BEYOND THE MARGIN By Joe Spear
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What I did on my summer vacation
’ve not written a summer vacation essay since I was in grade school, so I’ve got a lot of catching up to do – 50 summers’ worth. The back-to-school tradition was a good exercise to refresh our writing skills and remains today a worthwhile craft that has brought me some benefit. They say summers are for building memories that last longer than the all-too-short season itself. We remember things that bring smiles and mark milestones, like our first time away from home and our first encounter with law enforcement. So I’ll take a ballpark swing at making the narrative interesting or at least mildly amusing. The Twins played their first world series in my first summer before school started. At 4 years old, I started 14 • SEPTEMBER 2021 • MANKATO MAGAZINE
kindergarten a few weeks before my 5th birthday. I think the school administrators took pity on my mother who had seven children in 10 years. I remember sitting in the grass next to Dad who was in his lawn chair having a beer as we listened on the radio to the exploits of Harmon Killebrew, Jim Kaat, Mudcat Grant, Bobby Allison, Tony Oliva and Earl Battey. “Tony O” led the team with a .321 batting average that season and had 98 RBIs, while Killebrew blasted 25 home runs into the seats. Oliva won the American League batting titles in 1964, 1965 and 1971. After that, he began to see competition from Twins teammate Rod Carew who won it seven of the next 10 years. There’s a calmness and rhythm to a baseball game
