Duggy Butler

    Two brothers stood on a porch facing the front door of Duggy Butler's house. It was early one afternoon in July 1961.  The shade of the front porch shielded them from the hot summer sun. The younger brother had just pressed the doorbell button.

    Michael, the older, was of average dimensions, with brown hair and two big cheeks on a round face.  His mother liked his dual dimples.  He was eleven.

    Peter, the younger, was also of mean height, but wiry and thin-boned, with straight blond hair and admirable facial features. He was on his way to becoming handsome. He was nine. All of the boys’ clothes had been thoroughly washed and pressed, including dungarees, flannel shirts, white socks and underpants.  

    It was the middle of summer and the ironer of their clothes, Gabriele, had just served them lunch. She was a petite woman of German descent in her mid-30s. Michael inherited her round face. She considered herself a beauty, often comparing herself to Myrna Loy, the film star.  Gabriele’s husband, Dragutin, was at his bookkeeping desk in Long Island City.  The family of four lived around the corner from Duggy’s on Avery Avenue in Flushing.

    Earlier, just as Michael and Peter were finishing their grilled cheese sandwiches, Gabriele questioned them, as they seemed particularly anxious to go outside.

    “Now where are you going?”, she asked, as she began picking up their plates.

    “Duggy’s!” Peter said.

    “Again?  Why are you always going over there?”

    The boys looked at each other and shrugged.

    “He’s too old to play with you,” she said.

    It was true. Duggy was 14. But they loved him.  

    Duggy knew how to play baseball. His natural style of play seemed inborn. His mannerisms reminded Peter of the major leaguers he watched on television; the smooth, refined, effortless ways of Hank Aaron. He threw right-handed, and, amazingly, batted from both sides of the plate.

    He had wavy brown hair that fell across his pale forehead. His face was round but edgier and larger than Michael’s. He was lanky and athletic, usually covered with light khaki pants below a old polo shirt, and white Ked sneakers. He had a calm, yet determined manner, dabbling in witty sarcasm that intrigued the brothers.   

    The three of them fell into the habit of walking to the end of their block,  crossing College Point Boulevard, baseball equipment in hand, and heading for Flushing Meadow Park.

    That park was the last bastion of pastoral baseball.  It was not just a park-it was a refuge, for wild birds, and for humans.  It was the second largest park in New York City, with over 1200 acres.  The 1939 World’s Fair was once there.  Soon another fair would come.

    But now, in 1961, it was just a big park.  In it were many of the components of unsupervised recreation. There were baseball fields, many of them. They were numbered, each with a small green-painted sign on the backstop. If Field #1 was occupied, the boys would walk further into the depths of the huge park, through myriad orchards of mature oak trees, which provided shade and comfort during the search. There were drinking fountains should they become thirsty. Peter was always thirsty. He would often run ahead, racing to be first to slurp water from the spigot.

    The meandering cement paths would curve through the thickets of woods and approach the next baseball field. It was a walk in paradise. The joy of playing would soon commence,  because there always was an empty field. In the meantime, conversations between children would occur, unimpeded by grownups.

    And then, when the canopy of trees opened up, and a baseball field with #2 on its backstop appeared, empty and ready for dreams and play, the children would suddenly and joyously run to it, and begin their ritual.  

    Catch, pitch, bat-with the great fourteen year old, Duggy Butler, pointing the way to baseball perfection.

    He was not a coach. He was a kid. He did not instruct. He merely played and we admired and tried to play like him.

    He was an only child, living upstairs in the two-family rental with his mother. The brothers did not know him apart from baseball-where he went to school, whether he had other friends. They did not question his relationship with them. There was no reason to. For whatever reason, he played baseball with them, and it was great fun. Michael, and especially Peter, saw in Duggy the skills of a natural player that rarely, but sometimes, helped a young man become a major leaguer. Peter thought Duggy would lead him down the path, through Flushing Meadow Park, to the great stadiums of professional ball.

    Duggy was kind. He did not make the brothers feel like they annoyed him. He may have thought that he could do better than to play with young kids, but he never let on. His love of baseball overcame the self-consciousness he must have felt. Perhaps their admiration distracted him from his daily toil. They didn’t know or care. They just wanted to play.
    
    And so the rituals commenced and time stood still. Start with a three-way catch. Watch how Duggy throws the ball-with grace and ease, and try to do it that way. OK,  Duggy would say, let me hit some out to you. C’mon, Michael, said Peter, let’s head for the outfield. And then Duggy tossed the ball up in front of him, and let the bat strike it on its way to the ground.  The ball would fly skyward, higher, and higher, among the vast blue canopy of sky, and then, slowly reach its apex, and begin the journey downward with increasing speed, with Michael and Peter waiting below with their outstretched mitts, vying for position and yelling “I’ve got it!”  Throw it back to Duggy, and repeat the process, again, and again, and again. . .

    Of course, Michael and Peter did not understand the fragility of their baseball lives. They stood in front of Duggy’s door, unaware of the innocence and simplicity of their actions. They did not know that a time would come when all of a child’s sporting activities would be organized, supervised and attended by adults.

    Peter pressed the doorbell a second time. He looked at his brother.

    “Do you think he’s home?,” he asked.

    “Who knows?,” said Michael.

    They fidgeted. They looked around, wondering what to do. Peter was especially anxious, as he had recently broken in his new mitt. His father had given him ten dollars to replace the glove he left at Flushing Meadow Park.  Duggy had showed him how to break in the mitt. He followed Duggy’s instructions: place a baseball  in the glove, wrap two rubber bands around it, and let it rest overnight. That was two nights ago. Yesterday, he had methodically applied Rawlings baseball glove oil to the pocket, where Ken Boyer’s machined signature rested. It was now all greased and ready to go. Peter was very anxious to show it to Duggy. He would approve.

    Suddenly, footsteps were heard, and a grayish woman appeared,  spreading the sheer curtains inside the window at the top half of the door. Michael and Peter stared anxiously. They did not know this woman. She was older than Duggy’s mother; perhaps a grandmother?  Or maybe another tenant. It was a two-family home, just like the others on the block.

    The boys could see her wrinkled face, and the questioning look that accompanied it. “What do you want?,” it appeared to say.

    “Is Duggy there,?” asked Peter.

    “What?” she mouthed with her thin lips.

    “Is Duggy there?,” asked Michael.

    The old woman’s face relaxed. She appeared to understand.

    She waved her hand at them.

    Her lips formed the words “they moved.”