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that Haney would let me shag fly balls during batting practice. This was ages before America became the land of the lawsuit. No one worried whether a kid might get hurt trying to glove a screaming line drive travelling at over 100 miles per hour, hit at him by a professional athlete. I never got hurt but if I had, it wouldn't have occurred to my parents to sue anyone. The bruise would be packed in ice, I'd be put to bed sore but otherwise fine by morning.

Baseball was about fun and fans and heroes. Sports stars still had time for adoring fans and, in spite of their meagre salaries, they didn't insist on being paid a hefty appearance fee to make the time.

On one of those sunny afternoons in the outfield, I had caught a fly ball and was trying to hurl it back to a ball boy standing at second base. Like nearly every seven or eight year old, I didn't really know how to throw properly. It was more like a gawky heave that started with my right arm bent backwards at the elbow, my hand practically resting on my shoulder and my body set square to the target, feet flat on the ground. I tried to build some power into the throw by leaning back at my waist before shoving everything - my torso, my arm, head, the ball towards whomever it was that I wanted to catch it. As a result, when I tossed the ball it went maybe twenty feet, mostly straight up in the air, and a good 200 feet short of where I thought it would end up.

As they still do today, pitchers ran along the outfield fence to strengthen their legs while fielders took batting practice. Warren Spahn and Lew Burdette were running one day as I made another futile effort to get the ball back to second base, and they came over to me. Spahn eventually elected to the Hall Of Fame for winning more games than any left-handed pitcher, a record he still holds asked, "Hey, kid. Don't you know how to throw a ball?" Then he and Burdette, one of the better spitball artists of his time, spent five or 10 minutes kneeling patiently on the grass and teaching me how to throw.

What a time that was. What a game it still is.

Learn more about this author, Charley James.
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