Great Hands, Bob! by Bob Kaufman

Google "great hands" and you'll quickly find a list of web links and an array of images depicting a variety of seemingly unrelated topics: physical massage, tattoos, potter's wheels, football, baseball and basketball players doing their thing, and even a hockey player picking his nose.  If "ball" is anywhere in the name of a sport, the successful players must have good hands. The superstars have great hands.

T-38 Flight Line, Williams AFB, Arizona, 1971

T-38 In the Overhead Traffic Pattern,
Williams AFB, Arizona, 1971

During my days in the cockpit, the best pilots were sometimes called "good sticks" referring to the stick we held in our right hand to control every movement of the aircraft. With throttles in our left hand and the stick in our right hand, it was also said of those who were the best pilots, usually with some envy, "he has great hands".  I was first in my class of 70 or so student pilots for most of our year in training. When our follow-on assignments came near the end of training, I had earned first choice. I graduated 4th in my class...but that's another story.

I had pretty good hands.

Capt. Bob Kaufman, Boomer Flight IP,
Williams AFB, Arizona 1974

On the other hand, there was "ham hands".  Walking through the hallway of the T-38 squadron building one day I observed a small crowd of student pilots listening to one of their comrades telling a "war" story about his heroics during the mission he had just completed. While performing a routine entry to the overhead traffic pattern - a maneuver that required a simple, level 60-degree bank turn to line up with the runway at an altitude of 1500 feet AGL (above ground level) at a comfortable 280 knots airspeed - this magnificent young airman somehow rolled his flying machine inverted (upside down), crossed through the final approach corridors of two active, parallel runways and almost "bought the farm" in a cotton field a few miles southeast of the runway.  Miraculously, ham hands recovered from his very unusual attitude, crossed back through the other traffic on his return to the prescribed pattern, and eventually landed safely and lived to recount his heroics to his fellow students in the snack bar. During his heroic narrative he used the phrase "great hands" in reference to his safe recovery.  Its a wonder how he didn't break his arm patting himself on the back. I was not his IP (instructor pilot) so I bit my tongue and walked away.  Discounting possible mechanical failure, only the worst of pilots could ever get such an unusual attitude in a perfectly good airplane. Nah, that’s too nice. I can’t imagine how even the worst stick could do it. This guy was awfully @#^$%* lucky! (Colorful military metaphor censored!)

So, there I was, in right field, Spring 1965, my junior year in high school playing for the PHS Tigers baseball team.  That was a few years after they had completed the new football field which is now called Coach Bob Wise Memorial Stadium.  The old football field would later become the baseball field, but at that time we did not have a suitable baseball field anywhere in town.  Instead, for home games we rode the bus to Graeagle and played on the gravel field surrounded by Tomahawk Trail, just up the hill from highway 89 in the middle of town. (Later I mention the "dugouts" at that field, but they were no more than telephone poles, laid horizontally on some footings, which we seldom used because, frankly, they hurt our butts!)

Portola Tigers High School Baseball Team, Spring 1965
Graeagle Baseball Field
1965 Pineneedle

Bunky Brown played center field.  He had the strongest arm of anyone in the county and his skill at the plate was everything you would want in a strong center fielder.  On the other hand, my ninety-eight pound weakling arm had improved just a little…very little, from Little League…but I had quick feet, good judgement, and quick responses so I was able to cover a lot of ground and run down some tough fly balls. I wanted to play center field but nobody was going to replace Bunky until he graduated. (I did make to center field in 1966!)

Mr. Cimaglia's Coach's Message in the 1965 Pineneedle said:  "The outfield was manned by Brown, Grant and Fisher".  They were all seniors.  But I must have done something right because coach also said: "The 1965 baseball season can be summarized in the score:  Portola 2, Lassen 0.  The Tigers beat Lassen in the last game of the year to knock the Grizzlies out of first place.  Stalwart pitcher Ed Cavaille performed masterfully on the mound.  Portola scored on consecutive hits by Nally, Kaufman, Hull, and Ed Cavaille."
(Mr. Cimaglia always called me "Coffee" or maybe it was "Kaufee". However you spell it, I really liked that.)

Coach Armando "Mando" Cimaglia's Message
1965 Pineneedle

Make a note of that.  It is in print for all to see.  I actually contributed to the most important game of
that year...but this story is about the Greenville game.  We were scalped by the Indians 14 - 7.

In one of the late innings, Greenville had two out and I think a couple of men on base.  Their batter hit a routine fly ball to shallow right field...and it would have been a routine catch not worthy of being mentioned ever again except that, belying my previous statement about good judgement, at first, I started moving to my left and back.  Then I realized the ball was going to drop well in front of me. Quickly I dug in with my left foot, changed course, and scrambled forward.  At the last instant, with both arms outstretched, I dove head-first onto the gravel, landing on my forearms, kicking up a cloud of dust like an Arizona monsoon.  I closed my glove a split second early and the ball landed on the crease between my thumb and fingers.  Because I was engulfed in that cloud of dust, absolutely no one at the field but me knows for sure what happened. However, the umpire, showing somewhat uncharacteristic good judgement, (something umpires seldom do when you're losing), ruled it was an out.

I trotted toward our "dugout" on the third base side, passing the first base dugout where the Indians were on the warpath, whooping and hollering and complaining they had been cheated out of a few more runs...as if 14 to 7 wasn’t enough of a massacre. You would have thought the game was on the line by their reaction.  All the Tigers had to say was "Great hands, Bob!" (A few might have said “great catch”, but that wouldn’t fit the story, so I’ll pretend I’m right.)

Truthfully, it was a catch.  The ball never hit the ground.  Instant replay would not have overturned that call. Just like that ball stuck in the crease of my glove, that mental image of the ball resting there has stuck in my memory for more than fifty years!

The next day in Mr. Rowden's math class, I sat with my elbows on the desk and both hands in the air, like a doctor waiting for his assistant to put on his surgical gloves, to keep my scarred and scabbed forearms off the desk.  Oblivious to my heroic play the previous day he said something totally in character like: "What happened?  Did you trip going down the stairs?"  Didn't he know he was in the presence of a superstar with great hands?

I don’t know if I had a girlfriend at the time.  I hardly did, ever, so probably not.  But if I did, she would have been impressed even if Mr. Rowden wasn’t.  And she would not have known that I was a hero, basking in my fifteen seconds of fame, only because I misjudged a routine fly ball...and I certainly wasn’t about to admit it!