… Jerry McCaffrey

 

While the show was incredibly accurate in most instances, it did miss one crucial component of life back in those days — the twentysomething dad with younger kids, who played ball with the neighborhood kids.

 

In our neighborhood, that guy was Jerry McCaffrey.

 

When the McCaffreys moved into the neighborhood, Jerry was in his late 20s and his boys hadn’t yet reached kindergarten age while my buddies and I were just entering double-digit ages. We didn’t realize it as they were unloading the moving vans, but we had picked up another player and "prospects" for games in the future. Jerry "joined in" almost immediately, packing us in his car for pickup baseball games at the local field and becoming the "automatic" quarterback for both teams in touch and tackle football games in the backyard and out in the street. We also jumped in his car to tag along for Jerry’s softball and touch football games in the local adult leagues. We were batboys and ballboys, helping out in any way we could or were allowed to, absolutely thrilled to be in the presence of "adults" who still played sports. We vowed that when we got "old" and were finished playing professionally, of course, we would play in these leagues, too. And we did play in these leagues and still do to this day, although we got there a little quicker than we thought we would by skipping out on the playing professionally part of the equation.

 

Jerry taught us how to fight off a blocker and how to make a block and he pitched to us and hit grounders and fly balls to us on a regular basis. One memorable summer, I helped him coach his oldest son in something called "Mite" baseball at the Shadyside Boys Club. This often meant going right from Saturday morning Pony League games to mite games in my uniform. I don’t remember much about the season, we won the championship, which was hardly important, but I remember feeling like an adult for the first time in my life. Jerry treated me like a coach, not just a neighborhood kid who helped pick up the bats and balls. He made me work with the kids, teaching them how to get in front of groundballs and the proper footwork for throwing to a base. And I felt like a coach.

 

Still, time passes, you get older, and life gets, well, different. We started to get interested in things like cars, music and girls. The pickup games, at least in the street and backyards, disappeared. Jerry started coaching his sons and their peers. We all kind of moved on, so to speak. We grew up I guess. Some of us went to college. Others went to work. We got married and we started our own families.

 

Years later, while working at a newspaper a reporter who had started at quarterback in college, asked me if I knew a guy named Jerry McCaffrey. I beamed and told him that I knew Jerry very well. "He was the best coach I ever had," the quarterback/reporter said. "He coached me in eighth grade. He had a way of making all of us feel like a part of the team. We all felt like we were involved and important."

 

A decade or so ago, Jerry’s company sponsored a softball team I played on with his son, Patrick. My son, Patrick, 5 at the time, was the batboy, but even though he got a team jersey he wasn’t real interested in picking up bat. Like most 5-year-olds, he chose to play on the swings, the slides or in the mud, instead of doing his "job." The McCaffreys, staunch union folks, often joked with me that my son was a "union" batboy for the team and he was just on a nine-inning "break."

 

Most visits to my parents over the years included a stop across the street at the McCaffreys with Patrick and my daughter, Patrick’s younger sister, Sarah, in tow just to say hello.

 

When I started coaching back in the mid 1990s, the quarterback/reporter’s words always rang in my head, "Make everyone feel like they’re a part of the team." In 2002-03, I was lucky enough to coach a Franklin Regional ice hockey team that made it all the way to the state semifinals. At the banquet that year, everyone spoke of the closeness of the team and how each player felt like they played a role in our success and, of course, they all did.

 

That very same spring, Jerry got sick. He had bravely battled cancer for a couple of years, but this time he was very sick. Our last visit together, however, was very similar in many ways to our other visits through the years of my "adulthood." Jerry asked Bonnie, his wife, to get "Jimmy" something to drink. Then he proceeded to tell me how proud he was of me and what a great job I did with the Franklin Regional team. "I wish I could have been there, but I kept up on your season in the newspaper. You did great." Then he asked me a ton of questions about the team, the players, the games/practices, how I motivated the group, etc. As sick as he was, all Jerry wanted to talk about was a hockey team I coached. Amazing, huh?

 

A week or so later, he passed away.

 

In his memory and to raise money to fight cancer, Jerry sons, Patrick, Keith and Michael, started a golf tournament in 2004. I’ve played in both Shamrock Opens.

 

This year, I also picked up some jewelry, and no, my foursome didn’t even come close to winning a "skills" prize. I’m not much for jewelry. I wear a wedding ring, a watch, and well, that’s pretty much it. In a box on my dresser there are chains and rings that seldom see the light of day.

 

At this year’s Shamrock Open, I purchased one of those blue bands that raise funds for cancer research. I haven’t taken it off since I bought it on Saturday, July 2, and I don’t plan on taking it off anytime soon. You see, it reminds me of a guy I wanted to be like when I grew up.

 

Every boy who grew up in the suburbs back then knew this guy, but in our neighborhood, his name was Jerry McCaffrey and he played a big part in helping a lot of us grow up during our "Wonder Years."

The "Wonder Years" in many ways, was a realistic portrait of American suburban life for kids growing up in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

 

I know. I lived that life.

 

Like Kevin Arnold, on more than one occasion, I dropped back to pass just like Joe Willie Namath did, with shoulders stooped and shrugging and fired a touchdown pass to a suburban kid imitating Don Maynard complete with shirt sleeves sliced under the arm to facilitate oversized shoulder pads to win the "guaranteed" Super Bowl. Just like a 10-year-old Kevin at the time, I also was Tom Seaver in search of "The Perfect Game" in backyard wiffleball contests. We had woods complete with oversized rocks, and huge trees, ballfields, parks, a community swimming pool, nicknames for the fat kids as well as the scary old folks who lived on our street and pickup games of all kinds from sunup to sundown in the summertime. And most of our "pressing" problems and dramatic issues were similar to the ones Kevin Arnold and Winnie Cooper dealt with on TV a dozen years ago or so.

From the Corridor 51 Column

By Jim Damp

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