Paper Drive
There is a beat up, ugly ball on display at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. If you take the time to make out the scribbling apart from the smudges and stains, you will see the name Don Grate. Also, you will see "443 feet 3 ½ inches", which is how far Don Grate threw this particular ball. I first learned of this while thumbing through the Guinness Book of World Records in 1958. Prior to reading this, I had considered myself to have a strong throwing arm, second only to Kevin Boyle's mother.
Don Grate had several throws that bettered his record but went unmeasured. He started his professional baseball career with the Chattanooga Lookouts in the minor leagues, where promotional gimmicks were used to attract people to the ball park. Cow milking contests and skill exhibitions were often held prior to the game. One day in 1952 before a game at Pelican Park in New Orleans, the manager told Don to join in the throwing exhibition with the other players, and show the fans how far he could throw a baseball. The players were throwing from center field, perhaps thirty feet from the fence, in the direction of home plate. When it was Don's turn, he threw the ball over the press box.
To aid in visualizing this feat, the distance from the center field fence to home plate was 405 feet, plus the official regulations require the backstop to be a minimum of fifty feet behind home plate. The press box was supported by pillars that rose three stories directly above the backstop. In short, he threw the ball out of the stadium.
Later that year, Don was with the Lookouts when they played an exhibition game at the Atlanta Federal Prison. After the game ended the prison officials said the team couldn't leave the yard because the inmates wanted to see if Don could throw a ball from home plate and break a window high up on the prison building. Don's throw bounced off one of the bars that were in between the panes of glass. The prison officials insisted that he throw another. Don was quoted as saying, "I threw the next one over the Prison, and they let us go".
As impressive as this may sound, I would have to give the edge to Kevin's mother. Don Grate was only six foot two and 180 pounds. Although I do not have specifics, trust me, Kevin's mother was bigger. Kevin's older brother David told me that their mom weighed over twelve pounds at birth. Kevin and David were normal in size as they took after their father Tony, who was at most a welterweight. Mom was a Clydesdale.
Kevin and I lived ten houses apart and shared an interest in baseball. We spent many days playing a one-on-one game we invented in the church parking lot, as well a baseball dice game that was in its embryonic stage. Kevin's father was a cartoonist and had one of the first shows for kids on the local television channels. I didn't know that his mother had a job until a few years later.
I was fifteen years old when Neil Edwards told me I could make a few dollars on Sunday mornings delivering the Los Angeles Times. I went to see about the job after school. The man that ran the shop said I was hired and told me to come back Sunday morning at 2:00 am. When I arrived I was put to work immediately. The Times in those days had an enormous classified ads section on Sundays and the paper was delivered in two sections. The first task I was given was to fold each section, stick it into a machine that terrified me, and pull it back out (now tied with a string) and stack it off to the side. The machine had to be 100 years old, left over from the days of Upton Sinclair, hazardous working conditions, and child labor.
By the time I had finished tying the sections, I was covered in the black ink that rubbed off onto me from the newspapers. It was filthy, smelly work. I was amazed at how many newspapers there were. The coverage of the delivery area for this shop was all of Eagle Rock whose population then was around a third of today's 34,000.
Most of the sections were tied and stacked when the drivers started to pull into the parking lot. There were three drivers, each with a specially modified 1937 two-door humpback Ford sedan convertible. The back seat and trunk had been removed, and in its place was a huge, sheet-metal open bucket that could hold thousands of sections of the Sunday Times. The rear bumper had been replaced with a sixteen inch wide platform, and a galvanized pipe ran across the top of the rear of the bucket. The humpback model had been selected as the rear trunk lid was nearly straight up and down without any slope to it.
The result of these modifications allowed someone, like my self, to stand on the back platform, grab the pipe for support with one hand, reach into the bucket with the other hand, retrieve and then toss a section onto a customer's porch. There being two sections, the driver of the car would toss the other section while maneuvering down Eagle Rock's residential streets at 4:00 am doing 25 to 40 miles per hour. It seemed perfectly reasonable at the time. In addition, I couldn't believe my luck. I was going to get paid for throwing things, something I took great joy in doing at baseball practice after school.
Kevin's mother was one of the drivers and I was assigned to go with her. The man that hired me took me aside and told me to watch out for myself because, "She drives like a maniac." I hadn't spent any time at Kevin's house for three or four years and I don't know if Kevin's mother recognized me. I hopped on the platform and off we went. Kevin's mom stopped the car at the beginning of the first residential street we were going to deliver to. She said, "I know the route, I'll throw my section first. When you see where mine is headed, you throw your section."
I said, "Got it."
She continued, "If you make it on the porch that's great, but the lawn or driveway will do just fine."
I said, "Okay."
She added, "If the string breaks and the section comes apart, tell me to stop the car. Then run back, grab all of the pieces, and put them in a neat pile on the driveway. Oh yeah, for Christ's sake, don't fall off."
We started the route and did every street from Ellenwood on the west side to Figueroa on the east; staying north of Colorado the whole way. She drove straight down the middle of the street and hit the porch on both sides, almost every time. The other drivers would have to weave left and right as they went down the street to shorten the throwing distance. The zigzag method slowed them down and their sections only just made it onto the driveways. Kevin's mother finished an hour sooner than the other drivers.
I was having a blast, sensing where her section was going as soon as it left her hand, whipping my section out trying to catch up with hers or at least hit the same spot. The speed of the car added 25 to 30 mph onto my throws making them feel like they were coming off of a catapult. They didn't have to pay me, I would have waited in line to do this for nothing.
I could get my section to the porch just as well as she could, but that's where the comparison ended. One monumental difference was that I was standing up, throwing with a full leg and body motion like Sandy Koufax. She was sitting down with one hand on the steering wheel, driving the car. She could launch her section with a simple wrist flick, forehand or backhand, and send it on a bee-line right to the porch, or slamming against the front door. When a house was set a long ways back from the normal distance to the curb, only then would she actually throw her section. When she did this, the car would recoil sideways from the torque. She delivered the paper every morning. She was a professional.
From Colorado Blvd, we turned up a narrow street called Townsend. We were almost to the end of the street when I could feel that there was a broken string on my section. I let up on the throw, the pieces of the section came apart but only about ten feet away, mostly in the drive way. I yelled for Kevin's mother to stop the car and she did. I jumped down from the platform and ran twenty yards back to the driveway. I was down on all fours, hustling to collect all the pieces and make a neat pile where the end of the driveway met the street. Unbeknownst to me, Kevin's mother had let the car roll back down the hill to where it was two feet away from where I was working. Not wanting to cause us anymore of a delay, I sprang up, making a quarter turn like a sprinter coming sideways out their starting blocks and ran face first into the humpback.
I don't think I was knocked unconscious, just stunned for a moment or two. Kevin's mother though this was hysterical. I don't know if I remembered having even seen her smile before this. She turned off the engine and just sat there and roared for a few minutes which got me to laughing as well. Once she had gotten herself together, she asked me if I was alright, and I assured her I was fine. She started the car and we continued with the route. Every three or four blocks she would bust out laughing again, slamming her fist on the steering wheel as she sped down the street flinging her sections. We made a great team.