“Mick Shade, we hardly knew ye”

Prologue:

It had gotten nearly dark as I was striding to the plate in my Cleveland Indians uniform. It was muggy, and the lights were a little dim here in Lamar Porter Stadium in south central Little Rock. Lamar Porter Field had a classic look with stands of concrete, painted dark green, built during the Great Depression as a WPA project. Brooks Robinson had played his American Legion baseball there. The rest of the scene was a little dream-like. The nearly empty bleachers were eerily quiet and deep in the shadows. The occasional chatter briefly echoed and sounded hollow before fading away. The grass was glistening from the dew. A bit of fog out amongst the trees in the outfield added a touch of mystery.

We were playing the Rangers, a team that was very close to ours in the standings. Their pitcher was pretty good, but we were starting to get to him. He was a lefty about 6’6″ and he handled himself as if he had played somewhere at a pretty high level. We needed a rally. Two on, and two out. Al, our best hitter and RBI producer, was on deck and I needed to keep the inning going. He started me off with a curveball-a pretty good one, a pitch I was not expecting. I hacked at it and missed, cussing under my breath. Come on, I thought. You are 34 years old and playing baseball again. Have some fun!

I stepped out of the box and asked Al for the rosin bag. Knocking the bag on my wrists and on the handle of the bat, I winked at Al. A rush of memory washed over me, reminding me (again) how much I loved this game, now infused into my very essence.

The next pitch was a fastball middle in, and I turned on it. Ping! It took off like a shot into the gap in left center, disappearing into the darkening sky. “HEL-LO!” said Al, as I took off for first. I ended up with a stand-up double.

It’s hard to describe in words that feeling when you put a good swing on a ball and hit it right in the sweet spot, but I will try….. you feel a subtle chord strum, a pleasant harmonious vibration from your fingertips to your toes. You ballplayers know what I mean.

Arkansas, 1990

We were living in Arkansas in 1990. Back then it was all about the possibilities. At 34, I was the youngest bank president in Arkansas, running the first de novo (start-up) bank in Little Rock in 20 years. The local banks with their high powered law firms had tried to keep us out of LR for almost 2 years by filing objection after objection to our charter application. We eventually were able to open, but not without some local political clout. Two can play that game. Another story for another time.

I was in my office chatting with my friend Rick Johnson (no relation), the son of one of our bank directors when the subject of baseball came up. Rick was talking about hurting his knee in a slide the night before.

“You are old enough to know better”, I chided.

“I know, but playing baseball gets me excited, and I can’t help myself sometimes.”

“Baseball?” My ears perked up.

It turns out that there was a new game in town. Rick explained that the Central Arkansas League, part of a relatively new national organization called the Men’s Senior Baseball League, or MSBL, had been playing baseball in the area for a couple of years. The minimum age for the league was 30 years old with no maximum. I did not know this league existed.

“Do you play?” asked Rick.

“I used to, but I retired about 7 years ago”. Little did I know, that would be only the first of many retirements.

After some more discussions and negotiations, Rick put my name in with the league steering committee and I was assigned to the Indians. Rick was on the Dodgers. There were eight teams in the league, and we all wore genuine replica uniforms of Major League baseball. The class of the league was a team called the Astros. The Astros had dominated the league since its inception. It sometimes happens in leagues like this: one reason was that the Astros, once they were champs, usually had a number of players each year that wanted to jump to their team. In other words, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. The Astros were able to pick and choose from this group. They also seemed to get all the best new star players moving to Little Rock in the offseason, through some kind of ‘hush-hush-smoke-filled-bar-room-chicanery’. Team reps of the other teams would grumble, but nothing seemed to change.

Our team was competitive enough, and I really enjoyed playing baseball again. The league was thriving by drawing players from all over the central Arkansas. We even had a pitcher named Ed, aged 56 that drove from Memphis for our games. Apparently his Memphis team wasn’t giving him enough innings to suit him. Ed was old enough to be most of our Dads. His stuff was slow, but he threw strikes and would sometimes give good hitters fits by throwing them off balance. Other times, he would just get shelled. Either way, this guy was unflappable and wanted the ball, earning great respect from all of us. I have to laugh about this issue of age now. At the time, I had no idea that I would continue to play well beyond that age in St. Louis!

In my first season, our Indians finished in the middle of the pack, and lost all of our games against the dreaded Astros. The pitching staff of the Astros was deep, and they rotated guys in regularly. Most other teams were short of pitching depth, and the hurlers would usually run out of gas late in games.

Life was getting complicated. Our little bank had to weather a flood of marginal customers sent packing from the other banks. We expected it, but it still took a lot of time. No banker’s hours in a new start-up; We had a small but dedicated staff, and we asked a lot of them. For that reason, I liked being the last to leave at the end of the day.

In August of 1990, Desert Storm would call my brother Larry to the other side of the world with his AWACS squadron charged with directing air attack traffic. I could not get enough news about Desert Storm. The internet was in its infancy, and I remember subscribing to IBM’s Prodigy service just to get my war news at night. Rita had her hands full with three young kids and a new city to learn. Two of our kids were in youth sports. I learned again what I already knew and would never forget: don’t ever underestimate this beautiful determined woman/mom/wife. All this to say that playing baseball in the senior leagues was a genuine refuge for me from this complicated life.

For the 1991 season, our Indians had very little turnover. We did have one defector, however. One of our best all-around athletes jumped to the Astros. Jerks. We did get two replacement players, however. One was an infielder named Gene who moved from Phoenix. He was a versatile player whose claim to fame was that he was an extra on the set of the movie Major League. I looked for him in the credits, and sure enough he is there. He said that the director picked him because he could throw a curveball consistently for strikes. He was a stunt double for Chelcie Ross, as Eddie Harris, the guy that threw curveballs to Dennis Haysbert’s character Cerano in spring training. He said the filming took all day and his elbow was killing him at the end. The price of fame!

The other guy we picked up said he was a pitcher. His name was Mick Shade. Not making that up. Possibly the coolest baseball name I have ever heard. Apparently this guy was an unknown quantity to everyone. He showed up to Lamar Porter Field for our first game, and William, our manager, threw him into action by starting him. I remember bits and pieces of his performance. Here are a few vivid facts that I do remember, in no particular order. He threw extremely hard. He threw mostly fastballs and hard sliders. He struck out 16 batters in nine innings, and gave up two harmless singles. We won 3-0. This guy was legit.

Finally, we found a pitcher that could beat the Astros! Woohoo! After the game, we spent some time kicking back in the dugout at Lamar Porter talking baseball with Mr. Shade. We learned that Mick Shade was a former Cardinal farmhand, and had pitched as high as AAA in their farm system, and had been out of baseball just a couple of years.

That was the last time any of us ever saw him. Mick Shade disappeared like a fart in the wind, never to be heard from again. We were left to ponder his fate. Did he get hit by a truck? Did his agent suddenly hear about a job opening in Visalia in D ball? Did he throw his arm out in the first game? Did he decide that our little senior league was not worthy? Did he suddenly find a need for the witness protection program? Was he real? I half expected him to mysteriously show up in an Astros uniform, but he never did. The mystery of Mick Shade was never solved.