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THE MILLIONAIRE
People who love baseball never really grow old-- there's
something
about the game that keeps the human spirit young. An old chestnut
says,
"Even as an adult, you must have some little boy in you
to play
baseball." This chestnut was coined before Sappy Stanford
Univ. taught
us to be Politically Correct. Now we have to say boy or gurl.
Al Posey's father loved baseball and he never grew old.
Al lived
over by the four corners, a rural intersection, and we were best
friends
in jr high school in the mid-40's. Al's dad would drive a car
full of
kids to any ball field in town, at any time. And this was the
time of
WW2 gas rationing-- no pleasure or unnecessary driving. Mr Posey
considered a baseball game VERY necessary driving, and though
it was
illegal, several parents chipped in ration stamps for his gas
tank.
Gasoline was so precious during the war years that, to conserve,
the
national speed limit was set at 35 mph, strictly enforced.
The Posey family had plenty of kids, laughed a lot and,
like mine,
was poor. Not real poor, but surviving the Great Depression a
few years
earlier was reoccurring memory for many parents. ( Actually,
WW2 made
people nouveau riche' ). Their house was a typical farmhouse,
built in
the 20's, that sat on a knoll overlooking the lower pasture on
the Posey
farm. On the pasture Al's dad, with help, cleared and leveled
a
homemade baseball field, complete with sandbag bases. For years
I would
drive by the four corners, look over toward Al's and see kids,
young and
old, playing softball... Posey kids, cousins, nieces and nephews,
and
neighbors would be playing a game every evening it wasn't raining.
In the boom years of the early 90's a corporation spotted
the Posey
9-acre farm and made Al an offer he couldn't resist. Al sold
the place
and bought a new $250,000 house on a small lake. My sister who
still
lives in the same town, stopped Al on the street one day and
asked him
how it felt to be a millionaire. Al grimaced and said, I'd rather
have
my ball field back...
Most of the class of '49, South Kitsap High School, has
grown older,
but the last time I saw Al Posey, in 1992, he looked the same
as his
yearbook photo.
Al loves baseball.
Picture and article © 1998 by Ray Collins
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