THE RUNNING FROM THE BULLS

The guys from Kantner had been invited to go to Stoystown to play baseball on a real diamond, the one used by the Stoystown Pioneers. We didn’t have enough for a full team, but that was understood. The teams would be decided when we got there. Two captains would be chosen, and they would choose the players for their teams. (Wasn’t it a thrill to be the first one picked and pretty disappointing to be the last one chosen. “We’ll take Joe, so you have to take Bill.”) We gathered our bats and balls and gloves and walked toward Stoystown, a mile away. There was an available shortcut that went through a field rather than by the road. After we had decided to take the shortcut, and after we had walked part way through the field, someone said, “Aren’t those bulls?”
The answer was, “No, I don’t think so.”
“They don’t look very happy, and they are watching us. I think we should get out of the field.”
We all noticed by then that the cattle that turned out to be bulls had lined up and were looking our way.
“Run!” and we did. I didn’t know a person could get his body parallel to the ground a foot or so off the ground and slide it through the wires of a barbed wire fence without getting stuck, but we all did. We all made it through unscathed, but someone had dropped a bat in the field. We couldn’t let the bat in the field. Someone had to go get it. Fortunately, the bulls looked us over, decided we were no danger, and wandered off. Someone, I don’t remember who, so I guess it wasn’t me, sneaked back into the field, picked up the bat and ran for the fence. He made it because by this time, the bulls didn’t care, but someone did.
A truck stopped by the road and a man yelled, “Quit chasing my bulls!” We didn’t say a word. I tend to think the man in the truck had a good laugh at our expense and thought he would rub it in.
We did get to Stoystown and played the game. The game itself holds no particular memories for me, but the Running from the Bulls will always be part of what I remember.
The baseball field in Stoystown, while a real baseball diamond, did have several idiosyncracies. Because a street ran less than twenty feet from home plate, the backstop was unusual. It had three sides and a top. The bottom four feet was wood all the way around, and the remaining distance to the top was wire mesh, and the top was also wire mesh. A pass ball or wild pitch was likely to wind up in front of the plate in fair territory or under the feet of the umpire, the catcher, or the batter. No catcher ever caught a pop up on the Stoystown baseball diamond.
In right field there was a hill, rather steep, that flattened out after about an eight-foot climb. On top of the hill was a playground with swings and sliding boards. The right field hill was far enough away to seldom come into play when we played, but the right fielder during the Stoystown Pioneer games had to be part mountain goat. The hill extended to deep center field and got farther away from home plate as it went toward center field. The right field fence was on top of the hill beyond the slides and swings. The fence in center field was a low stone wall that could be jumped, but few balls were hit that far. There was no fence in left field, so any ball that got beyond the leftfielder had to be chased down beyond the edges of the field into the weeds and trees. Of course, by the time he got the ball, the batter had rounded third and was well on his way home.
In later years, after the Stoystown Pioneers folded, a fence was put up around the field at a distance appropriate to little league. I don’t think we ever had an official Little League, but the men of the area did organize all the kids into teams, and we played a series of games on the Stoystown ball diamond each summer. It was a lot of fun, but we still played ball other days at the Kantner school ground. It gave us good practice for our games in Stoystown. If you could field a ground ball in Kantner, the Stoystown infield was a breeze, and if you could keep your footing in the “shale” of the Kantner outfield, roaming the wide open spaces of the Stoystown diamond was a cinch. Of course, right field was NOT out of bounds in Stoystown.