Randy Smith: Ghosts Runners And One-Eyed Cat

When you were a youngster I know you had favorite games to play with your friends. Just about all my favorite games involved sports. If there were four of us, we played two on two basketball and if there were only two of us, we played one on one. In football we would do the same thing. Running the ball was a no-no. It was all passing no matter how many players we had. The biggest group we ever had in football was six on a side and when we had that many, the center was ineligible to catch the football.

Then....there was baseball....the grandest of all games. The kid with the biggest, flattest yard would host the games and we would use trees, rocks anything we could find for bases. Sometimes we would designate a tree or a line drawn in the outfield to signify a home run. One on one match ups would strictly be a home run derby but anything with more than two players could be a real baseball game. That's where we had to solve the problem of, " What happens when the next batter is on base?"

When my dad was a kid, he and his brothers would play a game called, "One-eyed Cat." In this particular game, which was great for just two players on each side, there were only two bases. There was home plate and second base. When you hit the ball, you would run across the field, right past the pitcher's mound and touch second base. You would stay there until your teammate batted and, if he made an out, you would switch places. Each team would also get just two outs per inning which made the games go quicker. This was great for my dad but not for my friends and me.

I hated "One-eyed Cat." When we would have a game with just two or three players on a team, we would use "ghost runners."  We believed in using all four bases because if you only used two it wasn't real baseball. Now this took a little math as well as athletic ability. With three players, if two reached base, and player number three also got a hit but not deep enough to score the guy from second, you would have the bases loaded but nobody left to hit. When that happened, you would place a "ghost runner" on third and the guy who was on third would come in to hit next.  The fewer players you had, the more "ghost runners" would be used. Generally when you got to the point where there were four players on a side, you seldom needed a "ghost runner."

We were creative and we were innovative. We had no computers, cell phones or video games. Televisions only had three channels and there was only one Major League game televised each week and it was on Saturday or Sunday. We actually played baseball. Some of us had no air conditioning and many times we played until it was too dark to see.  I would play the game as Mickey Mantle, while other kids would play it as their favorite player. Every now and then, I would be someone else and let another kid be Mickey because he was just about everyone's favorite player. Those were times I will never forget and I wouldn't trade those memories for anything in the world.

 

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