in listening to that music was not to rebel against God and religion.
I just loved the power of it. Heavy metal was good for me.
• • •
As soon as every baseball season was over, my dad would take us down to a condo we had in Wildwood, New Jersey, on the southern tip of the state. We called it the Jersey Sho-wa.
The next town over, Cape May, is historic and picturesque, but Wildwood’s style was unpretentious and very much Jerseyesque, with cheap motels and a carnival boardwalk where you could win stuffed animals and gorge yourself on cotton candy and tubs of fries. For me, it was one of the best times of the year, mostly because the pressure was off. Dad would drive us there and then head back home to work during the week. We’d spend all day at the pool or beach. Once a week, after dinner, we’d walk to a little restaurant down the street for a sundae—which, of course, we couldn’t have done if Dad had been with us. Then we’d watch Yankees and Mets games, with alltheir great announcers: Bill White, Phil Rizzuto, Ralph Kiner, Bob Murphy, Lindsey Nelson. For some reason, I actually preferred the Mets. The Schaefer beer commercials. Joe Torre, as a player-manager, sending himself up to pinch-hit.
Dad would arrive on Friday afternoon, and the first thing he’d say to me was, “Let’s go.” I’d grab a bat, we’d find a field, and he’d pitch to me. There was a dumpy, sandy field up by the beach and a beautiful, manicured Little League diamond that nobody was allowed on. We were able to use the fancy field after the director saw me hitting there one day and decided he wanted some of his players to come by and watch; but we’d usually end up on the dumpy one, which I didn’t mind because I could hit the ball out to the street. If I did, my dad would snarl at me to get back to the backstop so it wouldn’t happen again. When it rained, we played under the walkway.
My father was a lefty, and I figure that had something to do with why I always crushed left-handers. I loved to hit off him. I just loved to hit , period. I couldn’t get enough, and my dad was happy to take full advantage of that. If my brothers came along with us, it was mainly to shag balls. Dad would throw each of them ten pitches, then give me a hundred. Amazingly, they never rebelled. Back home, on the pretense of taking the kids to visit his mother in Jeffersonville, he’d drop off my brothers at her house, drive me over to a local field, and pitch to me until his arm wore out. When we returned to Phoenixville, my mother was always surprised that we’d had such a nice, long visit.
Another highlight of those great weeks at Wildwood was getting to see my friend Joe Pizzica. His family would vacation there, too, or he’d come down with us. I knew Joe from the all-star baseball teams in Little League, but he’d gone to the Catholic elementary, so we didn’t run around together until high school. He was a lot tighter with the in-crowd than I was. Joe’s buddies included Tony and John John Nattle, and we all played ball with each other, so—this is back in Phoenixville—we’d go over to one of their houses to watch Mike Tyson fights on pay-per-view, or whatever, and drink a little beer. It wasn’t the Ivy League crew.
Other nights, we drove to a secluded place we knew in the nowhere farmland of Chester County, turned on the radio, and just hung out. Got drunk. We called it Ja-Blip. That lasted until Joe kind of blew me off one night. I had a crush on a girl named Kim Jeffries, who was the class president and a friend of his, and I wanted to go out with Kim and chill at Ja-Blip with Joe and those guys. But there was some kind of complication—Kim might have been seeing somebody else at the time, I don’t recall—and Joe said,“You know what, man? You don’t want to hang out with us.” It was sort of like that scene from Good Will Hunting when Ben Affleck tells Matt Damon to just get out of there and move on with his life. He
I just loved the power of it. Heavy metal was good for me.
• • •
As soon as every baseball season was over, my dad would take us down to a condo we had in Wildwood, New Jersey, on the southern tip of the state. We called it the Jersey Sho-wa.
The next town over, Cape May, is historic and picturesque, but Wildwood’s style was unpretentious and very much Jerseyesque, with cheap motels and a carnival boardwalk where you could win stuffed animals and gorge yourself on cotton candy and tubs of fries. For me, it was one of the best times of the year, mostly because the pressure was off. Dad would drive us there and then head back home to work during the week. We’d spend all day at the pool or beach. Once a week, after dinner, we’d walk to a little restaurant down the street for a sundae—which, of course, we couldn’t have done if Dad had been with us. Then we’d watch Yankees and Mets games, with alltheir great announcers: Bill White, Phil Rizzuto, Ralph Kiner, Bob Murphy, Lindsey Nelson. For some reason, I actually preferred the Mets. The Schaefer beer commercials. Joe Torre, as a player-manager, sending himself up to pinch-hit.
Dad would arrive on Friday afternoon, and the first thing he’d say to me was, “Let’s go.” I’d grab a bat, we’d find a field, and he’d pitch to me. There was a dumpy, sandy field up by the beach and a beautiful, manicured Little League diamond that nobody was allowed on. We were able to use the fancy field after the director saw me hitting there one day and decided he wanted some of his players to come by and watch; but we’d usually end up on the dumpy one, which I didn’t mind because I could hit the ball out to the street. If I did, my dad would snarl at me to get back to the backstop so it wouldn’t happen again. When it rained, we played under the walkway.
My father was a lefty, and I figure that had something to do with why I always crushed left-handers. I loved to hit off him. I just loved to hit , period. I couldn’t get enough, and my dad was happy to take full advantage of that. If my brothers came along with us, it was mainly to shag balls. Dad would throw each of them ten pitches, then give me a hundred. Amazingly, they never rebelled. Back home, on the pretense of taking the kids to visit his mother in Jeffersonville, he’d drop off my brothers at her house, drive me over to a local field, and pitch to me until his arm wore out. When we returned to Phoenixville, my mother was always surprised that we’d had such a nice, long visit.
Another highlight of those great weeks at Wildwood was getting to see my friend Joe Pizzica. His family would vacation there, too, or he’d come down with us. I knew Joe from the all-star baseball teams in Little League, but he’d gone to the Catholic elementary, so we didn’t run around together until high school. He was a lot tighter with the in-crowd than I was. Joe’s buddies included Tony and John John Nattle, and we all played ball with each other, so—this is back in Phoenixville—we’d go over to one of their houses to watch Mike Tyson fights on pay-per-view, or whatever, and drink a little beer. It wasn’t the Ivy League crew.
Other nights, we drove to a secluded place we knew in the nowhere farmland of Chester County, turned on the radio, and just hung out. Got drunk. We called it Ja-Blip. That lasted until Joe kind of blew me off one night. I had a crush on a girl named Kim Jeffries, who was the class president and a friend of his, and I wanted to go out with Kim and chill at Ja-Blip with Joe and those guys. But there was some kind of complication—Kim might have been seeing somebody else at the time, I don’t recall—and Joe said,“You know what, man? You don’t want to hang out with us.” It was sort of like that scene from Good Will Hunting when Ben Affleck tells Matt Damon to just get out of there and move on with his life. He
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