as many of you know and can gleefully recite, there are lots of "artie gianakos stories" out there.

let me add one here. it is, typically, a little on the long side, but the 2011 season is nearly done, so presumably we all have a little more time to read. so here goes:

its the fourth inning of a fall ball game that artie organized at southgate field on sunday afternoon, a raw, chilly, overcast day. we've got maybe 20 guys there from most of the age divisions in the league. because it's fall ball, guys are wearing all manner of outfits, the infield is undragged, with clumps of cow-patty mud everywhere, and the catchers are serving as unpaid umps. it's the dying days of the season. in six hours, the world series will be set. in two weeks, we'll lose an hour of daylight. but this day, we 20 have a little baseball left.

artie, a left handed batter, is at the plate, i'm on the hill. on a 1-0 count, i throw what strikes me as the perfect pitcher's pitch: on the inside, at the knees, just over the black. i make so few of those pitches during the season that i tend to recognize one when i see it. fortunately, so did my catcher kevin macdonald, who called it a strike.

artie disagreed. the moment he heard the call, he stepped back and looked down at the spot where the ball passed, contemplating it for a second. then, he pointed with his bat at the plate and said something to kevin while shaking his head.

i was ready to be entertained and i figured everyone else was, too. so from the hill, i said, hey, speak up, artie, what's on your mind?

artie didnt disappoint.

he pointed again to the plate with his bat, turned to me, and said in a tone that wasn't all that unhappy (or that happy, either): "i said, i needed a seven iron to hit that one."

guys were smiling around the backstop. artie had hit his target.

then, i thought, artie's used that line and variations of it for years, all in what i call his on-going, lawerly arguments before baseball's high court, its umps, to protect and project his vision of how games should proceed, which is generally as he sees they should go, and, if they're not, someone has been wounded, which means it's possible that an injustice has been done that borders on the cosmic. whether artie's right or wrong, i admit to enjoying his pleadings. from the smiles i could see all around me, others did too.

a pitch later, artie made contact and he hit the ball toward first base. i don't recall what happened then: the fielders had forever to get the ball because artie couldn't run, he'd sprained a knee tendon while slipping off a ladder earlier this week. but even on a sore knee, artie displayed his nice swing and fine contact.

now, here's one point: artie, who's 64 and has been around the base paths more than once, lodged his complaint in a FALL BALL GAME. that is to say, in a game where everybody is exceedingly relaxed, where there's more laughter than usual (even as the year's last pitches and swings are in process, or maybe because they are) and where outcomes are not tallied. but artie was in character: he was playing and, darn it, he would do all he could to get his due, to get an edge, and then, to win, even in laid-back fall ball.

the larger point is that artie was in character in another, more important way: he'd organized this fall ball league, as he'd done many times in the past, to let anybody, from any age division, have one last shot at baseball for the season, and to prep the teams he takes to florida nearly every year. which is more organizing.

as i watched artie run the game, sitting in his spikes, jeans and windbreaker, directing things from behind the fence in a folding, canvas chair that looked very much like a director's chair, it struck me that these organizing efforts of his are very much in character for him.

weve been blessed in cdmsbl with a handful of fellows, who, over the years, have put together more than their share of teams and brought in not one or two guys, but groups of guys to baseball who otherwise might not have played: i'm sure there are fellows i'm leaving out, and i regret that, but john reel, kevin jackson, todd baldwin, dick stark, don dunham, jim konstantakis, cos di bari, don wixon and frank montagano come instantly to mind as fellows who've organized more than one team and brought in new guy after new guy.

well, artie's done that, too. in spades getting players for the regular season, for labor day tournaments, for games at cooperstown, for road tournaments and fall ball. and this season, the old guy did it again, organizing a new 45+ team, the blue jays, full of former players that many had forgotten about or who had dropped out of the league. they came back with artie and they made it to the quarterfinals.

artie's no slouch at playing ball; he can still pitch and hit. ask him and he'll tell you of his days being drafted by the phillies, though he'll quickly add, that was a long time ago, that he's a lumbering guy now where once, and, really, not that long ago, he was a pretty limber one.

my friend and fellow cdmsbl player al hart (no relation), pointed out to me recently that artie's been in cdmsbl a long time, too, more than 20 years, where he's probably been a part of more winning teams, and where he likely holds more (unkept) records as a pitcher for strikeouts and wins and as a hitter for hits and runs than perhaps anyone else.

artie's on the road today and he has no idea i'm writing this. (i didnt know i'd write it either, until i sat down) and he's doing something pretty nice: he volunteered to drive a truck of medical supplies to a poor people's medical center in selma, ala. artie is in the medical supply business and a retiring colleague of artie's had materials he wanted to donate. so artie said if he could get his expenses paid, he'd volunteer his time to drive a truck 1,200 miles down and fly back.

our league is rich because we have a few people in it who can not only play well, but who, by force of their personalities, entertain, who give of themselves, and who, in the words of a singer and civil rights worker i once knew, are "long-timin it."

artie's long-timed it for us, and it struck me yesterday, at a fall ball game i very much enjoyed, that many of us are the happier for it. i was then and still am.

thanks, artie.

-mike



-- Edited by mhart on Monday 17th of October 2011 07:15:02 PM

-- Edited by mhart on Monday 17th of October 2011 07:16:03 PM

-- Edited by mhart on Monday 17th of October 2011 07:17:00 PM