Life's trajectories are unpredictable. Sure, statistics can be used to predict life events, such as I am extremely likely to still live where I currently am one month from now, and that this likelihood will decrease as the prediction horizon becomes more distant. Nevertheless, new unexpected trajectories become increasingly probable as we interact in new environments and with new others. For example, in 2016 I started planning a sabbatical for 2019 and my intention was to do part or all of it in Berlin, but by what seemed pure chance, after presenting a seminar at Yale in 2017, a colleague proposed if I had a sabbatical coming up then Yale would be happy to host me. Of course, I had sabbatical on my mind and perhaps my Yale colleague made such offers to all invited seminar speakers, but it is certain had I not visited Yale I would have done that part of my sabbatical elsewhere[1].
There’s some romanticism in unpredictable events – obviously true when they do lead to romance as in Parts 1 and 3, 4 and 5 of this series. But unpredictable does not mean PRESTO! and something unexpected happens. Most surprises lead to nothing and for those leading to something, the downstream effects can take time. For example, the big event in my life was the councilor’s office at Berkeley in 1980. I was taken by surprise in being informed of the foreign language requirement in the University of California system. I must have been aware of this when I entered UCLA in 1978, but either figured I could take it in my junior or senior year or thought I could just ignore it and UCLA would let it slide. Regardless, not more than a minute after reality reared its ugly head in that office, I was saved by the intelligence of the College of Natural Resources to allow their students to take computer science to satisfy the language requirement. I immediately transferred to CNR, there met my wife to be (1984), and – very ironically – eventually moved to France (1991) and learned to read, write and speak French (in progress).
There are surely dozens of more or less improbable events that contributed to where I am today. As explained in the previous installments of this series of essays, these probabilities can never be known with certainty. Some events – even if improbable – might not have been necessary for the main contours of my life trajectory simply because other happenings would have ensured the same changes anyway.
One of these events where I’m reasonably sure of its unique impact on my life happened during a baseball game in the summer of 1974, exactly where x marks the spot:
Unchanged – Northridge Little League field today (Google Maps).
Yes, that’s a Little League baseball diamond in my home town of Northridge, California. More specifically, the x is in right field on the Senior Minor baseball diamond. Little League baseball is an institution in the US, and although I was a keen baseball fan and often played baseball with friends, I was not a particularly good player. I played the 1974 season in the lower of the two Northridge Senior Leagues, the higher league being the Senior Majors.
What could have possibly happened on that baseball field to change my life trajectory? Before revealing this, it is necessary to see what my trajectory was going into my mid-teens.
Play
Although I wouldn’t go so far to say I hated school as a kid, I definitely didn’t like it. My elementary school (Kindergarten to 6th grade) was only a 5-minute walk from home and junior high (7th to 9th grade; these schools are now called middle schools) a 20-minute walk. I was diligently on time to school every day, hair neatly combed and well-dressed. First thing in class each morning we would turn to the American Flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Depending on school politics or the teacher’s whims (I don’t know which) that year, we might follow the pledge with patriotic songs. Yes, this was the legacy of pre-60’s conservatism. Class curricula was handed-down by the Los Angeles School District. Each year, all kids in a given grade got the same new text and work books for each subject[2].
Teachers never informed class about grading methods[3]. My spotty memory is that most of my friends got B’s and C’s, with a spattering of A’s. Very few kids got D’s and only one I knew got F’s. I was one of the B/C students and as years passed, was fully aware I never earned an A in any subject matter, nor any of the “progress in school adjustment” grades on the elementary school report card. At the yearly open-house meeting where parents would see what their kids were up to, the private five-minute meeting with the teacher seemed to always conclude with the teacher saying: “Mike could do much better if he put in the effort” and then basically predict that this was not likely to happen any time soon: “Mike will be a late bloomer”. The latter made the former unnecessary and so not getting top grades – even if sometimes perplexing – didn’t really bother me. Add to this, my parents never put on pressure to perform and the case was sealed.
6th grade report card.
So, school up into my teens was just something I did from 8am to 3pm on weekdays and for an hour or so in evenings. During the many remaining hours I played with friends, watched TV and collected playing cards, especially baseball cards[4]. Despite the smog, the weather in Los Angeles was predictably agreeable – warm and sunny. This meant lots outdoor playtime, especially sports like baseball, football and basketball. Baseball was my favorite and indeed much of my mindset in elementary and junior high school was talking baseball, playing baseball, dreaming of being a pro-ball player, watching baseball on TV, going to Dodger games and, especially, collecting baseball cards.
Baseball cards
It seems silly now, but for a number of years the most important thing in my life was collecting stuff – rocks, coins, playing cards... For instance, I remember being obsessed when 7 or 8 years old about finding a gold nugget[5] for my rock collection – after all, California was the Gold-rush state and a friend named Jay, who lived a one-minute walk from my house had found a gold nugget nearby in a then-unpaved tributary of the LA river and shared it at show-and-tell in 1969 or 70. The same passion applied to coins and in particular to Lincoln pennies, but the notable rarities (1909sVDB, 1914D, 1922P) were well out of any kid’s pocket money and impossible to find among pennies pocket change. I contented myself to collect findable and kid-affordable specimens of so-called Wheat Pennies (1909 to 1958).
My biggest passion however was baseball cards. This started pretty much out-of-the-blue, or rather red-and-yellow, when I was 7 years old in 1968. I was at a neighbor’s house and he had a small stack of cards, each with a player photo on one side and various numbers on the reverse. I was thus very briefly introduced to a few baseball players who were active in the 1966 and 1967 seasons, for which their cards (and those of roughly 700-800 other players each year) were marketed by the Topps Card Company in 1967 and 68, respectively. I remember being confused as to where these cards actually came from (how did my neighbor get a hold of them?), but what fused the experience was – like many stupid, curious kids – he had found a pack of matches and decided to burn the cards – yellow and red flames sprang from the edges of the few he managed to torch. As it turned out the cards belonged to his (much) older brother, and in arriving on the scene, the big kid immediately dispersed the younger onlookers and probably had a word with his pyromaniac little brother.
Sorting baseball cards in my bedroom circa 1970.
I was thus initiated into the world of sports cards[6]. I started collecting the following spring in 1969, when the 1968 season baseball cards were released. Baseball card season went through to October. Football card season in September through to January. Basketball cards from to October to April. Ice hockey cards from October to June. So cards all year round. Cards were sold in sealed packs of 10, with a strip of bubble gum included. The 10 player cards inside were randomly assorted and one could not know which cards were in a pack until purchased and opened. My recollection is a pack cost 5 cents and went up to 10c by the time I was 10 years old. I could get cards at the local 7-11 store, about a 20-minute walk from home, or from what was a US institution at the time: the “ice cream man”. Every weekday afternoon at about 4pm, Jack the Ice Cream Man would drive his specially outfitted truck down our street, with a cheesy jingle that sounded like an amplified music box. He would drive very, very slowly so the kids had time to ask their mothers for some pocket change to buy ice cream or candy. Jack also sold playing cards and most kids would just buy their playing cards from Jack rather than walking to the local 7-11. I did both.
I didn’t become an avid sport card collector until the next season in 1970. By avid, I mean putting in an hour or more every day sorting my cards, of which by the time I stopped collecting at 14, had amassed over 3000. Sorting these could be by league, team, position on the field, but usually came down to the statistics on the back of each card to determine a ranking of the best to worst players. There were many ways to do this, since several stat categories were provided and no single number was objectively the most revealing in terms of player performance. I would go through the many stat combinations and eventually find myself desperate for new sorting ideas, so sometimes I’d sort by player height, weight, years of experience, birth date and even birth place. My head progressively became filled with names, numbers and photos and, although this worked my memory and number skills, my memory was increasingly cluttered with useless crap…and this was a plausible contributor to my lackluster school grades.
Ramping up passion
It dawned on me sometime in 1972 that I didn't have access to older cards. I knew organized baseball went back to the late 1800s, but had never seen a card earlier than the 1967s and 68s so cruelly disfigured by my neighbor.
How could I collect cards from earlier years? There were older kids only a few houses away who collected. Given their ages, there could be cards going back to the early 1960s a few 10s of meters away from my own collection. And, as I thought about it, why not cards from the 40s and 50s in dusty boxes of the dozen or so fathers who lived on my block? Being excessively shy, I didn’t dare do anything beyond dreaming and knew, for instance, that my own dad had baseball cards as a youth, but threw them all out, as did the vast majority of kids before the days when cards had sales value.
And then I had an idea. Why not write to Topps Inc., the company that produced all sports cards and ask them how I could get older cards? I don’t remember how I found their address – perhaps on the back of a card-pack wrapper. I wrote to them and they replied they did not deal in cards after their production years. They did however provide me with the addresses of two companies that bought and sold sports cards. They were the Card Collectors Company and Wholesale Cards Co. So, I wrote to each and received their catalogues. The most expensive card at the time was a 1952 rookie[7] card of the recently retired star player Mickey Mantle. It went for $5. A near-perfect condition specimen of this card recently sold for more than 12 million dollars. Needless to say, when I mailed my $5 check in 1973, the card was out of stock, and I didn't pursue this further. I was not motivated by cards as an investment, but having seen their value skyrocket since the 1980s, do kick myself from time-to-time.
There was an irritating problem with the idea of buying older cards by mail. The two catalogues reported card numbers and not player’s names, so I could not order the players I wanted à la carte. I figured out that the best players (at least in the 1960s) all had card numbers in multiples of 10. That is, card numbers 10, 20, 30 and so on, corresponded to the stars. Card numbers 100, 200, 300 etc. were the big stars. I went on a frenzy ordering such cards for 5 to 10 cents each, but quickly found for the early Topps years, star players could be assigned any number. I therefore bought a massive checklist associating all player names in all years with their card numbers. I was now on my way to collecting cards from the inception of Topps.
But there was more. I also discovered that these card companies sold cards from the early 1900s (1909 to be exact). Having found myself – quite by accident during a school trip to Los Angeles – in front of a sports card collecting store owned by the memorable Goodwin Goldfadden, I thought these “T206” cards looked too cheesy to collect. There were 10s of them in his shop window, but the shop was closed. The cards were very small, had painted facsimiles of the players on one side and no statistics on the reverse side. The only player I’d heard of was Ty Cobb (arguably one of the greatest baseball players of all time, and about whom the 1994 biopic film “Cobb” was produced). I was young and frankly pretty dumb – the T206's passed me by. Like my friends who collected cards at the time, we had no idea of what these printed cardboard rectangles would be worth some day. And we didn’t really care.
Short lived hubris
During the height of my card collecting, I decided I wanted to become a professional baseball player. This was a complete rethink from my wish to become either an inventor, medical doctor or scientist. Although I don’t recall for sure how the baseball player idea popped into my head, I suspect it was because I had a fantastic summer playing “Park League” baseball.
But my hubris was short lived. I had a talk with my dad about what I wanted to do when I grew up, and broke the news I was no longer interested in something requiring higher education – rather I wanted to become a professional ball player. I thought he would back this, since after all, I had a great season compared to my peers, enjoyed it, and honestly thought I was pretty good and would continue to improve.
I can still see exactly where my dad and I were standing at the entry of the hallway, and where, upon hearing my ambition he looked me straight in the eyes and said: “Mike, you have absolutely no chance of ever becoming a professional baseball player”. He explained why – “only about 100 boys out of several million your age will ever make it to the big leagues”. The probabilities were stacked against anyone who is not of exceptional talent. “Sorry son, you’re a good player, but it would be best to keep this as something you do for fun”. I didn’t think so at the time, but my dad had done me a favor.
Baseball 101
Here’s a quick overview of what is to many a totally incomprehensible game. There are nine players on each of two opposing teams, and the teams take turns being on offense (batting), while the other is on defense (trying to get batters out). The players on offense (call them Team A) go to bat in an order determined by the manager and continue 'to bat' player after player, trying to get on-base and go around the four bases (1st, 2nd, 3rd and home plate) to score points (‘runs’). Batters continue until three of them (or runners) have ‘gotten out’. Once Team A has three players out, the defending team Team B, now goes to bat and Team A goes on defense. There are typically six such cycles of batting and defending (‘innings’) in a Park League or Little League game. There are usually nine innings in professional baseball.
Aside from the rules, the important thing that differentiates baseball from other sports is the level of specialization. American football has a degree of specialization in both offense and defense. A right tackle could play left tackle and probably any position on the defensive line. Wide receivers and running backs could conceivably substitute for an injured quarterback. (Interestingly American football is perhaps the only major team sport with different players on offensive and defensive teams[8].) Rugby has specialization equivalent to American football and for sure the two quarterbacks (scrum half and fly half) would be hard-pressed (and pressed hard) to substitute for one of the front-line ‘props’. Soccer in contrast has less specialization, most of it between the goal keeper and all other players. Midfielders routinely defend and defenders occasional score goals. So too, basketball has moderate specialization, and like soccer and many other sports, considerable overlap in what players can do both offensively and defensively.
Baseball specialization is not about when the team goes up to hit the ball and score runs – much of the differences between players are actually due differences in power and speed between the players themselves and not requirements for batting order. The real specialization in baseball comes on defense. Virtually no player in Major League Baseball who is a pitcher would be competitive as a major league outfielder, let alone an infielder. Few major league players who are not catchers could substitute for one, given the skills needed to call pitches, catch the diversity of pitch speeds and trajectories, and throw out players trying to steal bases. The reverse is also true. Pitching a baseball with different spins and subtly different trajectories, between 120 and 160 km/hr., at a 1m2 target 20m away requires very special abilities.
In terms of pure defense – catching or stopping the ball and throwing out runners, very different technical and athletic abilities are required for different baseball positions. Infielders (2nd base, shortstop and 3rd base) need lightning-quick responses in stopping a hit ball and getting it to the appropriate base to get an opposing player out. The 2nd baseman and shortstop have to act as acrobatic intermediaries to get runners out at 2nd base and then throw the ball to the 1st basemen to complete a ‘double play’. The 3rd baseman has to be exceptionally quick and a hard thrower to beat the sprinting batter to 1st base. Outfielders have to judge the trajectories of balls hit to their field and either catch the ball for a direct out, or field a ball that hits the ground first and then throw the ball quickly to an infielder to prevent the runner from advancing to extra bases. Despite these and other specializations, some interchangeability is possible and does occur, for example among the three outfield positions and between 1st base and the outfield.
As complicated as all this sounds, it only scratches the surface of the game. What is important for kids, and in particular kids not at ease playing baseball, is to be assigned defensive positions based on their capacities and the likelihood of having a baseball hit in their direction. Fielding a ball can require special abilities, since infielders have less time to judge hits in their direction and the ball travels at higher velocities than for outfielders. A hard-hit line-drive reaches the shortstop in about 1 second. The same ball hit at a higher angle would reach an outfielder in about 3 seconds.
Thanks to the geometry and physics of batting and the fact that batters struggle to even hit the ball let alone hit it in fair play, there is an asymmetry in where most hits land. Most balls are hit towards the left side of the field (from the perspective of the batter at home plate) for the simple reason that the majority are right-handed and face slightly left when they bat. The left-handed minority tend to hit the ball to the right side of the field. What this means is you probably want your best fielders at 3rd base, shortstop and in left field. Center fielders and 2nd base players should also be very good, but can be slightly less capable in fielding than players on the left side of the diamond. (As it turns out, center fielders have more ground to cover than either left or right fielders, and the 2nd baseman does get a lot of difficult-to-field hits that go just to the right of 2nd base). The 1st baseman is generally the lowest quality infielder since this person gets the fewest infield hits and, rather, principally receives throws from the three other infielders, the catcher, and the pitcher to get batters out at 1st base. And finally, the least able of all defense is the right fielder. Few batters hit balls into right field, both because few are left-handed and, those who are, need power to get the ball past the 1st and 2nd basemen.
Head Shot
Having taken a year off baseball in 1973 for reasons I’ve since forgotten, I returned to it in 1974. I was on a team called the Spartans in the 'American League' (the other Senior Minor grouping being the 'National League') and when I did play, it was in right field.
I was left-handed, meaning because of the geometry of baseball[9], I could only otherwise play pitcher, 1st base or any of the three outfield positions. Since I was a slow runner and an average fielder, my natural home was in right field. During the 1974 Little League season, I had perhaps a half dozen balls hit to me in the outfield. All but one was easily fielded, since these hit the ground first and all I had to do was either let it roll into my glove or chase after it and then throw it to the ‘cutoff man’, usually the 2nd baseman. No sweat. But because the only fly balls I ever caught were during practice, I never had in-game fly ball experience. Not surprisingly, I was worried during games that a fly ball would come my way and I’d drop it. Dropping an easy-to-catch fly ball is embarrassing to say the least, and because of the delay in getting a dropped ball back to the infield, can result in the batter getting extra bases or players already on base scoring runs. As the season continued, my fly ball anxiety got worse, until the fateful day.
I don’t recall what team we were playing, who was batting, what the score was, or who eventually won the game. All I do remember it was mid-afternoon since the sun was at a 75° angle in the Western sky. As you will see from the baseball diamond in the photo above, I was facing due West, and when looking up, had the sun directly in my eyes. This shouldn’t have been a problem, since I was equipped with a special pair of flip-down sun glasses. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my sunglasses to the game on this day.
So, there I was in right field, bent slightly as outfielders do, with glove on right knee and throwing hand on left knee, prepared to run after a ball should the batter hit it in my direction. The only thing going through my mind was “please batter, don't be left-handed”.
A lefty came to bat.
My fly ball alert system went to red. As I said, I was used to fielding balls on the ground, so I was anticipating running after a ball soon. Which pitch it was in the series I don’t know, but the batter swung hard and I heard a wooden CRACK as the ball connected with the bat. It was a beautiful fly ball and given the marvels of Google Maps I estimate the ball was hit about 120 feet. A small blooper by major league standards, but a deep pop in the Little League Senior Minors.
The fate of the moment and, as it turns out, my lifetime, traveled with that ball. The ball seemed to fly forever. I carefully tracked it and as it neared, I did not have to move more than several feet to be confident it would land in my glove. But the ball did not want to make my task easy and decided to perfectly eclipse the sun for just a millisecond. Partly blinded, I lost it momentarily. As the ball reappeared it seemed to be heading directly for the glove sweet-spot – the webbing or ‘pocket’. The ball arrived as expected... but not quite. I misjudged it by less than its width, but enough to hit the upper lip of the glove and bank directly to my head. I heard a CRACK as the ball ricocheted off my glabella. The shock wave produced by the 140g object jiggled my jello and I fell to the ground. I was lucky my glove took a few percent off of the kinetic energy, but nevertheless lost consciousness and suspect that the ball made its way on its own to the 2nd baseman. I was on the ground for a while – perhaps a minute – whereupon the coaches ran out to pick me up and bring me back to the dugout. As I came back to my senses, I distinctly remember one of our coaches saying “That was an easy ball to catch”.
“The Glove” as it looks today.
Rewired
I have little memory of the rest of the summer of ‘74, except having had a large bump between my eyes and on the bridge of my nose. I spent most of that time in my bedroom, not able to come up with an honorable story to explain my transformed face.
As the end of summer approached, I was more excited than usual about going back to school. I entered 9th grade and took History, English, 1st year Algebra, 1st year Spanish, and Science. There was no reason to believe anything would change as to my abilities at school. In my previous 8 years, I had earned only one ‘A’ and it was in 8th grade Print shop. Perhaps I was destined to print baseball cards. But something was very different in the fall and winter of 1974/75. It was if a fog had lifted. I was understanding everything going on in most classes. And so, I found myself at midterms with A’s in all subjects (except a B in Spanish), and finished the academic year the following May with straight A’s (B in Spanish). The A-pattern would continue throughout my three years in high school (save two C’s in Spanish).
Was it?
Some unexpected events really are the only explanation for the paths we take in life. Had I been a B/C student in high school, there’s no way I could have entered UCLA and transfer to Berkeley. I have no idea what I’d be doing or where I’d be today.
Likewise, had I been a straight A student in high school, the issue I had in the councilor’s office at Berkeley wouldn’t have happened. I would have enthusiastically taken Spanish in my first or second year at UCLA and had I not, dutifully acquiesced to UC College of Life Science requirements and taken it in my junior year at Berkeley. Again, I have no idea what I’d be doing or where I’d be today.
But neither happened. I got straight A’s, save the C’s in Spanish. The Spanish grades made some sense given my ability in middle school Spanish (true, I went from B’s to C’s, but only one student out of about 30 in my high school Spanish class got A’s; Mr. Lira was a tough grader).
I have four explanations for my improved grades.
1. I simply grew up. Perhaps my elementary teachers were right and I was a late bloomer.
2. My memory banks were freed. I said goodbye to collecting and memorizing playing cards when I was 14. Coincidence? Those 3000 or so photos with hundreds of thousands of numbers may have been replaced in my brain by school.
3. My brain was altered by the fly ball. Not impossible, since my grades bounded by more than a full point, from a consistent C+/B- to an A- in less than 6 months.
4. I carried the belief that the baseball accident woke-up the A student in me.
I do think the head hit was instrumental in my school flip-flop, but can't discount 1 and 2. Explanations 1, 2 and 4 therefore might all have been involved. I would however discard 3, since if anything, a hit to the head would have sent my grades in the other direction.
Here’s my preferred scenario. I had always been puzzled why – despite what seemed hard work – I never earned an A in school. I was growing up and catching up in my early teens, but lacked self-confidence. Although I don’t recall having associated my grades in 9th grade with the baseball accident (maybe because of the accident), the head hit generated a veiled belief that my abilities had changed. I rapidly gained self-confidence and transformed into an excellent student. The influence of path 4 could have been temporary, but even if so, it was necessary to achieve the new trajectory through high school.
I was back at the Northridge Little League fields in 2013 for a reunion game with friends, two of whom were on the ’74 Spartans team. Needless to say, I played in right field, but have no memory of having done something so silly as to drop a fly ball.
NOTES
[1] As it turned out, I did half my sabbatical at Yale in 2019 and the other half at the Freie University in Berlin in 2022. Although Berlin was planned, 2020 was not: my sabbatical stay there was cut short from 6 months to 2 weeks due to COVID, and then reprogrammed as 3 months in 2022.
[2] My sense is this started to change in the early 70’s. For example, my teacher in the 1970-71 school year, Ms. Cora Porterfield, did not give grades, but rather only pass/fail. Ms. Porterfield was also much more avid about music and patriotic songs than any teacher I had before or after. Clearly she had latitude to spend more time on what she believe was important as long as enough time was left for the more standard approaches to teaching required subjects.
[3] So-called grades (not to be confused with the class level, also called ‘grade’) were on a basic scale from excellent (A) to fail (F), with good (B), average (C) and below average (D).
[4] I never read a book at my own initiative until I was 11 years old, since, for want of a better word, I found reading painful. Part of this was due to light dyslexia, which sorted itself in my late teens. Nevertheless, I still tire rapidly when reading books, particularly those I’m not smitten by.
[5] I had an awful experience in 2nd grade (7 years old), where a kid was showing-off his new gold tooth filling. Dumbly, I thrust my right index finger into his mouth to touch it, whereupon he bit down with the force of a pit bull terrier. Onomatopoeia and fearful neurons give his name as Curt.
[6] Officially called “trading cards”, because in purchasing these in packs of 10 randomly assorted players, and accumulating cards over time, kids would wind up with two or more cards of some players. We called these “doubles”, “triples” and so on. Having an extra copy of a given player was an opportunity to trade that card for one of a player missing from a collection. Of course, trading went beyond the easy to sacrifice of doubles or triples. I once traded 50 “singles” cards for a 1969 Willie Mays (my favorite player). I never regretted it.
[7] A “rookie” is a player in their first season.
[8] Probably due to both specialization and reducing the risk of injury.
[9] If you watch major league baseball, you will (almost) never see a left-handed catcher, shortstop or 2nd baseman. Left-handed 3rd basemen are uncommon, whereas they are very common among outfielders and 1st basemen. Most surprisingly, because pitching is the art of trickery, having the occasional left-handed pitcher can give the defensive team an advantage, since batters tend to habituate to the most common pitching arm, that is, right-handers. Whereas 10% of the general population throws left-handed, almost 30% of pitching in major league baseball is left-handed.
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