We’d play pitch before school. In class, we’d think about playing some more.
Then we’d play ball at recess. Little time was wasted choosing teams and positions. Everyone knew where to go, and no one could wait to get there.
Time was too precious. There was never enough of it during baseball season.
So I’m glad baseball season is in full swing. Big leagues, little leagues, everything in between. It helps me remember.
Baseball.
During daylight-saving time, we’d play after school, hours, until our mommas called us in to eat.
So we’d wash our hands quick. We’d eat quick.
And then we’d play some more.
On summer days when there was no work, we’d play from morning until night in a field behind the old sixth-grade school building across the rock road that ran in front of my house. It was a fine field: Pine woods guarded the right field line and ended behind home plate where a bean field began and ran up the third base and left field lines, up toward that rock road and past the side of that red-brick school.
The grass. From home plate, you saw a sea of clipped green. It stopped at the base of the building in deep left and then went on, endlessly, into center and right, rolling toward the church and the faraway curve in the rock road.
An infield was never cut into the grass; the infield just evolved. The baselines were turned to dirt by little running feet, and the dirt broadened around the bases where those feet made turns, ever toward home, and where infielders rested, gloves on knees, while somebody hunted for a foul ball hit into the woods or the field.
Because of the traffic there, those spots where the bases were became indentations in the earth. Home was both the most sacred and the most scarred. After a rain, that’s where the worst puddles were.
Always, though, the sun would come back, rising beyond center, baking afternoon outfielders, setting behind home plate, just like in the big leagues.
When it set, we sat. Had to. We’d have played until our hands nearly bled. Your fingers would be curled from holding the bat and your glove hand would smell like leather, and you’d bathe and try to rub the dirt and dust off your sun-soaked arms and legs and back, and then your momma or daddy would almost need to help you get around, because nothing was left.
It was all out there on the field.
Do you remember?
I love that field. I found my old dog Sport there one evening, dead from time, resting finally in the knee-high early winter grass of shallow right-center field. We buried him there. We buried him there on the field where he ran with us all those days, playing, as much a part of the game as the ball and the bat, as alive as any little boy.
That field. I could see it from my bedroom window, waiting. And at the start of another season, I see it now, holding memories, holding a childhood companion, holding me.
Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu
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