The Legend of Eddie Bubble Gum

There are a handful of moments every now and again that trigger some deep, long forgotten sense memory in me. Once in a while, when the wind is just right, a neighbor will light up his barbeque and just a whiff of the coals will transport me back to a summer evening cooking out on the grill in our backyard. Just the right smell of just the right kind of leather sparks visions of long hours spent patrolling the little league outfield with my glove to my face to smell the greatest smell on Earth – leather and baseball dirt. Music can do it too. The opening chords of Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong has me longing for my days in the college dorms, and while I’ve probably only heard it two or three times in the last fifteen years, just a note or two of Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam’s Lost in Emotion instantly sends me back to 1987, so much so that I’d swear that I can smell the fresh paint my dad and I spent that entire summer coating our new house with. A nice rain, and the smell of worms, helps me recall family fishing trips. Overripe tomatoes, for some reason, give me mental images of these big fat green hairless caterpillars that roamed the fields around my neighborhood – we must have found them on backyard tomato plants at some point, because cutting into an even slightly mushy tomato makes me wince, as a picture of these alieny green bugs that emitted some sort of funky stank from their heads while little red antennae popped out. While these images that stem from smells and sounds are strong, nothing triggers sense memory for me quite like food.

When I start to think of specific foods from my childhood, memories flood my brain. Just the mention of Fun Dip has me salivating, and even though it’s been two decades since I’ve had any, I could just about taste the poof of candy powder that erupts from the pouch when you tear into a packet of Fun Dip as I typed those words. I can smell the artificial grape and strawberry chemical compounds that made Fun Dip so darn fun, and I can feel the grainy white stick slide across my tongue right now. What a disgusting concept that product was. While thoughts of Fun Dip have me planning a lunch hour trip to the local 7-11 to search for my old friend (or at the very least, snatch up a few packets of Smarties and Sweet Tarts that I can pound the crap out of with my stapler until I have my own homemade Fun Dip), that’s not even the food that conjures up the strongest memories. For some reason, the top of my list is cluttered with a variety of tube shaped foods – hot dogs, the Super Rope licorice, Freeze Pops, Cow Tails, and beef jerky all hold a special place in the pantry of my mind, but the Grandpappy of edible memory triggers is Big Daddy Bubble Gum.

I honestly don’t know if they make this anymore. I don’t know if it was ever even widely available. I don’t know if it came from a crazed bubblegum fanatic who had a mini-gum factory in his basement hidden somewhere in the maze of cul de sacs that is suburbia. The only place I ever saw Big Daddy Bubble Gum for sale was the concession stands of the little league baseball fields in my neighborhood.

For the uninitiated, Big Daddy Bubble Gum was indeed the big daddy of all bubblegum, not a stick like Big Red, or a hunk like Bubblicious, or a brick like Bazooka Joe, or a ball like you might chip your tooth on, or shredded like Big League Chew, or a nugget o’ gum like a Chicklet – Big Daddy was a rod of gum. As pornographic as this entire paragraph is going to come across, we’re talking about a nine inch gum pipe. I don’t remember which is a diameter and which is a circumference and what you multiply pi by to get the body mass index of a Big Daddy, but I’d have to guess that it was about as big around as one of those fatty pencils that they make you use in kindergarten, only it was about twice as long. Packaged in a slick plastic sheath that you had to tear open with your teeth, Big Daddy was coated in a strange white powder that was more flour than sugar, but may just have been cocaine’s little brother for all the addictive properties a rod o’ Big Daddy had. I don’t recall all the flavors they made, only that my preferred Big Daddy came in a bright blue wrapping that gets me excited just thinking about it.

I can distinctly recall sprinting to the concessions after a hard fought little league battle just to get my little mitts on another Big Daddy. Sitting here right now, twenty-five years after the fact, I can feel the smooth plastic, the soft gum inside, and the struggle I always had to tear into the wrapper. I can smell the chemically enhanced fruity flavors burst out of the plastic. I can just about feel the weird white powder on my fingers and the not-quite-as-soft-as-it-looks gum in my mouth. I can taste the grapey, bubble gummy, and mystery fruit flavored goodness right now. It makes my jaw hurt, my jaw which is probably twice the size as it was back in the day, just to think about the massive entire-pack-of-Bubble-Yum sized wad of goo I’d chomp on for seven innings at a time. Then I start to remember my neighbor and teammate Eddie Mayer. At one game little Eddie shoved an entire log of Big Daddy into his yap before taking the mound. He pitched great, prompted Coach Lakaitis to dub him “Eddie Bubble Gum.” Eddie liked the nickname so much, that despite the possibility of lockjaw (or, considering the Eddie to gum mass ratio, an entire locked head) he began a pregame ritual during which he would shove three or four Big Daddy Bubble Gums into his mouth.

Unbelievably, it helped. Eddie went from the worst player on the team to our top pitcher in the course of one foot long gum branch. His fastball had more pop. His curveball was suddenly wicked. He change-up changed so much that it changed, went back to being what it was initially, then changed again. It was like the bubble gum had empowered his arm to make the ball miss bats. Eddie Bubble Gum became a folk hero of sorts after he threw three straight no-hitters. There was an article about him in the local paper. There were kids asking for his autograph. There was a teammate who wrote an Eddie Bubble Gum song that helped the legend grow. Kids on other teams would breathe a sigh of relief on Eddie’s off days. Coaches would resign themselves to a loss. Opponents would see striking out against Bubble Gum as a badge of honor – something they would tell their grandkids about the day Eddie Bubble Gum was elected to the Hall of Fame.

Eddie’s new found success was part luck and part the power of positive thinking and part a psychological advantage – at first. Soon though, it inspired him, motivated him, pushed him. In no time Eddie Bubble Gum was watching major leaguers, studying their pitching delivery. He was reading books, trying to find any tips he could. And, he was practicing, practicing, practicing. He threw each and every day. Being his next door neighbor, I was suddenly elected catcher, so that I could work with him at home before and after practice. It was inspiring to see his dedication, but disgusting to see the little pink sugar crusties form on the corners of his mouth and the bubble gum juice erupt from his cheeks as he grunted with each fastball he threw.

Soon his nice white uniform was streaked with spitty, fruity globs of pink, blue, and green. This lasted most of a season, until Eddie’s mom made it to a game. You see, she’d been home most of this time looking after a newborn baby brother (who several coaches had already called dibs on), then it stopped real quick. The legend of Eddie Bubble Gum died because Mrs. Bubble had finally figured out what her son was doing that was making laundry day such a chore. No more gum, that was the decree from above. At first Eddie resisted, sneaking smaller wads (Jupiter would have been a smaller wad) into his cheek before gametime, but mom found him out. Eddie Bubble Gum was no more.

Opponents, sure that the gum was the source of Eddie’s dominance, were suddenly confident that they could hit him. Teammates began to question his ability. Coaches grumbled about banning mom from the ballpark. Eddie doubted himself.

The first game he started after the bubble gum ban was imposed was a disaster. He hit the first batter, walked two more, gave up a three run triple, and felt a little pop in his shoulder. Coach pulled him. He pitched again a few days later and was back to domination, striking out the first ten kids he faced. He kept it up, pitching great time after time all the way through high school and into college, but it wasn’t the same. He was just Eddie, and later just Ed. He wasn’t a legend anymore. He wasn’t a folk hero. He wasn’t Eddie Bubble Gum. In fact, it wasn’t long before kids went back to calling him by his old nickname – an unfortunate label inflicted upon him due to a strange set of allergies that left him with a runny nose all year round – Eddie Bubble Gum went back to being known as “Booger Ed.”

Until something triggered the memory of that gum, I’d forgotten about Eddie. I moved out of that neighborhood a few years after that baseball season and over time we fell out of touch. What a fun summer that was. What a fantastic baseball season. What a fastball. What a memory. What a bubble gum.

To get Eddie Bubblegum into the Hall of Fame, vote here.