Bopper and I were watching a special on the boob tube about a local Detroit ballplayer and his teams from the '50s and '60s. I played against several of those interviewed, but never the player, "Pinky" Deras, himself. But I knew about him, of course. More about competition between "us" and "them" in another post.

But the program displayed the "black bat," given to national championship teams. Team and team members' names, dates, exactly what championship, etc. are stamped on the bats. I mentioned to Bopper than I had a few of those. He looked skeptically at me, so I went to see if I could find them. I did find two. Bopp became curious, wanting to see my name (I wonder if thought I stole them?). Then he asked about the "really good guy" that he'd heard about from me and others. That was Ted Simmons and I showed him Ted's name. He looked satisfied. He asked about some of the other names, which really meant little to him, but he wanted to know if they were good, etc. There was no all-state baseball team back then, but quite a few of the team members on that bat were all-state in football and basketball. Including the four we picked up for the national tournament, if I recall, all but one either were drafted by MLB teams or played college ball or both. It brought back fond memories. I told Karen that, when I kick off, Bopper gets the black bats.

I ran into one of my son's junior high, I mean middle school, teachers. He said he heard about Matt teaching in Las Vegas. "I knew he'd be successful," he said. Well, although Matt was always a very, very good student, I'd say he was less than the ideal jr high kid, esp for teachers he didn't respect or like. Anyway, the teacher said he'd followed Matt through his high school, sports I assume, and was proud of him and what he'd done. Pretty cool....