MY MEMORIES

Charles Glenn Petersen

Sports (continued)

As an aside I was told many years later that Ronald Reagan (our future president) did the same thing when he worked at WHO out of Des Moines, Iowa. I am told that when he was required to give a station break it was long and elaborate, something like, 'This is radio station whose call sign is WHO, we are broadcasting out of our studios in Des Moines, Iowa with a power of 50 thousand watts on a clear channel on your dial at a frequency one thousand and forty kilocycles'. After being told repeatedly to shorten it, he did try several shorter and shorter versions. Finally, the owner told him there is only one WHO, it is at only one place on the dial and there is only one Des Moines in the world. So it became '1040 WHO Des Moines' and then just 'WHO Des Moines'.

Things did change for me my Sophomore year. I made the baseball team but sat on the bench for several games until one day the starting pitcher wasn't doing so well and the coach put me in. He found out very quickly that I could actually pitch well and from then on I was in the starting rotation. I was also one of the two starting pitchers during Junior Legion Baseball the summer between the Sophomore and Junior year. I couldn't throw very fast, in fact I had heard jokes about my fastball being so slow that batters could see the seams on the ball as it was coming toward the plate. However, I could throw strikes and I could throw a curve ball. Throwing strikes is a problem many young pitchers have. I discovered that throwing the ball over the plate was the most important thing. Let them swing at it and maybe even hit it. With a good defense a one pitch fly out or ground out was a lot easier than a 10 pitch strike out. However, a strike out was a good confidence builder and great for the ego; it made you feel you were better than the batter.

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