We sat on the swing, eating bing cherries, pushing off the grass, looking out over the valley down deep in which my dad and his mom grew up. “Tell me the one about Satchel Paige again,” I said.
“Satchel was up to bat and I was playing centerfield. Satchel’s hit lobbed into centerfield, and was almost a trap, but I caught it before it hit the ground, and the umpire called Satchel out and it was the third out. As headed toward the dugout and passed Satchel heading toward the pitching mound, he looked rough, that man, like 90 miles of bad road, and he said, “You say you caught that ball, Hoerner, I’m gonna strike you out.”
So when I came up to bat, Satchel pitched, and I drove a home run into the center field bleachers. I wasn’t dinkin’ around.”
Dad drove in all four runs of that game for the win. June 29, 1951.
I loved swinging with him and listening to his stories. Recently, around Father’s Day, my sister sent me a photo of this article in the Dubuque Telegraph Herald.
Wow! I answered, thrilled to see Dad’s name and to read Erik Hogstrom calling him “one of the Key City’s finest homegrown players.” Sister Julie told me our brother Dan had gone to Finley hospital that morning with his wife, Linda, and after she was wheeled into surgery, and he was in the waiting room turning in circles and worried, he picked up the paper, opened it, and there was Dad. So Dan sent the photo to Julie in Iowa City and Julie sent it to me in Barcelona, and it made the ache for him ease in all of us. And we all called each other, too. Thanks to Erik and the Telegraph Herald!
Below is a slide-show of some photos of other clippings I found in a box in the fall of 2018, months after Mom died, and while I was in Iowa City, working on I am home. The story of Satchel and Dad that night varies a bit with everyone who tells it. I’d like to write about all of the clippings I found in that box, highlighting some of the fabulous language those sportswriters of yesteryear used. Seeing Mom’s handwriting on the date, June 29, 1951, and knowing my father died on June 23, 2011, I wondered when we buried him so did a quick search and saw it was June 27. Almost 60 years to the day after that remarkable evening that made him and many others smile for the rest of his life.
To imagine my dad, Beltin’ Bobby Hoerner, at 25, and Mom, 24, childless, a whole life ahead of them, celebrating the win and the runs that night also makes me smile. Their first child was born on April 30, 1952. Dad still played for a year or two after that. Gosh, how I wish I could have seen him beltin’ them in.
Marianne Maili 