A memorable image

Decorated WWII veteran and longtime (40+years) Atlanta Braves official photographer Walter Victor died this week at age 97. My favorite of his many photos hangs on a wall in my basement. It is from the Sat., June 21, 1969 game attended by some Boynton youth.

My brother Rob (age 14) and I (age 13) were kidded by our friends for our over-joyous response to an unannounced pregame gathering at the mound. Mays and Aaron walked from their respective dugouts to be joined by Mantle, who had announced his retirement in March and was working on the broadcast crew for NBC's Game of the Week.

"Look! That's the three living home run leaders!" Rob and I said repeatedly as we marveled at being eyewitnesses to such an occasion. (Remember: We didn't see these guys much, even on TV; NBC's Game of the Week was the only baseball televised each week.)

I came across the photo (autographed) decades later — though the image was long seared in my mind — and negotiated a great deal. But I would have mortgaged the house to have it.

RIP, Mr. Victor. Thanks for your heroic service — and for this photo of heroes that brings back great memories.

Zeb's stadium art

By John Pierce

Second-grader Zeb Mathis of Sylva, N.C., draws and builds baseball stadiums just for fun. 

Lots of them.

The BrainTrust envisioning the new SunTrust Park in metro Atlanta should hire him as a consultant. He’ll work for grilled cheese sandwiches and French fries. For now.

His parents, Jeff and Rebecca, display his artwork on a wall in their mountain home — and a floor mat holds the variously shaped and colored blocks that form multi-leveled stadium designs. The kid is good.

They also get him to his own ballgames during the summer as well as to major and minor league stadiums — including historic ballparks in nearby Asheville and in Chicago. Zeb and his dad even drove down to Atlanta recently to share a long rain delay with me.

Last Saturday, while we were waiting on our dinner (delicious mahi-mahi for me and grilled cheese for Zeb) at Lulu’s on Main in quaint downtown Sylva, Rebecca borrowed some crayons from the hostess. And Zeb turned the blank back of my driving instructions into a piece of stadium art — for me.

I’m so glad to have a Zeb Mathis original. 

It will soon be framed and placed among the baseball stuff that gets me through the off-season.

Thanks, Zeb! 

Keep drawing and building.

Scooter and Shamu

By John Pierce

With the baseball season slipping painfully away — carrying dashed hopes for postseason play in Atlanta — the franchise is seeking to turn fans' attention to the future. The newly named and yet-to-be-built SunTrust Park looks great.

But my excitement is dampened by the uninspired and uninspiring play of the Braves this season. So I prefer to look backward rather than ahead just yet.

(Note: I paid for the improbable postseason ticket strips at the time — and will attend most of the remaining, meaningless games.  So I’m not a fair-weather fan. That’s why it creates pain and requires processing.)

Before 1991, we never really expected to be heading to the stadium in October. It was a year most Atlantans (of a certain age range) will never forget.

But the lowly baseball team that had ended the previous season in the division cellar got on a roll. Florida State football showboat Deion Sanders joined the team and a couple of fans’ spontaneous tomahawk chant soon became a stadium-wide sensation.

By season end, Braves fans were making plans to attend the city’s first-ever World Series.

Winning builds excitement and draws crowds. Foam tomahawks showed up the hands of statuary dignitaries around the state capitol. And the often-ignored Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium became the social place to be.

Playoff tickets were a treasured commodity. Before StubHub and other online outlets, scalpers hawked the few highly-inflated tickets on street corners around the stadium.

Walter "Scooter" Brown watching the 2014 Braves

Then the Braves announced that a very few remaining tickets would be put on sale on a first-come, first-served basis. I turned to one of the students with whom I had enjoyed this most remarkable “worst-to-first” season.

Walter “Scooter” Brown was a diehard fan and student at Southern Tech in Marietta. (Some may know it as Southern Technical Institute, Southern Technical College, Southern Polytechnic State University; just don’t call it Kennesaw State University in front of alumni.)

“I’ll buy the tickets if you will stand in line to get them,” I said to Scooter, who was always open to a challenge.

He recruited fellow student Russell Skelton — who still confesses to having to work very hard to make up for the class and lab work missed. They spent two, yes two, nights camped out in the ticket line.

The prize was finally grasped: tickets to post-season Braves baseball.

The old stadium was a round bowl designed for both baseball and football but not particularly good for either. It lacked the intimacy of the current (but soon to be former) Braves ballpark.

Fortunately, we were not in the highest, most remote seats in the stadium. We were one row in front of them — towering above the leftfield foul pole.

Through the top opening of the stadium, we could see Shamu the blimp — there to provide overhead views for the television audience. And we didn’t have to look up. Shamu was right there with us.

When a disputed call at third base erupted, we jokingly assured each other that we had seen David Justice’s toe touch the bag.

Recently, Scooter and I recalled and laughed about that time long ago. We did so from seats at Turner Field with a clear, close view of all the action.

I don’t want to go back to the cheap seats. But the memories sure are good.

But I sure hope to go back to October baseball in Atlanta again. Someday.

A legend and his doo-dads

By John Pierce

It was a Monday day game and I needed a break. So I arrived early — because I like to arrive early for baseball games.

The stadium felt close to empty. There was no batting practice.

Many of the players pulled their big trucks and luxury cars into their designated lot well after I had arrived. They unloaded luggage for what would be the team’s worst road trip in more than half a century.

There is something about a ballpark that brings peace and allows my mind to rest — even if looking only at the well-manicured grass and watching groundskeepers chalk the lines.

My easy stroll around the lower aisle soon led me to an encounter with the legendary usher Walter Banks who mans the owner’s box. He began working as an usher in April 1965 — a full year before the Braves relocated from Milwaukee to old Atlanta Stadium.

The Detroit Tigers and the Atlanta Braves played an exhibition game there after breaking spring training camp, Walter told me. Then, for the rest of the 1965 season, the minor league Atlanta Crackers made use of the newly-built stadium that now serves as a parking lot.

“Where you from?” Walter asked.

“I live in Macon now; spent a lot of years in Atlanta, but grew up near Chattanooga,” I replied.

“Ringgold?” he asked.

I didn’t know if he was a mind reader or just taking a lucky guess.

“Well, yes,” I said.

Then he talked about growing up in the neighborhood where we stood — before there were stadiums and interstate highways.

“It was more integrated back then than most folks think,” he said. Blacks, whites, Jews lived on different streets but knew each other, he added.

Walter Banks, who has a suite named after him down in  the tunnel, is best known (other than for his longevity) for his trivia. He calls these bits of baseball information “doo-dads.”

He started rolling off some of them — like the five players in major league baseball with the number five retired. I’m not a big numbers person, but he delighted in my quick and accurate responses to most of his questions — especially the ones about the Braves franchise.

I was honored by his affirmation: “You’re a real fan. A lot of people just go with whoever is winning.”

Our long and winding conversation soon led to passing along the joy of baseball to future generations. I told him of a recent text message I received from my daughter Meredith, a senior at the University of Georgia, when the Cubs were in town.

“Did you know that’s Eric Hinske coaching first?” she asked. I looked down the line to see the wide man in a Chicago uniform that I’d not recognized as the former Brave.

Walter laughed and shook his head. We talked awhile more and he asked me to jot down my seat number. I hope that means we’ll have the chance to connect again.

As I left he asked me to do him a favor.

“When you see your daughters, give them a hug for me,” he said. “And tell them I said they did a great job raising a good dad.”

Will do, Walter. And thanks for the best pregame experience I’ve had all year.

Even better than catching BP homers — though that is quite good too.

Game-time souvenir

On those rare and wonderful occasions during my childhood when my family would attend a Braves game at the old ballpark, we sat so high in the cheap seats that Aaron, Alou and Carty looked the size of ants. So a treasured game ball making a trek to our seats never reached beyond my imagination.

In 222, however, a glove is always on the left hand if a left-handed hitter is at the plate. A couple of seasons ago Michael Bourn and Chipper Jones provided foul balls within my reach.

Most recently (May 3, 2014), it was the Giants' "Kung Fu Panda" who sliced one my way.

Sitting just above the walkway, we greet vendors, fellow fans and others who pass by or come by to say "Hi."

But no guest is more welcomed than an official, mud-rubbed MLB baseball that touches nothing but air from bat to glove.

And Marshall was there

My friend Marshall Kerlin and I have attended hundreds of Atlanta Braves games together over the last few decades. We often talk about “being there” when various memorable events occurred.

But, in the final analysis, he always bests me on the biggest moment of all.

I was a high school senior in Ringgold, Ga., watching a fuzzy TV screen on April 8, 1974. And he was crouched in the aisle behind home plate at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.

It was Marshall’s first game as an usher at the old ballpark — where he later worked on the grounds crew as well.

On that chilly night, his supervisor told him to go on break — which usually meant leaving the seating area for few minutes. But it was the bottom of the fourth inning and Hank Aaron was coming to bat.

Yes, I saw it on TV and it was a magical moment as the home run crown long worn by The Babe settled onto the head of a most talented and gracious man from Mobile wearing a cartoonish feather on his sleeve.

Hank Aaron was — and is — my favorite athlete of all time.

The Braves’ home opener this year (Tuesday, April 8) commemorates that historic home run — hit exactly 40 years early.

And I’ll be there.

With Marshall.

Who will tell me for the 715^th time that he saw it live and in person.

And that I didn’t.

Chasing baseball

It has been harder than expected to live up to a claim made many years ago that I would not live in a town without professional baseball. Teams come and go. Sometimes they seem to elude me.

The Braves were accessible (by Atlanta traffic standards) throughout my 18 years of living in the metro area. However, 13 of those years were in Cobb County where the Braves will move a few years from now.

Tales of the original Chattanooga Lookouts filled my early years of living just a Harmon Killebrew shot over the state line. But going to the games are not in my memory log. The only big gap in the franchise’s long history was from the time I was a kid until after I went off to college.

Moving to Macon 14 years ago offered the chance to see the up-and-coming A Braves on a regular basis. But after three seasons of my enjoyment of games at historic Luther Williams Field, the M-Braves left for Rome, Ga.

And, once upon a time, I spent a few years in Georgia’s Rome as well — before baseball, of course.

Currently, my only remaining baseball option is to drive to Atlanta from Macon, which isn’t bad. Turner Field is easily accessible from the south side of the city. And without the daily hassles of a metro Atlanta commute, and with no minor league team in Macon, I attend more Braves games than ever before.

My recounting of the bad timing between where I’ve lived and where baseball teams locate should not be considered a major, but perhaps minor, complaint. It may take a little more effort, but I get in my share of the national pastime.

Baseball gets worked into my travels as much as possible — and I enjoy regular viewing of the game’s best from the front row of section 222 at Turner Field.

However, the news that the Braves will relocate to the northern ‘burbs in 2017 continues a challenging effort to be in the right place at the right time for baseball.

Baseball may run, but it cannot hide. I’ll track it down like a long fly ball up the centerfield hill in old Engel Stadium.

Now if winter will just give way to spring.

Hammerin’ Hank hits 80

Years ago my friend Steve Shore of Apex, N.C., was traveling through Atlanta. Taking him out for a good dinner was the least I could do since he and his wife Darlene had fed and housed me on numerous occasions during my seminary years.

So Teresa and I chose upscale Pano’s & Paul’s in Buckhead, a former Atlanta restaurant well known for its sautéed Dover sole, fried lobster tails and other delightful food offered with only the best service. An adjacent table for 10 was set but empty.

Shortly after placing our orders, the larger party arrived. It was a birthday celebration for Henry Louis Aaron, the true all-time home run champion. What was already a wonderful evening became more delightful as I inconspicuously watched my favorite sports hero celebrate.

Hank turns 80 today. According to a news report, he is celebrating this milestone in even bigger style. His friend, Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, is throwing a dinner party this week and the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery is adding the Hammer's likeness to its impressive collection.

Then on April 8, thousands will gather at Turner Field for the home opener, which also marks the 40^th anniversary of Aaron’s record-breaking 715^th home run. I can’t wait to take it all in from 222.

That offseason feeling

By John Pierce

Perhaps the late baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti said it best: “It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone.”

However, the baseball season goes well into the fall now. It is the dormancy of winter that makes fans yearn for the crack of the bat and the pop of leather.

Or maybe the late Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby put it better: “People ask me what I do in the winter when there’s no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”

For me, and many others, it is simple enough to say, “I miss baseball.”

There are specific aspects of the national pastime, however, that leave me looking forward to Opening Day.

I will miss seeing the “regulars” at the Turner Field: Norman, Darrell, Tommy, Dan, Chief and others.

I miss the staff welcoming us to Braves Country: Gary, Debora, Herman, Nate, Mike, Reggie, Lola, Stella and others.

I miss running into the old Braves players who can’t stay away from the action either. And spotting proud parents of current players.

I miss hearing beer vendor/psychologist Warren shouting “Hot out here!” on a cold, breezy April night at the Ted.

I miss singing the national anthem, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and “Devil Went Down to Georgia” (even though I liked “Thank God, I’m a Country Boy” better) — and, sometimes, Alan Jackson’s “Chattahoochee” if there is a delay late in the game.

I miss the sight and feel of a white official Major League baseball with its 108 red stitches leaving the batting cage and sailing some 350 feet into the outfield stands — and sometimes into my glove.

I miss chopping and cheering — and seeing my friend Marshall drawing wide attention with his neon tomahawk.

I miss baseball.

Spring training is the short-term goal. But more is needed.

April 8 — here we come.

(This photo of historic Engel Stadium in Chattanooga, where much of "42" was filmed, is from a visit there on the day the movie opened. It conveys the "empty feeling" better than any photo I have of Turner Field.)