Doing the Lindy

As a kid, I used to imitate his extreme overhand pitching motion. This is what we did, back in the day, back in the early- and mid-1970s of my youth. We’d meet at a baseball field, play pickup games and pretend to be the players we saw on TV. When I batted, I was Roy White. Always Roy White, the steady, consistent outfielder for the New York Yankees. When I pitched, I was Lindy McDaniel, a player few had heard of and a guy who through no fault on his own always played on mediocre teams – including the Yankees, during their dark days of the late 1960s to early 1970s when they weren’t all that good. McDaniel had a good, long Major League Baseball career, as I learned in his obituary earlier this week in the New York Times. He died of Covid-related illness at age 84. Whenever I play catch with my son James in the yard, every once in a while, to this day, I’ll throw a fastball with my left arm extended fully straight up in the air, and I’ll think of Lindy McDaniel, long forgotten and now gone. I guess it’s no surprise and probably a recurring theme as you get older that the sort-of famous people that were part of your life growing up start disappearing from the planet.