When I was a kid I was pretty good ballplayer and always made the little league all-star team – which today would be called the “travel team.”

     Our little league all-star team in 1967, ages eleven and twelve, was a very good club, and featured what we all called in later years the “all-star, all-Italian” infield. John Faraci played first base, Van Anunziato was at second, I played shortstop and Tommy Ferraro was our third baseman. We played ball together for many years afterwards, all the way through high school.

     In the summer of 1967 our all-star team won eight games in a row and advanced to the Long Island Championship semi-finals before we lost and were eliminated. Our loss came against a pitcher named Ira Padlowski who played for Brentwood. Ira was a little kid with thick glasses, stooped shoulders and curly black hair. When we saw him warming up before the game we thought we were going to kick his butt. Turns out little Ira had something the rest of us didn’t have.

     A curveball.

     None of us had ever seen a curveball before and we couldn’t touch the kid.

     For those of you who don’t know, a good curveball from a right-handed pitcher is devastating. It looks like its coming straight at your head or body, and at the last second, it breaks over home plate for a strike. Your first instinct, when you see the ball coming at you, is to get the hell out of the way. If you’re a right-handed batter – which all of us were – you tend to lean back toward third base instead of stepping into the pitch. You have to stride toward the pitch – not away from it – to hit the ball solidly.

     Our coach said to us, “Listen boys, I know when you’re hitting against this guy you’re heart’s in there, but your ass isn’t. It’s moving up the third base line. You gotta stay in there.” We listened in earnest to what the coach said, but as soon as we saw that Padlowski curveball coming at us, our eleven-year old asses were bailing out toward third base. It was not a pretty sight.

     Today, in little league baseball, it’s against the rules for a pitcher to throw a curveball. The violent twisting motion of the arm necessary to snap off a good curve wrecks havoc on a young boy’s undeveloped elbow and shoulder, and can cause permanent structural damage. Unfortunately for us, this rule was not in place when Ira Padlowski was mowing us down.

     Ira held us hitless for six innings. In the seventh inning I broke up his no-hitter when I got the only hit for our team. I basically closed my eyes and took a wild swing. I made contact and somehow the ball rolled through the infield for a single.

     I have often wondered whatever happened to little Ira Padlowski. He obviously never made it to the big leagues. I have no idea where he is now. I even googled him once but couldn’t find him. Nonetheless, I’m sure wherever he is, Ira often thinks back to that summer afternoon when he pitched a one-hitter against us and broke our hearts.

     Still, our team making it to the Long Island semi-finals was a pretty good run, and, up to that time, it was the furthest any all-star club from our little league had ever gotten. And following every victory that summer – even after little Ira shut us down – the whole team, and all their parents and siblings, came to my house for a party. We’re talking between forty and fifty people at the house after every game.

     No big deal.

     My family is Italian and that’s what we do.

     We feed people.

     We feed large numbers of people.

     The garage at our house served as a huge food pantry. In fact, I don’t remember a car ever actually being parked in the garage. There wasn’t enough room. Instead, we had three extra refrigerators in there, as well as two huge freezers. The garage walls were lined with shelves that held hundreds of jars of homemade tomato sauce, eggplants and roasted peppers. There were dozens of boxes of macaroni, cases of soda, canned goods and all other kinds of food on the shelves. We could, at any given time, feed up to 100 people at a moment’s notice. I thought it was absolutely normal to have that much food around all the time. That’s how I grew up.

     After an all-star game everybody came to my house and my father got the big grill in the backyard going. He went into the freezers in the garage and brought out large quantities of burgers, hot dogs, chicken and sausage and fed everybody. The kids all went swimming in our built-in pool, while the grown-ups sat at tables on the patio in the backyard.

     Bathing suits for all the kids?

     No problem.

     In the cabana by the pool we had dozens of suits in all different sizes.

     Towels?

     We had hundreds of them.

     Quite often the parties would run late into the night. Most of us kids were exhausted after a day of playing ball, a night of swimming and running around, and a huge meal. It wasn’t uncommon for a number of kids to fall asleep somewhere in the house – on the floor, the couches, everywhere. My parents told the other parents to let the kids stay asleep. They could be picked up the next day. In the morning there would be ten or twelve kids at the breakfast table. My parents made eggs, pancakes, waffles, home fries, bacon and sausage for the whole crew. We also consumed gallons of orange juice and milk.

     That’s the way it was at my house.

     Everybody is welcome.

     Everybody eats.

     After two years in little league we all moved up to the Babe Ruth League, which is ages thirteen to fifteen. My father had decided to become a coach. He didn’t know a whole lot about baseball fundamentals or strategy, but it didn’t matter much. We always had the best players on our team.

     Why?

     The food and the fun, of course.

     All the kids from our little league all-star team wanted to play on my old man’s Babe Ruth League team because they knew that after we won, there was a very good chance there was going to be a big party at our house. So, on their Babe Ruth League applications, they would put down that they HAD to play on my father’s team or they would be unable to get to the games. My father, supposedly, made arrangements for everyone to get a ride to the field. This was not entirely true – actually, it wasn’t true at all – but it made for a helluva good baseball team. We went undefeated for two years. In fact, as a coach, my father didn’t even have any secret signs for specific plays, which is usually standard procedure on a baseball team. If he wanted somebody to steal a base, there was no signal; he’d just shout out to the runner, “Hey, steal second base!” The runner always made it despite the fact that the other team knew exactly what we were up to. We were that good.

     Most of the same kids from the little league all-star team also made the all-star team in Babe Ruth League, and it was the same thing all over again when we won – party at the Amoruso house!

     Many years later, when I was away at college in Boston, I would call home on a Sunday afternoon. Quite often one of my friends from our old baseball team would answer the phone.

     “What the hell are you doing there?” I’d ask.

     “Nothing. Me and some of the guys came over your house to see how your parents were doing.”

     Hmmm. It was three o’clock on a Sunday. Just about the time my mom made the macaroni and meatballs.

     “Where’s my mom?”

     “She’s by the stove.”

     “Can I talk to her?”

     “No, she’s cooking right now. She says she’ll call you back. She just put the macaroni in the water.”

     I was in college.

     I was broke.

     I was having peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner.

     My friends were at my house eating macaroni.

     Where was the justice in this world?

     I still live on Long Island, and occasionally I’ll run into some of the guys I played ball with. Inevitably, the first thing they say after we shake hands is, “Do you remember that kid Ira Padlowski with that wicked curveball?” Then they smile and say, “Hey, do you remember all those parties at your house when we played on the all-star teams? Man, those were the best times.”

     I remember those times very well. And to many of my boyhood friends those summer nights of eating, swimming and sleeping at my house are among the fondest and most cherished memories of their childhoods. They are among my fondest memories, too. It was a time when we all thought we were destined to become major league ballplayers; a time when our main responsibilities in life were school work, taking out the garbage and mowing the lawn.

     Then we grew up.

     Life happened.

     College, jobs, marriages, divorces, mortgage payments, kids, money worries, stress, sickness, parents dying, sometimes the death of friends.

     And when all this happens, it’s a wonderful thing to be able to think back and remember a time when life was so much simpler. A time when we all thought we were going to live forever. When we were certain it was our destiny to play ball in the big leagues. When our whole focus in life was winning a baseball game. And after the game, we swam in a big pool, ran around, laughed, ate, and then slept a deep, peaceful sleep. The kind of worry-free sleep you rarely, if ever, have as an adult.

     When you’re a kid you just can’t wait to grow up. Then, when you grow up, you often wish you were a kid again. You look at your own kids and see how they are so anxious to grow up – so impatient with being a child. You tell them to please slow down, to not grow up so fast, and to appreciate every minute because it all goes by so quickly. But they don’t listen.

     Just like you didn’t listen.

     And you know something? Every time the mortgage comes due, or I get a stack of bills in the mail, or I have to make a huge college tuition payment for one of my children, or I have painful back spasms trying to get out of bed in the morning, or I need to put on my reading glasses because the words on the page are a blur, there’s a real big part of me that wishes I was a kid again.

     Even if it means facing Ira Padlowski’s curveball.

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 Thanks for reading my column.

     As a film writer-director I have made over 40 films for networks such as PBS, A&E, The History Channel, ESPN, MSG and SNY to name just a few. I have done films about American history, sports, entertainment, popular culture and more. Please visit my website at www.NSEfilms.com to see clips from these films.