Jim Davidson, Lessons from The Hurricane

Jim Davidson, 1942-1996

Jim Davidson was a prolific writer. His daughter Anne-Marie shared photos and this story that Jim wrote about one of his life-long passions, baseball.

Bats left, throws right, makes great contact, fair power, very fast, good arm, good fielder, great range, knows the game, thinks – a definite prospect.  At least that’s what scouts from the Braves and Giants and maybe some others  said about me and the University of Minnesota, then a perennial contender in the NCAA College World Series.  In another year, they would be talking full ride.          

At 15,  I was well on my way to being All-State as an outfielder, my natural position, but was also learning to catch, play some shortstop, and was forever trying to pitch, even if my control was like Nolan Ryan or Rex Barney, as the case study was then, on their worst days.  It was the summer of 1957, and I was adjusting to my first season in senior American Legion ball and competing against players two or three years older.  I was breezing along batting around .450, hoping my team would get to the state and maybe regional tournament, and keep the active season alive another month.

Not that the season ever exactly ended for me.  When I was an ambidextrous two year old, my father made me right -handed because there were more positions to play.  At five, I became a left-handed hitter because I would be a step closer to first base.  At eight, I saw my first curve ball – my dad’s.  From mid-February, or whenever the Kansas winter slightly thawed, until it returned in late November, my dad and I played, talked, thought, and breathed the game.  The other three months, we waited until we could play again.  For him, it was a love of a son and a game.  For me, it was the love of a father and the pleasure my success brought him, but maybe not so much the love of the game itself.  He always said, “Get an education,” and after age eight, I never penciled myself into the Yankee lineup. Others did, however, and  so much as they felt I had pro prospects, I thought about it – until I met The Hurricane.               

I was no stranger to professional baseball players.  Every summer, the National Baseball Congress semi-pro tournament was held in Wichita and teams came in from all over the United States, often with former minor or even occasional major leaguers on their rosters.  The teams practiced on a huge complex of nine diamonds, a glorious two blocks from my house.  From age 8, most of my Augusts were spent shagging balls for these teams, some more generous than others in giving me one for good service in chasing them over the fence of the adjacent football field. (Jim Davidson, age 13 and ready to play ball)

The best were the military teams that came in during the Korean War.  Not only were they generous with Uncle Sam’s baseballs, they brought real, genuine, active major leaguers – guys who were on my baseball cards or the year before had been on the Game of the Day with Al Helfer and were now serving their hitches playing ball for the likes of Ft. Meyer, Va. or the Brooke Army team which had my favorite, Bobby Brown.  During  those two summers, I was 9 and 10 years old and a little timid about interrupting Danny O’Connell or Jim Lemon or Johnny Antonelli to get their autographs, but I wasn’t hesitant to play on the infield with these guys taking batting practice.  Amazingly, I only got hit once, with a shot from Sam Calderone, who gave me a new baseball for my pain and made me move to the outfield at least when his team practiced.  For a nine year old, I learned up close a lot of playing, chewing, scratching and colorful vocabulary from some legitimate major leaguers in all these categories, but with an uncritical innocence.             

So, I was not overly impressed when The Hurricane became the batting instructor for a team that played in a younger league but was composed mostly of friends my own age who couldn’t play in the older division.   Their coach wanted me to play for them the next season and often let me pitch batting practice for them while hanging out with friends, so I was there when The Hurricane debuted.   The Hurricane was Bob (Hurricane) Hazle who was then laboring in the outfield for the AAA Wichita Braves and was about a month away from the start of his 15 minutes of baseball fame.  He was a well-built, rather arrogant guy, prone to talking a lot about himself and his near misses in The Show and rather reluctant to spend any time critiquing the team’s hitting deficiencies. Usually the hour or so he spent was about equally divided between talking about himself and taking personal batting practice to show us how it was done.            

Since I always wanted to pitch and thought I was pretty good, I did the  honors for The Hurricane on his first day.  I started off slowly.  I wasn’t throwing very hard and he was hitting it all over the lot while keeping up a running commentary on what he was doing right, which was everything.  Finally, he yelled out at me to query if I could throw harder.  Yow, I could – a lot harder.  Why I was an outfielder and not a pitcher wasn’t a lack of stuff.  It was lack of control, or so I thought.  At least Legion kids didn’t hit it when I threw strikes.  So I let it out and threw as hard as I could, quit signaling when the curves and sliders were coming and went after this guy.  Remarkably, I had pretty decent control – for me, excellent.  But, now he was into the situation as well.  He had made the challenge and now he had to back it up.  The commentary stopped and the line drives started.               

The next fifteen minutes were critical for me, not for dodging everything he quite purposefully hit back at me for curving him without warning or for mentally estimating if this drive or that was 400 or 425 feet, but in terms of career counseling.  Far from an awed nine year-old, I was now a very realistic teenager being given a private tutorial on the skills necessary even to be near The Show, much less in it.  Ball after ball he hit, just crushing them, probably 30 or 40 out of an equal number that were even remotely around the plate.  He didn’t miss one and he didn’t stop.  In the blur of line drives going off all around me and the wounded pride of recognized shortcomings, I wouldn’t quit either.  Finally, his dress slacks and sport shirt completely soaked and his point made, he excused himself and left us to continue practice. 

He came out a couple more times with similar results but without the competition.  I knew where I stood and I signaled the curves and sliders and, for his part, he didn’t hit any more back up the middle.  In August, The Hurricane got the call and the only time we saw him again was on black and white TV when the big Braves were on.  The Hurricane hit .403 the rest of the way as a pinch hitter and part-time outfielder.  He was absolutely essential to Milwaukee’s winning its second straight pennant and the World Series.  During the 1958 season, he  played 63 games with Milwaukee and Detroit and then dropped from major league sight.      

I suppose I could have taken solace from the fact that The Hurricane had treated major league pitchers nearly as rudely as he had me, but The Hurricane had trained me better than that.  I had seen from 60 feet, 6 inches the unique and exquisite combination of timing, strength, coordination and form that it takes to be major league hitter.  In fifteen minutes, I had seen exploded before me the crater of  difference between even a very good high school player and the true professional, and I knew that getting an education was what I needed to do.  I made All-State two more years as a catcher-outfielder, accepted an academic scholarship to Washington University in St. Louis, played a little college ball, and went to medical school. 

The Hurricane was a great teacher.