Ron Caler: Ace of the Register team

Ronnie Caler died this week, and truth be known, his death probably didn’t register with most folks outside of family and a knot of friends.
That’s a shame. But, his passing did have an effect on me.
Ronnie played baseball for the Register PeeWee League team back in the 1960s, when I was its coach. He played second base most of the time, partly because he had a pretty good glove and also because he didn’t have a strong throwing arm.
Notable was a post-season tournament. I don’t recall the circumstances that prompted it, but I decided to have Ronnie pitch in the championship game, maybe because he could lob ball after ball over the heart of the plate. His pitches would reach an apex of six or eight feet, twice as high as he was tall, about half way to the plate and than settle into the strike zone. Opposing batters either had trouble waiting on the pitches to arrive or flayed away without contact on the downward spin of the ball.
His pitches reminded me of slow-pitch softball, where pitchers try to get as much altitude as possible with as little of a strike zone as possible.
I don’t remember if Ronnie went on to play sports while he was growing up. In recent years I’ve noticed him around town; I regret not having made a point to stop to talk, a failing that we blame on being too busy or something else just as frail. My rationale was he probably wouldn’t have remembered me.
Another kid I’ll always remember is Mike Blevins.
Mikey, as I called him, was quick as the dickens and loved to play baseball. Often on game days I’d drive by the old Bassett diamond, where PeeWee and Little League games were played then, and he would be in full uniform sitting in the bleachers, waiting for game time that often was two or three hours hence.
Again, I don’t know if Mike ever played any sports in high school, but he certainly had hintings of talent including speed and quickness.
I bumped into Mike several years ago at Foodtown, which gives a time frame. With the smile I remembered from his youth, he had to tell about still having a newspaper clipping reporting the time he hit a home run.
It’s times like that do the soul good. Coaching is not a thankless task, but can be a most rewarding pasttime.