ROANOKE TIMES Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times DATE: Thursday, April 18, 1996 TAG: 9604180007 SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO COLUMN: Beth Macy SOURCE: BETH MACY
Jerry Overstreet can tell you - without pausing - the menu for every lunch served in the Roanoke City Schools from 1963 to present.
Tell him your birthday is May 30, 1964, and he says immediately: ``A Saturday.''
His own birthday? Dec. 31, 1957, at precisely 12:02 p.m. ``A Tuesday.''
Opening day of baseball season came early this year, on March 31, but for Jerry Overstreet, it's never early enough.
For most of us, the start of baseball season triggers memories of sandlot slides and scabby knees, the smell of hot dogs and popcorn, the sound of Red Barber's voice on Friday-morning radio - the community of fans, the camellias, the catbird seat.
For Jerry, the joy lies not in the beauty of a line drive hammered up the middle, but in the numbers.
He could give you a rundown of the '96 season - which teams are playing where, on what dates - before it even began.
He can tell you the history of the World Series - who won, and what the score was - since its inception in 1903.
``Pittsburgh beat Boston 5 to 3 the first year,'' he says, in a best-out-of-nine series.
And in 1904? ``Canceled ... due to protest ... The New York Giants thought they were too good to play the Boston Pilgrims.''
``He's right,'' says Kim Clark, owner of GreenFields baseball-accessory shop on the Roanoke City Market, where Jerry hangs out most afternoons after his shift at Goodwill Industries Tinker Mountain Inc. ``He's always right.
``He's incredible with numbers - any numbers - but he especially likes baseball because the numbers are constant,'' Clark says. ``You can compare numbers today to numbers from 25 years ago.
``He can even tell you what the attendance was from the box scores - the stuff most people never read.''
He's what's called a ``calendar calculator,'' with some of the characteristics of a savant. His gifts are similar to those of the Dustin Hoffman character in the movie ``Rain Man,'' his mother says, though she thought the character's gifts were overblown.
Jerry's disability struck at age 3 with back-to-back bouts of chicken pox and measles, the high fevers damaging his brain. His gift with numbers emerged soon after.
``He would always remember the dates of things the other kids had done - that his sister started school on this date five years ago, or his brother had gone to a party on this date two years ago,'' Gladys Overstreet recalls.
She's been told that her 38-year-old son might have become a math genius were it not for the brain damage. ``But you can't be sure of that.''
What you can be sure of is his dedication to the scores, stats and mental accounting of America's No. 1 pastime. When the players' strike put an end to the 1994 season, Jerry devised a way to play the year out in his own home.
He made up his own game and threw dice to represent every player's turn at bat. ``I played the schedule one day at a time, every game out,'' he says. ``It took me two or three hours every night.''
In Jerry's fantasy league, the fans didn't emerge as the losers, as they did in real life: Seattle did. In Jerry's version of the World Series, San Francisco beat the Mariners 4-2.
Although he favors scores and dates over individual players and teams, Jerry's favorites have always been the Oakland A's - especially the early-'70s teams that featured pitching greats Vida Blue and Rollie Fingers.
As he sees it, the two most important events in baseball were when Hank Aaron hit his 715th homer in 1974 (though he points out that Sadahara Oh, a Japanese league player, beat Hank's record in 1977); and when Cal Ripken Jr. played his 2,131st consecutive game last year, breaking Lou Gehrig's record.
``I like Cal because he makes history every day,'' Jerry says. ``Most players have good days and bad days - and that's average. But Cal's not average.''
Jerry likes to watch the games when they're on TV. He listens to them on radio when they're not. If a West Coast game is being televised late at night, he'll take a nap after work just so he can stay up late to watch it.
He even follows the wins and losses of that other great fantasy team - Milford High, of comic strip ``Gil Thorp'' fame. Last week the Milford Mudlarks beat the Oakwood Owls 73-72 to clinch the basketball tournament, he explains. His outlook for Milford's baseball season isn't too rosy this year, what with the graduation of star hitter Binky Peel last spring.
While Jerry has many other hobbies - among them the circus, football, horse races and keeping up with school-lunch menus - his first love is baseball. ``He doesn't have family like most people his age have or other outside interests,'' his mother says. ``So he needs these things.
``Like everybody else, if you don't use your mind, you're gonna lose it.'' She's thankful that he's found his own comfort zone.
For him, it's that mysterious place in his brain where scores are compared, cataloged and sorted with the quickness of a computer - that place where he alone sits in the catbird seat.
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. WAYNE DEEL/Staff. Jerry Overstreet enjoys a baseballby CNBboard game in the dining room of his Northwest Roanoke home. During
the 1994 Major League Baseball strike, Overstreet played out the
season himself. San Francisco won his World Series. 2. PAUL L. NEWBY
II/Staff. When the 1998 season begins, Jerry Overstreet will have
two more baseball teams to keep track of: the Arizona Diamondbacks
and the Tampa Bay Devils, whose hats he's holding. color.