Column: The longest homerun

Ervin was my friend until we were with girls I wanted to impress. Once two girls I liked walked by on the gravel road by the stadium, and stopped to chat. Ervin drooled and stuttered and laughed, "Hee hee hee," several times — just being Ervin, really. That irked me.

When he said, "Biddee and I are friends," I worried the girls thought less of me for having a friend with developmental issues.

Later that day when I prepared to pitch to Ervin, my anger rushed back. Why did he swing the bat so weirdly, like a tomahawk instead of across the plate like the rest of us, the right way? When he pitched, why did he wind up like the old pitchers in the 1920s? He invited people to make fun of him.

He pounded his bat on the plate. "Haaay! Rubber arm!" he cried. "Hum chucka, baby! Just try to-to-to throw a strike in here. Haaay! You-you-you don't know how to throw strikes. We want a pitcher, Biddee, not a glass of water. Hee hee hee! Haaay!"

Normally those insults, picked up from town team baseball, meant nothing. Today I took them personally. I felt the rough horsehide against my fingers. Time to get even.

I wound up, reared back, and fired a fast ball high and tight. At his head. Ervin squinched his eyes, grunted, and swung his bat over his head straight down, as though he was clubbing the ground. Usually his hits dribbled into the infield. Not this time. Crack!

"Whoa!" someone cried. Our heads turned. The ball rose over the infield, soared higher and higher over the outfielders, across the road, and plopped into Gutschmidt's rhubarb patch.

Ervin's first home run ever! A monster blast! Our jaws dropped. He hippity-hopped around the bases like a little kid. We mobbed him at home, and for a moment I forgot I was mad at him and half-hugged him.

After his team made the third out, I attempted to mark homerun on the score sheet by Ervin's name, but he locked his big paw on my wrist so I couldn't write. His eyes were large as new baseballs, and he panted and hopped back and forth like a little kid needing the bathroom.

"Biddee!" he said. "Biddee! I hit-I hit-I hit-I hit a home run."

"I know, Ervin."

"Biddee!"

"Yes, Ervin."

"I hit-I hit-"

"Yes, Ervin, I know!"

"Biddee, Biddee, how far?"

I had marked my longest home run with a popsicle stick in the garden across the road, moving it each time I hit one further.

"How far, Biddee?"

I thought I knew how far — farther than mine. I would be known as the pitcher who not only gave up Ervin's first home run ever — probably the only one he would ever hit — and a blast hit farther than mine. What if the Yankees found out? I felt heartsick.

"Pretty far," I said, glancing at the others, a couple grinning as they mimicked Ervin's swing. I snatched up a ball and hid it in my hand in the folds of my shirt at my hip. "Let's go see how far," I said. Someone always had to retrieve home runs.

Laughter dogged us across the outfield, maybe directed toward me for giving up the homer. Maybe for Ervin. He stammered and asked why others made fun of him.

"I don't know, Ervin," I said, feeling uneasy.

"I-I-I don't do anything to them, Biddee. Why do they want to hurt me?"

I fidgeted as we crossed the gravel road into the garden. "Sometimes if you make fun of someone else, it makes you feel better. For a little bit, I guess."

While he gazed into the distance, I released the ball I'd hidden. The thump made me jump.

"It-it-it-" He slapped his chest with his palm, and a tear trickled out of his eye. His face turned soft.

"That-that-that's why I like you, Biddee," he said. "You wouldn't do that to me."

I blanched, and averted my eyes. With forced heartiness I said, "Look Ervin!" and made a show of discovering the ball I'd just planted.

"Your home run ball! Almost as far as mine!"

He took it. "Oh no, Biddee," he said. "That's not my ball."

Uh-oh, I thought. The jig's up. I glanced wildly around, then hung my head. Softly I said, "Maybe you're right, Ervin. Maybe the ball hit somewhere else." My heart sank. I wished I'd brought another ball to plant. But I hadn't. Time to be honest. "Oh yeah," I pointed. "Over there. I remember now."

Looking at the ball in his hand, Ervin said, "This is your new ball. We don't want to use it yet, remember? It‘s too nice."

He showed me Mickey Mantle's blue handwriting next to the red seams. My hero. Not his actual handwritten signature, but duplicated. Yet still special to me. I grabbed the ball, and stalked to my popsicle stick thrust in the earth. And past. I rummaged among the rhubarb, and found a baseball. "Here's your ball."

Ervin's eyes measured his home run and my stake. "Oh n-no, Biddee. I couldn't have hit it that far. Not farther than you." He shook his head.

"You did."

"No, Biddee, not farther than your ball."

With the heel of my shoe I gouged a line in the soft earth. "Yes," I said. "Here's where we'll put your stake." I smiled with relief. Honesty felt good.

Ervin rubbed out the line with his boot. "No."

"Yes. You hit it, Ervin. Fair and square. You deserve it." He tried to say no, but was pleased. He started crying.

"And as a prize," I said, as he blubbered softly, I pried open his thick hand and stuck my baseball into it.

"But Biddee! This is the wrong ball!"

"No it isn't."

"But oh no, The Mick's name is on it! It-it's yours!"

"Now it's yours, Ervin. I closed his fingers over the ball and held them shut. "It's a trade."

"A-a-a trade? For what, Biddee? I don't have…"

I held his arm. "For…" I couldn't say "For helping me be honest." Instead, I said, "For-for being my friend."

This is the opinion of Bill Vossler of Rockville, author of 18 books including his latest, "Days of Wonder: A Memoir of Growing Up." He can be reached at bvossler0@outlook.com.

Bill Vossler

This article originally appeared on St. Cloud Times: The longest homerun in town