Putting Inspirational music aside for the moment, I’d like to recount still one of the most inspirational stories of my life.  This blog is about ALL things Inspirational, so here goes…

The Glendale Wildcats were suddenly defunct.  It was April and I was in the 6^th grade.  Baseball was my life.

The St. Louis Cardinals with Stan Musial as its Hall of Fame player were my passion, but the Glendale Wildcats was the Little League team I had played on the summer before.

The Wildcats had lost their sponsor and that meant no team, no baseball for the summer — an impossible situation to face for a 6^th grader.

My Dad, Lyman, who was a good athlete – once played hockey for the Chicago Blackhawks – had never thrown a baseball in his life.  He grew up in Canada in an era long before the Toronto Blue Jays.

Dad saw the look on my face when we heard the bad news about the Wildcats and stepped up to the plate.

At dinner he announced, “I’m going to hit up my richest client, one Herbert Daust, to sponsor a team.  I don’t know if he likes kids, but he’s certainly got the money to do it!”  Having saved the day, Dad went to ol’ Herbie and Herbie accepted.

A month passed by as we breathlessly waited for the season to start.  At the last moment just before league registration, Herbie decided to put his money elsewhere and dropped out.  Now we were really in a pickle – no money, no time and no baseball.

Once again Mom and Dad pulled through.  Lyman Link would sponsor the team.  That meant registration fees, uniforms, equipment, transportation and God knows what else.  It also meant no summer vacation for the Links, but it did mean Baseball.

So Dad became George Steinbrenner, my brother Jim, who was about to go into his senior year in high school, took on the job as manager of the team and Mom became head cheerleader.

We decided to call the team ‘Link’s Leopards’.  Dad said, “Well, if I’m going to spend all this money, I’m certainly going to put our name on it.”  I was so proud I could pop.  I was going to play on a team named after my dad and managed by my big brother!  When our blue uniform t-shirts and hats arrived with the red Link’s Leopards across the chest and the L on the hats, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.  I remember the whole family, once again at dinner, opening up the boxes and staring at those uniforms, speechless.

As it turned out, we had a really good team.  My brother, Jim, turned out to be a terrific manager and my Dad was a very un-Steinbrenner-like hands-off owner.  He left the team in the capable hands of my brother and basically paid the bills.  He and Mom did come to every game and cheered us on from the stands.

We rolled through June, July and August winning most of our games.  With 3 great, beyond-their-years pitchers named Phaff Hopkins, Keith Ryan and the one Black kid on the team, Wesley Whitesides (I’m not making these names up), we were pretty invincible.  With Tommy Singleton at shortstop and the great hitting Bill Scharff at first, we were slick fielding and strong hitting as well.

But our real star that summer was our catcher and my best friend, Doug Ryan, Keith’s brother.  Doug was simply the best athlete to come out of Kirkwood, Missouri in years – big for his age, coordinated beyond his years, blessed with tremendous baseball smarts and one helluva hitter.

These guys formed the nucleus of a team that would go on to the district finals.

“Where was young Pete in all this?” you should ask.

Mired on the bench.  The team had graduated from Bantams to Midgets that year, so that meant that the age range of the Midget division was 6^th and 7^th graders.  At that age the difference in maturity between the two grades was great and so most of the regulars on the team were 7^th graders.  I was in the 6^th.

The following summer, when I was in the 7^th grade I hit about 10 homers and a gaudy .456.  The summer of Link’s Leopards I never got a hit.  I played right field (the place where they always put the weakest guy) when I did play and was secretly mortified all summer.  I kept a notebook of my hitting non-exploits that I still have somewhere tucked inside the bottom of a box.

It was the first summer where I faced real fastballs and even an occasional curve ball and that summer I never did figure out how to hit either.  My sojourns to the plate were filled with anxiety, disappointment and great embarrassment with Mom and Dad hopelessly cheering me on and brother Jim wishing that he could send somebody else up there.

I did get pretty good at drawing walks (being scared to death to swing at the ball) and getting on base and actually scored a few runs that summer, so all was not lost.  I was part of the team and the team was soaring.  But it was a truly humbling experience.

Just the other day Derek Jeter, Yankee shortstop, mired in a slump, said, “Baseball is a truly humbling experience.”  I know down deep what he means.

In the district semifinals we faced the only team that had beaten us twice that summer for the 3^rd time.  Back then we played 7 inning games and we went into the 7^th inning losing 3-0.  It looked like the end of the season for Link’s Leopards as we came to our final at bats and our last 3 outs.

Just before our final at bats as I sat down on the end of the bench praying, I heard the team abuzz.  As I looked up, there stood my Dad.  He had come down out of the stands for the first time all summer to talk to “his boys”.

“Gather around, boys!”  With great curiosity and sense of drama we all gathered around Dad readying our minds for the inspirational speech that the moment called for.  “Win one for the Gipper” came to mind.  Perhaps some of the immortal words of Winston Churchill, Dad’s hero in life, would inspire us on to victory.

Dad stood silently as 23 boys waited.  The umpire called out, “C’mon Leopards, let’s play some ball here.”  The people in the stands sat hushed.  I thought to myself, “C’mon Dad, say something!”  Dad was an accountant –not exactly a leader of men, not exactly the orator that I would have picked for the moment.

Still the silence went on.  The umpire began to approach the bench.  Still we waited for Dad to speak.  He stood frozen.  Manager Jim said, “Dad…      ?”

That seemed to snap him out of it.  He gathered us closer and whispered so only the team could hear, “Boys, if you win this game, I’ll buy you all the ice cream you can eat.”

We won the game 16-3.  We scored 16 runs that inning and demolished the team that had beaten us twice that season and waltzed into the finals.

We lost the final game that summer, but it didn’t matter.  We won the big one and Dad turned out to be very George Steinbrenner-like.  You want your team to win?  Throw more money at ’em.

This story has been told in the Link households now for years over and over.  Whenever Dad would tell the story, he would always include this, his favorite anecdote.

After the winning 16-3 game as we all celebrated at the local Dairy Queen, Dad approached Wesley Whitesides who sat at the outdoor table with an uneaten hot fudge sundae, chocolate milkshake, banana split and 25 cent chocolate cone (a foot high) before him.  “What’s wrong, Wesley, don’t you like ice cream?” said Dad.  Wesley answered excitedly, I’s jus’ lookin’ at it all Mr. Link; I’s jus’ lookin’ at it!”

For years Dad used to brag that he had spent $37 dollars that day on ice cream.  Remember, those were the days when a large chocolate shake cost 25 cents.

He used to say that was the best $37 dollars he ever spent.

For more inspirational music, thoughts and ideas from Peter Link,
please visit Watchfire Music.