Memories of summer
are, for me, memories of youth. I
moved here in the spring of 1970. It doesn’t sound that long ago, but god,
there was no ESPN, TNT, ESPN2, CNN, or Headline News.
Television was a fuzzy KTBC. Barton Springs was just a cool place to swim; if a
horny guy was lucky, maybe he’d see a topless bather. Those first condos were
still a few years away and I guess the hike-and-bike trail was there but it
must have been, by today’s congested standards, quite desolate; running shoes
had yet to be invented.
William’s Field (across from the Y) and JC/Barton Fields (behind Barton
Springs) were the premier ballfields in town. Today, after years of neglect,
Williams has been spruced up. Still, it’s used only for girls’ fast pitch. I
don’t know if they play on JC at all.
My first spring in Austin, the restaurant where I worked formed a softball
team. We featured 3/4-sleeve jerseys with royal blue sleeves. Our logo,
emblazoned across the front, was a large, rabid, salivating rat. The deranged
rodent was chewing a baseball bat and he had a bandage across his cheek. The
logo symbolized a more relaxed era, when an innocuous “mouse” meandering slowly
across the dining room rafters would not provoke a hailstorm of simpering
complaints to the health department from picky diners. We were called The
Les Amis Daily Specials.
I’m looking at a wonderful black-and-white team picture, taken at JC
Field on a sweltering July day. We’re all grinning moronically. Everyone, I’m
certain, is quite stoned. You never knew, until after the game, on exactly
what. “Man,” says Ralphie, explaining why he placidly watched the ball arc
gently over his head and roll, unmolested, down the hill, “did you see the
trailers on that one?” Ed struck out four times on 12 straight pitches.
Astoundingly, his bat never touched a single ball. Keep in mind please, this
is slow pitch softball. I’ll give Ed this, he got in his cuts. It was
stunning, really. No one was angry. We stood in awe, wanting some of whatever
he was on. Later he recounted, “I just never picked out the right ball to swing
at.”
I’m looking at the grainy picture, 11 sweaty guys, babies really, just
starting out in life. Although only a few became real friends, I still know,
more or less, where most of them are. Steve stares out from 1970 belligerently,
his yellow Pearl Beer cap cocked at a jaunty, aggressive angle. That active and
intense interest in pharmaceuticals he possessed inspired him to open his own
drug store on the square in Jackson Hole. Mac, then the owner of what I think
was Austin’s first health food restaurant, is now a loan officer. His good
friend Red, our quarrelsome shortstop, smiling out of the old picture with
perpetually fogged bifocals that took the blame for all his errors, does, when
he must, some accounting. Neuman, our owner/patron and erratic right-fielder
is still running Les Amis Cafe. He seems the most unchanged. Picky Micheal
Smith, appalled and disgusted that a swine-eater and vegetable hater like
myself would be allowed to make Les Amis’ holy Vegetable Curry, became a
convert to a bizarre Buddhist sect. Ralphie, who you’ve already met, was a high
strung, hot-tempered Latino. His jet black hair was long and wild, like a
Mexican methuselah. In the photo he’s holding his baby who just this year graduated from UT. Last I heard he was the kitchen manager at
Jeffrey’s.
My good friend Craig was our manager. Craig would go on to fame as a Whole
Foods guru. He hinted at this decisive executive bent when he yanked me
out, in the middle of the first inning, of my first game
with the Daily Specials simply because three balls went under my legs…
for home runs. I’ve never forgiven him for that!
The Daily Specials stayed together, in shifting forms, for a number of years
of real summers. Slowly, it began to change. Guys got married, had kids, or
just got too busy with that sad but inevitable thing we call “real life.”
Eventually, the team drifted apart, turning summer merely into a bunch of
endless days of unrelenting heat. I haven’t picked up a softball in almost a
decade. Maybe I should – that’s the last time I remember summer being special.
This article appears in May 19 • 1995 and May 19 • 1995 (Cover).