Tag: life

Play Ball

Play Ball

I’m stuck indoors today as July seeps into August and rain seems a constant companion for the next week. 

When the skies clear, I can limp around a golf course, hauling my shabby bag on my back for nine holes of erratic play, but I long for the days when I could shag flies and a few crisp ground balls, humming the ball back to the plate from the outfield with something like a crisp one bounce return. Balance is an issue in this late season. Tracking a ball in the air is a challenge, and my arm is pretty well thrown out, but hope springs eternal. I have a vintage glove in the back of the car just in case.

Some years ago I played catch with my son on the Field of Dreams on a summer trip dedicated to visiting sports Halls of Fame strung out between California and Connecticut. There’s no matching that moment, but warm nights in July remind me of a strange season between my junior and senior year in college, aimlessly driving country roads in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa, ostensibly selling encyclopedias door-to-door. I’m relieved now to report that I never sold a set, never convinced a family to accept the free encyclopedia and the twenty year obligation to buy the annual update at astronomical cost. I stopped trying after my third day on the road, when  a family came close to accepting the cheesy pitch. I continued to drive the route for about a month, crossing into Illinois south of the Janesville County Fair, and Beloit in Wisconsin, ducking south past Rockford, then west to Freeport in Illinois, taking the long, sleepy route to Dubuque, longing to drive west to Waterloo, Iowa, an actual city, home of the John Deere Tractor Museum, fictional home of Jim Wellington, star athlete at Harvard in a series of books written by John R. Tunis. I read The Iron Duke, The Duke Decides, Keystone Kids, and The Kid from Tomkinsville, Tunis’ epic tales about kids becoming star athletes until the covers fell off and the books fell apart. 

From Waterloo, the drive to Omaha would have been a piece of cake, but I was running low on gas money, so I pulled myself north through Dodgeville and back to Madison. 

In my memory, every small town in that pokey odyssey shut down at dinner time, slowly gathering players to town fields, where thick grass with furry white foul lines stretched to uneven plank fences. At dusk, harsh lights clanked on, and players took the field. I’d pull over, buy a Dr. Pepper from the moms running the concession table, and sat in the stands as the games began. I cheered for both sides and saw some pretty good baseball from time to time. Some nights there was no game, but high school kids practiced under the lights for American Legion ball or Pony League. I’d pull up, park by the side of the field, grab a glove and ask if I could help retrieve balls from the outfield.

“You wanna hit,?” Sometimes a coach would offer a chance to step into the batter’s box, but my place was out in the field, out of the way of the real players, ready if the ball went over the heads of the kids who belonged.

My granddaughter has a friend playing Little League this summer, a good kid who happens to be a Red Sox fan as half the kids in Connecticut are. I went to his game last week and thought about getting the glove from the car. I saw at least four pop fouls ark above the backstop into the driveway behind the field and knew I could camp out there and see some action.

I would have loved to pull down a few foul balls, but tracking a ball in the air pretty much assures loss of balance, a stumbling tumble to the gravel, floundering to recover, and a distraction kids don’t really need. I watched kids playing ball, remembered how much the game had meant to me, and told the Red Sox fan his uniform number, 5, was pretty great, worn for a decade by Nomar Garciaparra (highest batting avg. by a right handed player since WWII, .372 in 2000) a Red Sox legend.

I didn’t tell him that it was also worn by Joe Dimaggio, a Yankee Hall of Fame icon and in the top ten in my pantheon of childhood heroes. I came home, rummaged through my collection of treasured books, and wallowed in The Fireside Book of Baseball, recalling with fresh admiration the great writers who made the game come alive in my imagination and the kind folks in small town in the midwest who let me shag balls and loft lazy throws back to the infield.

Friendship

Friendship

Apparently friendship comes more easily to some of us than to others. The universe puts people in our path, personalities mesh or collide, and in rare cases, something about a turn of phrase or artful shrug of shoulder sends the clear message that this is a person with whom I’d like to spend some time.

Those encounters came fairly easily in my work in schools; I got paid to read books, have conversations, and step out into bright autumn days to “coach” teams that operated perfectly well without my intrusion. I had smart colleagues who functioned with an operating sense of humor and an abiding commitment to the young people in our universe. Retirement was daunting, but I connected with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Southern Oregon’s Hospice thrift store. My wife’s meaningful work with dogs and dog owners brought other wonderful people to our small farm. Covid, fire, and relocation in Connecticut changed the dimensions of our lives, bringing family closer and adding two new pups to our household, but offering few opportunities to make friends.

I’ve written about “book friends”, people I’ve bumped into who share my love of books. Those conversations have popped up in airports, waiting rooms, and auto repair shops. Not often, not nearly often enough, and have  brought only fleeting connections. 

Yesterday I stood in the check out line at Trader Joe’s, watching the bags fill and the cashier artfully nudging the cookies to the bottom of a bag where they would remain safely protected by cereal boxes until I brought the haul home. I happened to look up as a woman in the adjacent line joked with her cashier as her bags filled, “That’s why they tell us not to shop when we’re hungry!”

My response was reflexive, immediate, and completely uninvited. “What if I’m always hungry?” 

Not the most exquisite bon mot, but her response was to hold up a box of cookies and say, “These will not get home safely.”

As we paid up and maneuvered our carts along the small corridor leading to the exit, I saw her standing aside, that box of cookies open and held out to me as I walked by. We laughed, I thanked her and left the cookies untouched. “These guys might actually make it home today,” I suggested as I waved and pushed my cart into the parking lot.

Even as I tossed the bags into the back of my car I wondered how I might have been able to communicate how much I appreciated her sense of humor, how to suggest that my wife would love to meet her, that we’d be delighted to have her visit or meet us for coffee (and cookies). It would have been weird, or at least unseemly, to linger in the parking lot hoping to start a conversation. 

And so it goes.

A sense of humor goes a long way, willingness to see and connect with another human being goes a long way, belief in the goodness of a guy checking out at Trader Joe’s on a Saturday afternoon goes a long way. As was the case with my airport book friends, this potential friendship remains purely hypothetical. 

It helps a bit to think of the possibility that potential friendships might pop up again. I’ll have to develop the skill necessary to keep a conversation going, even in a parking lot, without appearing predatory or simply goofy. 

Goofy’s probably ok. Worth a try.