When I was 15, my life passion switched from baseball to girls. To this day, I don’t know if it was a natural evolution or if it was because my favorite players, Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, were limping to the end of their careers and my favorite franchise, the Yankees, had been sold and were soon destined for last place.

My new passion quickly settled on one girl, Bethani. But it took almost the entire first year of high school for us to get together. And we got together only because she finally got tired of waiting for me.

We first had met in 9^th grade when she went to a crosstown junior high and was dating some guy that I had met while playing Little League baseball. I would see them up at the Center sharing an ice cream cone (raspberry sherbet for her).

I was the only kid in West Hartford wearing a beret at the time and her boy friend would always give me a hard time about it. I would, of course, let him try my beret on and endure a predictable ribbing from him so I could steal glances at her.

I thought she was a doll. I couldn’t breathe, think straight or say anything resembling a complete sentence when I was near her. Yet whenever I would go to the Center, I hoped to see them, even if I had to listen to his witless teasing.

The next year, when we were sophomores, they split up when he went to the other high school in town and she wound up in mine.But it was high school, a bigger building with more students, and it took time for us to find each other.

That’s where Mr. Riemer and his speech class came in. I was enrolled in a 7^th period speech class with a bunch of the most popular seniors. I didn’t like it in college when I got in a class with a bunch of older kids – but in high school, it was worse. The difference in age, brainpower and their ability to shave were even greater.

My mother signed me up for the class partly to overcome my shyness. I may have been the social director for my group of friends, but she long remembered and often told the story about my first effort in front of an audience.

I had come out to recite a sentence or two at a Thanksgiving pageant in kindergarten.  I promptly turned my back to all those staring eyes in the audience. Not seeing them, I felt more comfortable and delivered my lines flawlessly.

Still, she signed me up for the class and that was also because of the teacher, Mr. Riemer. My big sister, Carol, had had him and thought he was, in her words, dreamy. Little did we know the shocking fact – in 1967 – that he was gay. And two years later he would be found dead under mysterious circumstances in New York City at the age of 36. But for me, his class was one of those classes that was life changing.

Even though I was only a sophomore, the seniors treated me like one of them. A lot of these kids – to me, they looked like adults who could smoke, drink and go off to Viet Nam at any moment – had gone to school with my brother and knew he was away at reform school. At first it was as if I was their kid brother (after all, I was Page’s kid brother): they were going to pay attention when I spoke and they were going to laugh when I tried to be funny.

Mr. Riemer joined in, not out of any loyalty to Page, but because he quickly decided I had a gift for speaking. He began calling me “the voice.” I hadn’t been an academic star since the second grade. And as I discovered the thrill of speaking successfully in front of this audience, they soon weren’t paying attention to support Page’s brother; they were paying attention because they wanted to hear what I had to say. And I discovered I could make them laugh.

These popular seniors, the in-crowd, would talk to me before and after class and, much more importantly socially, in the hallways between classes where everyone could see us. Even Debbie Dunn, the acknowledged prettiest girl in the school. I bypassed the sophomore and junior social awkwardness.

Mr. Riemer would use me as an example in class and every once in awhile he would mention this girl in his 6^th period class and how good she was. And he kept mentioning her. Then he got the idea to play matchmaker.

It wasn’t typical teacher behavior, but then, Mr. Riemer wasn’t a typical teacher. He started announcing to the class that I should meet this girl from his 6^th period class as she was cute, smart and also a good speaker. And like me, a sophomore.

This attempted matchmaking by Mr. Riemer went on for several weeks. I was feeling the pressure of my classmates who joined in, especially the senior girls, so I decided to see who this girl was before I agreed to make a move.

 So one day in late fall, I beat it out of my 6^th period class the instant the bell began to ring and sped down two hallways and up a flight of stairs without stopping at my locker or engaging in idle chitchat with my friends during the 3-minute passing period. I got to Mr. Riemer’s classroom just in time to see the students from the previous period leaving and there she was: the girl who liked raspberry sherbet cones. Bethani.

Mr. Riemer had apparently been saying the same stuff in her class about me and putting the pressure on her to meet up with me. She was a lot smarter than I was and had figured out whom he was talking about.  We locked eyes, there was a pause and then smiles. She knew why I was arriving at class early. We both knew then that we’d be going out.

She probably thought it would be sooner than later. But it would take several months for that to happen. Because I am slow about these things.

We started talking whenever we ran in to each other in the halls. These were meetings I had to engineer. You get into patterns in those 3-minute passing periods. But, once there was a reason, like when a girl with long, reddish brown hair and a sly smile liked you better than any other guy at school, you changed your routine, no matter how far off track it took you. Because at 15 years old, even a five second glance seemed worth the effort and if you added up all those five second glances during the day, well, that could be close to a minute spent with the person you dreamed of at night. 

At the end of the fall semester, Mr. Riemer, who also taught drama, was working on the Christmas Concert and wanted me to accompany the orchestra by reading passages of the Bible. He was so enthusiastic and encouraging about what he saw as my talent that, despite my public shyness, I had to say yes.

It was the first “job” with my voice. Bethani found me up in the balcony after I finished to say what a great job I’d done and she sat with me while we watched the rest of the concert. Almost like a date.

Of course, as would prove to be a pattern, I didn’t do anything about it. The two-week Christmas break came and went and I didn’t call her. Oh, I went down to the basement and paced around the phone we kids used when we didn’t want our parents to hear us. I even picked up the receiver a few times and imagined how a conversation might go if her mom or dad answered. But in my imagination, and reality, I never got through to her.

Then the spring semester started and any momentum on the romantic front was stalled by my penchant for thinking, not acting. I was sure she liked someone else. I could imagine impediments with the best of them. Maybe she still liked that dope who kept teasing me about my beret and they were getting back together. Even though I was now cool with the seniors, I was sure she was too pretty and too smart to want to go out with me.

I made a million excuses.

We continued to run into each other in the hallways as I still hustled between classes to see her. But our relationship, if it could be called that, was going nowhere as the school year neared the end. Then, some five months after I began my very subtle courtship by altering my pattern of walking the hallways so I could see her, it finally happened.

It was the middle of May and the big, end-of-the-year dance was coming up. I figured I had better do something or school would be over and any imagined progress I had made in our relationship during the year would be lost. But I was still too chicken to ask her to the dance. If I had put the effort into my school work that I put into worrying about asking Bethani out, I probably would have gotten in to Yale.

My biggest and best excuse was that I had too much going on to go to the dance. We had an away JV baseball game right after school on the day of the dance. And it wasn’t across town or in the next suburb. It was a half hour bus ride away, in Manchester. And after the game, I was scheduled to work at Lincoln Dairy, until 9. And the dance ended at 11.

That gave me just 2 hours after the store closed to clean the counters, wash the dishes, mop the floors, dress myself up, calm down, get to the dance, find Bethani and win her heart. A lot to do. Not a lot of time. 

Whenever I’d work myself into a state of nerves about calling her and finding the words to ask her out, I’d calm down by telling myself that I was excused from asking because I was too busy.

Unbeknownst to me, Bethani had begun to worry that I would never call. She was a smart girl, vying to be first in our class, and my months of inaction pushed her to action. She told a friend to tell me that she liked me, hoping to light a fire.

Well, it wasn’t a fire, but it warmed me up a bit. In one of our brief encounters in the hallway late in the week, I asked if she was going to the dance. She said yes, and I told her I wanted to go but I had obligations until 9 at the earliest, but could maybe dance with her after that. She said that would work in such a way that it was obvious she would wait for me.

The day of the dance was busy. Only perfect timing allowed me to fulfill my scheduled obligations.

At the game, our starting pitcher got in trouble early. The coach, having used all his other pitchers earlier in the week, was out of his reliable pitching options, so in the second inning, after scanning the bench up and down twice, hoping a Bob Gibson might suddenly appear, he saw his only option: me.

As much as I loved baseball, I knew, just as the coach knew, that I was not a very good player. And it’s no wonder that the coach took until the umpire was yelling at him about a delay of game to make his decision. Reluctantly, he put me in.

To his surprise and mine, I had the game of my life. I didn’t have a fastball, curve or slider. I only had two pitches: balls and strikes. And on this day, I was able to throw strikes. And every time they hit one of those strikes – hard – it was right at one of our fielders.

We rallied and were up by one run, but by the bottom of the final inning, I had run out of gas. The bases were loaded with 2 outs and I had a 2-2 count on the batter. I did not want to go to 3-2 because then there would be great pressure not to walk the guy. So I just aimed a ball right down the middle of the plate and the batter crushed it.

I couldn’t see it, but I heard it whiz by my head, headed for center field, destined to win the game for them. But Joe Morley, who was playing 2B, took two steps to his right and dove as far as he could, stretching from  5’ 10” to  6’ 5” and making a diving stop and a great throw and the game was over. We’d won.

On the way home, the guys attributed my success to the fact that I threw the ball so slow, the batters fell asleep before it got to the plate. I laughed. Even at an age where there are few limitations on your dreams, I had no illusions of a great athletic career. I knew I was destined to be third string.

We got back to town, I showered as quickly as I could, and raced over to Lincoln Dairy just in time for the dinner rush hour. It was a busy Friday night and the time flew by so I didn’t have too much time to be nervous about the dance and Bethani. As the crowds thinned out and the clock moved toward nine, I began to tell myself that maybe it was too late and I probably shouldn’t even bother going. That calmed my nerves.

But Page knew I might be chickening out and he told me to change out of my uniform and get over to the dance. He would clean up and clock me out. He wouldn’t hear any excuses. Page always had several girlfriends and he thought I needed one, too, so he hustled me out the back door.

The Dairy was just 5 minutes away from the school so once I was out of Page’s sight, I slowed way down, trying to delay something I really wanted. But even with my delaying tactics, I was soon approaching the front of the school. Some of my friends were outside smoking.

Everybody seemed to know that Bethani and I were to get together that night. And even though I wasn’t the big girl magnet that guys were jealous of, I was still in a lot better shape in that regard than some of my friends. One guy, who also liked Bethani and was on her IQ level and would go on to an Ivy League school but was incredibly awkward socially, tried to psych me out.

“You should see who Bethani is dancing with,” Sam said.

Immediately, I was deflated. She was going to start going out with someone tonight and since I was late, she already picked her guy. She wouldn’t stay on the shelf too long and because of my game and work, she was taken.

But one of my other friends scowled at Sam for his lame attempt. 

“She’s dancing with Locker,” Jeff said.

I felt relief. Joe Locker was a senior, the hulking star fullback. He had been friends with my brother and I helped him in speech class. He knew what was up that night and he was dancing with Bethani so no one else would dare move in until I got there.

So I went in and stayed in the shadows for as long as I could, scanning the crowd and then the dance floor, looking for her. I finally saw her. It was a moment when romance novels talk about hearts fluttering. I guess that’s what was happening because it wasn’t butterflies in my stomach. It was higher. And I was having trouble breathing. There was a numbness in my head and a buzzing sound in my ears. I began to question why I had wanted this and how I could get out of there without being seen. 

Suddenly Bethani appeared at my side, grabbed my hand and said hi and that she’d been wondering when I’d show up. Did I just get there? Thankfully, she did most of the talking.

We talked while the band took a break and it was different than the fun conversations that we’d had in the hallways all year. Those had flowed easily and we didn’t have to worry about what to say. After all, then we only had a few seconds each time we saw each other. Now we had a couple of hours to spend and there was actually something at stake.

The band started playing again and I didn’t move.  Didn’t talk and still couldn’t breathe. Some senior came up and asked Bethani to dance, but she said thanks, but no, Alan and I are dancing and she dragged me out onto the dance floor. And we danced the rest of the night and we held hands until her dad came to pick her up.

Everything seemed to go right on May 15, 1967. That summer became known around the country as The Summer of Love … and for me, it was off to a great start.

Next week: Chapter 11: Summer Doesn’t Last Forever