One of my earliest memories of my grandfather Sline was about baseball, specifically about our beloved Boston Red Sox. On hot and humid summer nights we’d listen to their game while sitting on the front porch. This is where the seed was planted for my love of baseball and later led to my discovery and sensemaking of a family secret.

My grampa was not a man of many words. Neither he, Gram, or other family members, ever mentioned that he had spent 11 years as a professional baseball pitcher in the early 1900s. After Grampa died, one of my favorite things to do as a child when I visited Gramma was to climb the back stairs to the attic where I found a box of old baseballs, each with hand writing on it. Gramma gave me permission to take one ball to play with after each visit. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized that the balls I let get waterlogged and eventually come apart from playing in the rain were ones that Grampa kept as mementos of different important games that he had won as a “spit ball” pitcher.

Oh how I wish I had known that the balls I ruined had some significant meaning to Grampa, and ultimately to me. Surprisingly, the balls seemed to have had no nostalgic meaning to our family. No one ever spoke of Grampa’s baseball career except to tell me that, “he was a ball player.” Our family’s seeming lack of knowledge about the details of Grampa’s baseball career remains a family secret to this day. I learned a little about his career from research I conducted on every team he pitched for from 1905 to 1915 but so much remains a mystery.

This is a picture of a 1912 baseball card of him with the Providence Grays of the AAA International League. It was the only year that cards were produced for minor league players.

Rick Sline, Ph.D., is a Professor Emeritus of Communication at Weber State University.