Maybe it’s because baseball’s spring training is here once again, and maybe it’s because baseball is America’s sport, and maybe it’s because America’s sport keeps spawning all those great metaphors to describe life in America.
In any case, one of my favorite baseball metaphors keeps coming to mind these days: “Just because you were born on third base, it doesn’t mean you hit a triple.”
For the record, I am a native-born American. In other words, I was born on third base. I was already that close to scoring because most of the work was done for me long before I squiggled wetly into this world.
I didn’t have to outfox somebody else’s breaking curveball or slider.
I didn’t have to sprint from base to base to beat an outfielder’s throw.
I didn’t have to dive face-first in the dirt to get so close to home.
No, I found myself on third base because I was born there.
To my credit, I made it home by going to college and earning a handful of degrees, which landed me my dream job of being a high-school teacher and coach for a long, successful career. But I achieved all those things by being born on third and strolling home on somebody else’s sacrifice fly.
My father’s parents were born in Germany in the late 1800s and found a way to come to America as young adults in the days leading up to the first World War at the dawn of the 20th Century. They saw which way the totalitarian winds blew, and they had the courage and determination to leave everything they knew behind, and to struggle their way into steerage berths on the first ship they could catch to America.
Here, they found the kind of prejudice and discrimination you might expect to find in a country heading into war against a nation that spoke with the same accent those new immigrants had. For every dream they had — getting a job, buying a home, starting a family — they found nothing but curveballs and sliders to swing at.
But they kept their mouths shut, dug in their spikes, and they kept swinging.
They had several children, one of whom was my father. Born just after World War I, many of them served in the American military as young men to fight Germany once again when the next World War came around.
When my father and his brothers returned home from that war, all of them became manual laborers — carpenters, cement men, steel workers — building America. They sprinted around the bases, farther and faster than their parents ever could have done.
And then I was born. On third base.
And I trotted home without having to break much of a sweat compared to all the work my parents and grandparents did to get me there.
I hear a lot of third-base-born Americans these days griping about all the immigrants striving to leave their “s***hole countries” to come here. These privileged whiners are led in their complaints by a self-congratulatory grandson of immigrants who is the poster-boy for being born on third base.
And when I hear their complaints, I wonder: As they stand there breathing easy on third base with their hands on their ample hips in unstained uniforms, have they ever actually met any of those struggling rookies digging in at the batter’s box, waiting to face another hard-breaking curveball or slider? Oh, they may be glad that they’re not the hired help trimming the hedges, or washing the windows, or scrubbing the floors, but have they ever gotten to know any of those fraught immigrants personally?
And to all of you who agree with that privileged, racist scare-mongering about the immigrant threat, I would ask: Can you think of a single immigrant in your life who has ever hurt you personally? I can’t, but I can name several immigrants who have helped me beyond measure.
As a full-time caregiver for a wife severely disabled by stroke, I occasionally hired a temporary caregiver to let me catch my breath for a few hours — and all of them were people who spoke with accents.
There was Margaret who came here from Poland, and whenever I returned home from a quick nine holes of golf, I always found her covered in mud and scratches from my wife’s garden, where she was willing to do all the chores my wife usually asked me to do — transplant roses, pull weeds, or dig up a patch of sod for a new planting bed. And she did it with a smile and a hug for my wife.
And there was Izabela, also from Poland, who was willing to turn over the sofa to get to the last of the dust-bunnies that might be lurking there, or to work at that stain in the carpet that I hadn’t been able to get rid of. And she did it with a smile and a hug for my wife.
And there was Alejandra from Venezuela, who was not only willing to scrub the dust off the top of the floor moldings, but to pull out a paintbrush and touch up all those wheelchair-scuffs I’d been meaning to get to that my wife pointed out to her as she exercised my wife’s paralyzed arm or leg. And she did it with a smile and a hug.
I not only admire these people, I love them — each and every one of them, as well as others I could name. They are the ones swinging at the curveballs and sliders, racing to beat the throw from the outfielder, diving headlong into a base.
They are the ones who deserve the all-star title of True American, because every day for them is a difficult and honorable struggle from the dugout, to the batter’s box, to the base paths.
Me? I was born on third base.
How about you?
Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.
