Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Curt says he is a baseball man. From what I know about my husband, I think this means he has been (quite literally) built by baseball.  He has played baseball his whole life.  He doesn’t brag about it, but if you ask him, he’ll tell you he was drafted by the Orioles in his sophomore year of college, and that he turned it down, wanting to graduate before going to the Bigs.  Firmly believing there would be another opportunity, it turned out there wasn’t (which personally would drive me crazy if something like that happened to me because I would plague myself forever with “what ifs”). It doesn’t drive him crazy.  He just smiles, and keeps playing baseball.

He pitches and plays second base for Team Q of the Ponce de Leon League here in the Washington DC region.

It’s a great name for a recreational baseball league, isn’t it?  Ponce de Leon – the intrepid explorer of legend who made it his life’s work to find the Fountain of Youth.  Newsflash – Ponce ol’ boy, that particular fountain is all about  baseball.

TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME

It’s Sunday morning, and the alarm on his side of the bed rings out at 7 a.m.  It’s a 9 o’clock game today at a field a good 30 miles from home.  He needs to get there a half-hour early, because he is the starting pitcher.  We’re both up and at ’em.  I love going along to watch his games.  I get to see my honey swing the bat.  I get to hear the other team moan when he connects with the ball and then it sails waaaayyyy out there, landing just inside the left field fence. I get to see him wind up before a sinking-and-away curveball that fakes-out the poor schlub at the plate.  I get to see him field a line drive to second and whip it to first for the out.

And I get to become giddy with school-girl baseball-jock crush-juice.

TAKE ME OUT WITH THE CROWD

Today, I am the crowd for Team Q.  Hold up – the crowd for Team Q also includes MacGuffin, the dog who sleeps at the foot of our bed every night (and who starts his antsy canine hum when Curt reaches into the closet and extracts his baseball jersey).  But, the opposition wins the crowd contest, because they have three youngsters playing with toy trucks in the dirt, and apparently, a wife-cum-manager in the dugout hollering out the batting order.  Being a part of this crowd makes me happy to my very toes, and I feel the ghost of Norman Rockwell nearby.

BUY ME SOME PEANUTS AND CRACKER JACK

From the opposition’s dugout, number 12 yells, “Ashley, share your cookies with Heather!  You hear me?”  I fill MacGuffin’s Outward Hound travel bowl with water from my bottle.  I look down and draw little pictures in the sand-and-sunflower-seed-shell mix below my feet.  These sunflower seed shells were crunched in someone’s mouth for a salty roll on the tongue, split neatly in a well-placed crunch between upper and lower molars, and spat at the ground to become my media for this morning’s artwork.

I DON’T CARE IF I NEVER GET BACK

At least half the thrill of going to a game is the permission it gives you to NOT do what needs to be done at home.  Laundry?  Pah.  Dusting, bathtub scrubbing, bill-paying?  Let ’em be.  There will be time for those things another day, along with pulling weeds and changing the oil. Today, lucky us, we have a game.

LET ME ROOT, ROOT, ROOT FOR THE HOME TEAM, IF THEY DON’T WIN IT’S A SHAME

Not too long ago, our MLB home team played in an empty stadium because there had been riots in the streets of Baltimore overnight and it wasn’t safe for ticket-holders to attend the game.  The O’s played the White Sox, I guess, and even in a empty Camden Yards, they did the traditional seventh-inning stretch while the PA blared “Thank God, I’m A Country Boy.”  The O’s won, but this?  This was a shame on our town.

FOR IT’S ONE, TWO, THREE STRIKES, “YOU’RE OUT!”

Curt pitches these.  Looking or swinging.  He can still throw crazy off-speed shit. Turn the tables, and mostly his at-bats are productive, but there are times he strikes out.  But hardly ever looking.

AT THE OLD BALL GAME

Why this adjective?  Why stand and sing and proclaim the game we are attending is the “old ball game”?  At its heart, I think it’s because baseball has the power to bring us into a part of something timeless, something elegant and noble and sensible, something with a history we can visualize as we imagine the face of Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, and the unknown mugs in a mildewy shoebox full of baseball cards.

I think when we sing it, we say, “We are part of that time, right here in this time, and hallelujah, there is such a thing as time travel, and we can do it, and it’s right here, right now!”

Yes indeed, Mr. de Leon.  The fountain of youth?  It’s baseball.