he picked up his shooter, hit the target marble two inches away and pocketed it.
“See you in class,” he said as he walked away.
As I walked away from the incident, I noticed that I didn’t have any of my own marbles left in my pocket. I had started the day with 10 marbles—five cat-eyes and five shooters, including the pearl blue one I had won a few days earlier.
As I made my way into the Grade One class, Pete called out, “Hey, Joe, you got any marbles left?”
“No,” I answered.
“Me either,” he said simply.
It was the same story with the other guys, Scott, Charlie and Paul. Only Charlie had two marbles left.
The girls in class didn’t seem too concerned with our losses. They were generally talking about their skipping adventures. Several of them had skinned knees, which needed attention, but otherwise, they regaled in each other’s successes.
Jim hadn’t hung around with us much that day, as he usually would have. He was off by himself playing marbles against all comers, notably the students in Grades Five, Six, Seven and Eight. Jim had certainly mastered the art. Whereas most players would take careful aim at the target marble, gently trying to finesse their marble toward the target, Jim had mastered the art of throwing line drives at the target marble. He was deadly from ranges of five, even 10 feet away. The beauty of throwing line drives, with a sideways toss, is that, in the event his marble missed, it would bounce away with gusto and land a considerable distance from the target marble. His competitor seldom had a close shot at his marble. No one else at the school had mastered the art of long distance shooting, the way Jim had.
But, we all noticed Jim, as he walked into the classroom. I think it was Pete who shouted out first, “Hey, look at the bag of marbles Jim has.”
It was true. Jim had about 50 marbles in a cloth bag he carried in his left hand.
“Did you win all those?” Pete inquired.
“Yeah, I won most of them today at recess and noon hour,” he replied. Jim didn’t add that he had borrowed a marble at the start of play that day because he hadn’t brought any to school with him.
As we, each in our turn, revealed the miserable results of our day, we looked at the marbles Jim had laid out on his desk. We quickly recognized several that we had lost to older students. Jim had won them back.
“I’ll tell you what,” Jim said. “I’m going to give each of you three marbles to start out with again. Only, I don’t want you to lose them to big guys.” The older students were referred to as ‘big guys’. “Just play against Grade One’s and Two’s,” he cautioned.
At the next recess, the final one of the day, the big guys came over to prey on us again. All of us declined their invitations. Usually, they tried to talk us into playing them, or ‘sucker us in’ as it was called. This ended when we told them Jim had said not to play with them. To our surprise, the older guys seemed to agree with Jim’s advice.
“If Jim Mahon told us not to play them, then we shouldn’t play them,” they agreed. “Have fun,” the big guys said to us as they walked away.
II—SOFTBALL SURPRISE
We were in Grade Two now. We had been at the school long enough to have a sense of belonging. We knew our way around a little. Scott, Pete, Charlie, Jim and I were now usually preoccupied with building snow forts and playing hockey when it was cold and building dams to hold in the water during winter thaws, hoping to turn them into ice rinks when the temperature dropped again.
In spring, we turned to marbles, and then once the field dried a little, we would look to play softball. Alternatively, we would dig scoop ditches to drain any water off the field that we could find. The big guys would let us play as long as we were on the other team. They wanted us to be easy outs. Jim was the exception. They wanted him to play on their team, but he usually played with us anyway.
We would play ball on the diamond at the back end of the school yard. The backstop was placed at the extreme far end of it. Home plate was about 220 feet from the nearest point of the school. The big guys wore their ability to hit the softball that far, as a badge of honour. To hit the ball to the school made them a ‘somebody,’ a star for a day. No one in Grade Five or lower had hit a ball to the school. Rarely, a Grade Six student would hit one that far, and once in a while a Grade Seven or Grade Eight student would do it. So far this year, two balls had been hit to the school and none past it. The pitcher for the big guys that day was Ron. Ron had hit one of the long balls and was very good about it. He didn’t boast about his hit. He let the others do it for him.
Gerry was the first one up for us that day. Gerry was a big, strong farm kid, hardened by work, now playing a game.
“Where do you want them Gerry?” Ron asked, as he tossed in an underhand pitch for a strike. Gerry didn’t swing.
“That was a strike,” Ron chortled. The next pitch came in with a high arch. Gerry swung at it, but fouled it off, over the backstop. On the third pitch, Gerry reached back and hit the ball squarely on the nose. The ball bounced off the bat in a straight line up the middle for a nice hit, a rarity for our side. I was the next batter.
“Where do you want them?” Ron called in. I hesitated.
“He likes grounders,” someone cackled from the outfield, knowing I couldn’t hit a ball out of the air.
“Do you want grounders?” Ron asked. “Sure,” I said, as I nodded my head.
I placed my bat so that it lay across home plate, my hands on the end of it. Ron rolled the ball in. I swung and would have hit it except that the ball hit a pebble and bounced over my bat.
“Strike one,” Ron called, as he prepared to roll in the next pitch. “Strike two,” he called when I missed it as well. With that, Mike called in, “he’s going to strike out with grounders,” he laughed with a mocking tone.
I looked over to Jim for moral support and encouragement. “Time! Ump,” Jim said to Ron as he strode over to talk to me. “Don’t be nervous,” Jim said. “Keep your eye on the ball. You can hit that thing. I’ve seen you do it.”
“Okay, Jim,” I replied.
Now, with added confidence, I settled in at the plate, holding the handle of the bat as it lay across the plate.
“Hey,” Mike said as he ran in from third base. “Come in here, Jim,” he said. “Stand over here. Jim’s twice as big as you guys,” he announced with glee to the crowd gathered there.
“Look at this,” he said. “Jim is twice as tall, his chest is twice as big, and his arms are twice as strong.”
After Mike and several others had had their fun, Jim came over to me again. “Never mind them,” he said. “Just concentrate on hitting the ball.”
“Okay, Jim,” I said.
Ron pitched the ball in for the third time. If I missed it, I was out. I watched it roll in carefully as Jim had instructed me to do. I readied to swing the bat forward along the ground when the ball was close enough to hit it. I started to swing, then, I noticed the ball again hit a pebble or small hump in the ground. It bounced up about six inches into the air. As I swung the bat along the ground, I instinctively lifted it into the air and toward the ball. The ball bounced off of the bat toward third base, in the direction of Mike. I started to run to first base. I heard Ron shout over at Mike. I glanced over quickly. There was Mike, squatting on his haunches, facing away from the ball, bouncing pebbles off of the dirt midfield.
He was explaining to the short stop how, “this is absolutely useless, letting guys play that can’t even hit the ball—absolutely useless,” he said, as my foot hit the bag at first base for my first hit of my life against big guys.
“I knew you could do it,” Jim called