That rose bush used to be second base

When the late Harmon Killebrew was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, he recounted the story of his mom complaining to his dad that their lawn was dug up by Harmon and his siblings playing sports. Harmon recalled his dad saying, "Mom, we're raising boys, not lawn."

That thought has come to me many times over the years. Now our back yard has strawberries where the backstop against the fence used to be and a rose bush grows where second base used to be. The pitcher's mound is hardly perceptible any more.

One of the tell-tale signs that the backyard used to be a baseball diamond is the chalk markings on the inside of the garage. To this day, the score board still stands out on the east wall. The concrete blocks are covered with names and numbers representing the players and runs scored.

We had some wild games...back in the day. Scott would strike a pose at the plate like Chuck Knoblauch, the former rookie of the year for the Minnesota Twins. Derek swung for the fences like Twins Hall of Fame centerfielder Kirby Puckett. I was the perennial pitcher.

Our backyard isn't very big so we had to make some rules to go along with the game. One of the rules was that if you hit a foul ball into the garage, it was an out. If you hit a ball into the fence, that was like hitting the ball to the shortstop because the fence and a good shortstop can both stop a ball.

We also used furry, yellow tennis balls instead of hard baseballs. That was because the back of our house and two windows were only about 15 and 20 feet away from home plate. Line drives would come screaming off the wooden bats of the boys and smack the windows. However, we never suffered a broken glass pane.

The trick, of course, was to hit the ball over the fence between our yard and the city park. First, there was no one in the park to catch the ball. Secondly, the park is built on a hill so a well struck ball can travel a long ways down the hill side, especially if it makes it to the street.

The worst thing that ever happened in a backyard baseball game occurred on a foul ball that went straight back of home plate. Most of the time when the boys were little, the house next door was deserted, but the house beside that one was inhabited by an old, unfriendly lady who seemed to despise children and especially ours.

Anyway, I came home from work and was met by the boys who told me that a foul ball had landed in the lady's backyard. The lady grabbed the ball and took it into her home.

So, I marched over to her house and knocked on the back door...the one the lady used. Her daughter was visiting her so I told the daughter what had transpired. The daughter heard my story and then went back into the house. In a couple of minutes she came back with a furry, yellow tennis ball and handed it to me. She apologized for her mother and I was on my way.

Back in our yard, I'm sure the boys were delighted to get the ball back and might even have been surprised to see me go get it. After all, it wasn't as if it was the only tennis ball we had. Our garage was full of tennis balls. However, I wanted to make a point with the lady that she could no longer get away with being rude to the boys.

As the years passed, the boys got bigger and somehow our backyard kept getting smaller. For a while, the boys would go to the nearby elementary school playground to play baseball. Then they got interested in other things...girls, among them. And it seemed as though baseball was nothing but a memory.

So when I look out and see the rose bush where second base used to be, forgive me if I smile. We now grow grass in the backyard, but once upon a time we were raising little baseball players.

What do you want to do when you grow up?

Most of us heard that question a number of times during our youth. My answer was that I wanted to be a sports reporter that covered the New York Yankees. Actually, I wanted to be the center fielder for the New York Yankees. At the time, Mickey Rivers was the center fielder and I figured that I was at least as good as him. But, alas, no baseball scouts ever came to see the Roundup Miners play baseball, so I was left for the next best thing...sports reporter.

That's why I wrote sports for our hometown newspaper when I was in high school. That's why I went to the University of Montana to study journalism. I even studied Russian as a foreign language when I was in college so that I could cover the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. You remember that Olympics don't you? That's the one that the United States didn't participate in because President Carter boycotted it to protest the USSR invasion of Afghanistan.

So what's a young grad with a journalism degree to do? Well, the Yankees hadn't come calling so my first job out of college was as a reporter in Beach, North Dakota. I was a general assignment reporter and covered everything from writing wedding announcements to covering an oil field explosion. After six months, I had had enough of Beach and I think Beach had had enough of me. We agreed to part amicably.

However, I stayed with newspapers for another couple of years until I made the swap to public relations in 1983, moving from the newspaper in Baker, Montana, to Mid-Rivers Telephone Cooperative in Glendive, Montana. From there, I moved to Mandan in 1985 with my new bride and a new job with MDU. I had another job transition in 2001, and actually worked for six months as the education reporter for the Bismarck Tribune before going to work for my present employer, the Lignite Energy Council.

So for 27 or so years, I've been in public relations. I never did get to write sports or cover the New York Yankees as I had wanted to...but my point of this blog and my question remains..."What did you want to do when you were growing up?"