LENNY

Lenny Kasten died last month. He was 80. From my athletic life, he was one of the people that I liked the best.

I met Lenny when he and his family came to the bungalow colony, Lansmans, where my family and I had long spent our summers. It was the mid 1960's and I was a teenager and he a grown man of about 40.

Lenny wanted to play on our softball team. The team was mainly, though not completely, pretty young. Most of the players were my age or just a few years older. "What's an old guy like that doing coming out for our team?" I thought to myself.

After Lenny smashed a bunch of long drives deep into the outfield in batting practice, including some that rolled into the woods surrounding the field, I understood. He was coming out because he was going to be one of our best players. Lenny made the team, becoming our starting third basemen and cleanup hitter.

Here's the way many of our games would start. I would lead off and get on base. Either Bobby or Tony, batting behind me, would also get on (sometimes they both would) and Lenny would get the long hit that drove us home. We had so many big first innings! We'd just blow teams away before the game had barely begun.

We won SO many games with Lenny, made the playoffs EVERY season and won more than our share of championships.

I don't think Lenny loved playing third base, however. He didn't really use his glove very well there. In fact he'd often let smashes bounce off his big barrel chest, fall to the ground at his feet where he'd pick the ball up and throw the runner out at first. Unconventional! What Lenny claimed was that in his youth he was a fleet footed outfielder. He said that at my age he was as fast as me. Sorry, Lenny, I never believed that one, maybe because I could never imagine that you were as young as me!

We had a bunch of hot heads and crazies on our team who would provoke huge arguements and even fights with the oppostion. Lenny was not one of them; he was almost always calm and soothing. I only remember a single time that he got mad. It concerned a most unusual game...

...It was played entirely in the rain at the Friedlander's field. They were a tough rival and the game was very close and very messy. I dropped a fly ball in leftfield. I caught another that travelled through a bunch of tree branches that overhung the leftfield foul line. I stretched a single into a double and scored the tieing run...maybe Lenny drove me in?...late in the game.

And all the while it rained. The rain got heavier and heavier but the umpires insisted that we play through it. They promised that, no matter what, we'd finish. But then it rained harder. And harder. And it became very difficult to even see the ball. But we were batting in the top of the last inning with the game tied, 2 out, 1 on and me coming up. Conditions were near impossible, however, and the umpire, who was from Lansmans, stopped play.

Friedlander's was furious. They thought this was a ploy on the part of "our" umpire. How it could be I still don't understand. But, as a compromise, "our" umpire agreed that the game would resume the following weekend exactly where it had been suspended, that is, with us batting with 2 outs and a runner on first.

While this sounds reasonable, it went against league rules which stated that a rained out game should be replayed in its entirety. Arguable Friedlanders would have the competitive advantage by this ruling since we had only 1 out remaining in the 7th inning while they had a full inning to work with. If we didn't rally and score and they did they would win this important game.

And that is exactly what happened. A week later we travelled to meet them, took batting practice, warmed up and then I grounded out on the very first pitch and they quickly scored a run and prevailed. We had spent over 2 hours of our afternoon to play for about 5 minutes and get stuck with a loss.

As we walked off the field, Lenny said: "I've never felt more humiliated in my life. Never." And he kept repeating it. Never had I seen Lenny so upset. But that just made the rematch with our arch rivals all the more exciting when we met them at the end of the summer in the championship contest. And, of course, it made our hard fought victory that day all the sweeter!

The softball times that I enjoyed most with Lenny, oddly enough, occurred when we didn't actually have a game. Lenny, as many of the men, worked in the City throughout the week and came up to Lansmans late on Thursdays. Those evenings, after dinner, deep into the twilight, he and I and a few others would go to the field for extended batting practice.

Except I wouldn't hit. I didn't care about hitting. All I wanted to do was play the outfield and chase long fly balls. And that was certainly okay with Lenny. He didn't want to go to third base and take more drives off his chest! And he was way more than happy to stand in the batters box till it got dark. So that's what we did. He would hit long, towering drives and I would run them down. Sometimes he'd get a little frustrated because he couldn't get too many over my head and out of my reach. But, since he didn't play much in the Lansmans outfield, he didn't fully realize my big competitive advantage...the field was on the top of a hill that sloped downwards from the middle of the outfield to the surrounding woods. Hit one over my head and, as I ran back for it, I was running down hill. So when I tracked down his long drives I had the help of gravity. The sweat was dripping from my face, the bugs were all around and I was flying! Oh, did I ever love that!!

As good as Lenny was at softball, I think his best game was paddleball. I can not remember EVER having beaten him. Of course I hope this is only due to a failure of my memory...though I must admit it's not like me to forget many successes!

Lenny was a smart player, he took good position on the court, he could hit the ball hard with either hand and he could place it expertly. He chose a very good partner who was also smart and complimented him well. And the two of them shared another characteristic in common...they were both SO BIG!

The key to getting good position in paddleball is to get in front of your opponent and close to the wall. From that position you can reach their killer shots more readily and place your own shots more effectively. But getting in front of Lenny and his partner Sol was SO difficult. They were so wide and bulky that I'd practically have to run off the court to get around them and, in this fast moving game, there just wasn't enough time to do that. So I played practically the entire match behind Lenny...from where I could barely see the wall, let alone the ball!

But these troubles disappeared one summer when Lenny and I were paired in the Men's Paddleball Tournament. We swept away all our opponents without any trouble. The finals was an absolute route. It was just another championship trophy that Lenny helped put in my hands!

To think there was a time that I viewed a 40 year old as, well, old. Now I think of them as young! Whatever our relative ages, though, Lenny was a great athlete and a wonderful teammate and partner.

Championships have been a lot tougher to come by without this old cleanup hitter.