Published: July 06, 2008 12:33 am         

The door to a friend’s house is never closed

We talked here on Mothers Day about how much we love all of the moms in the old neighborhood who not only allowed our love for baseball to grow, but encouraged it by not allowing us in the house during the summer unless it was to eat dinner or come out of an electrical storm. On Friday, we lost perhaps the most important baseball mom in the neighborhood when Ruth Conley passed away after a tremendously courageous battle with cancer.

I say Mrs. Conley was the most important baseball mom because she was the mother of the very best baseball player in the neighborhood: James Conley, the fireballing right-hander, who could pick ’em with anybody at third base, and who seemingly could hit the ball as far as his boyhood baseball hero Frank Howard.

James, who died on July 8, 1973 at the age of 14, was probably the best baseball player I ever saw, and I say that not because he was the nicest guy I ever knew, or because he was the best friend to everybody in the neighborhood — child and adult alike. I say it because he was the best baseball player I ever saw — or at least played with.

Whenever I see the movie “The Natural” and it comes to the part when Roy Hobbs is pitching to the Whammer at the fair I think of James, particularly at the part when Hobbs throws his first fastball and the sportswriter Max Mercy, who is catching, has to throw his glove down because the velocity of the pitch hurts his hand so much.

I can’t tell you how many times that happened to me whenever I caught James, whether we were playing for the Dapper Dan Reds or simply playing pitcher-catcher in the field behind my house. Nor can I tell you how many times it made James laugh to see my red hand come flying out of that catcher’s mitt. But it didn’t prevent him from throwing the next pitch even harder. He had to get that arm ready, because there was no doubt in either of our minds he was going to pitch in the big leagues, and I will be convinced to my final day that he would have made it to the big leagues.

I wouldn’t say Mrs. Conley understood baseball at that time, nor would I say she even liked it, even though her husband Jim was probably the most learned baseball fan I have ever known. She reminded me a lot of Lou Gehrig’s mother in “Pride of the Yankees.” When it came to James playing baseball, she tolerated it, not because she was opposed to him playing, but because she worked during the day at Christopher’s Photo Lab across the street from her house, and the only time she got to see James during the day was on her lunch hour, which happened to coincide with the third or fourth inning of our baseball game.

We played a lot of interrupted games during the summer because we had to have James, and James always had to run home “to see Mama.” Then when he came back to the field an hour or so later we would resume. And the best part of his return was he was always carrying an umbrella with him, because Mrs. Conley did not want him to catch pneumonia again if it started to rain.

I don’t know how many umbrellas were purchased by the Conley family in those days, but I know an awful lot of them were left hanging on the mailbox on our garage through the course of the years, whether James was stopping by to play ball or was on his way to school.

The door to Mrs. Conley’s house, though, was always open to everybody. She was the most caring, loving and generous person so many of us have ever known. She was also the strongest and the most courageous. Her spirit, her will and her deep faith carried her through horrible illnesses she would survive until Friday. But she also experienced so much personal tragedy and heartbreak, that I have no idea how she not only endured them but grew from them and made those around her even stronger because of them. She shepherded her family through the deaths of her husband, two of her children and three of her brothers, and somehow brought us all closer together through them. She is one of the most extraordinary people I have ever known.

She fought so valiantly through so many illnesses that my mother began calling her The Comeback Kid, and I’ll always remember how many times she made it clear that everybody was welcome to come back to her home anytime for a visit. She took care of us from the time we were small children and, along with our own mothers, we couldn’t have been in better hands. I can’t tell you how many baseball games we kept score to in her living room, nor can I tell you how many times I heard her say, “And shut that door behind you! I don’t need flies,” whenever we’d take a break and run next door for some of Mrs. Ruppenkamp’s world famous root beer.

They are gentle and loving memories we will carry for the rest of our lives, because one of our baseball moms, Ruth Conley, was always so gentle and loving in carrying us.

Mike Burke is sports editor of the Cumberland Times-News. Write to him at mburke@times-news.com.