Meg Barnhouse: Music
Getting Baseball
(Meg Barnhouse)
Fall baseball, mid-season, South Carolina, my ten-year old's team was in the field. My breath came out in clouds. Even wrapped in the plaid wool blanket my mother bought 25 years ago for a camping trip, I was starting to shiver. My canvas chair wasn't doing much to keep out the cold. I had a thermos of coffee, though, the sky was green fading up to deep black, pierced with stars. I was completely happy.
The ump grunted as he bent over to brush the dust off home plate. Our boys in the outfield shifted from foot to foot, crouched over, ready to catch the big one. The batter tapped home plate twice with his bat, thinking about being a hero. Standing next to me, our pitcher's dad called out to him to throw hard, hit the target, watch the runners. Parents were huddled on the metal bleachers. Two dads stood with hands jammed into their pockets, talking to each other, keeping their eyes on the field. Someone's little brother in a bright yellow jacket strode past me four or five times eating popcorn, looking purposeful, taking care of whatever business keeps five year olds going. Every so often, the parents on one set of bleachers would cheer.
These days I try not to cheer too much. My son gets embarrassed because I always cheer for the wrong things. Even after three years, I don't know much about the game. I married a man who watched sports on TV for 17 years instead of talking to me. To be fair, I knew he watched TV too much when I married him. I didn't realize it would bother me so profoundly. With my resentment grew a resistance to sports of all kinds. When I try to watch my sons' games, it's as if something blocks my vision and my brain. I have trouble even seeing what is going on, much less understanding it. My resistance is fading gradually, but still I yell "Way to watch!" then I find out the poor kid has just struck out. Or I stand up and yell "Yea!" when our kid slides into home, but the pop fly has been caught and his effort was for nothing. This season I keep quiet, or I cheer when the other parents do.
We were playing an All-Star team from another town, so there was slim hope of winning. One of their players was a girl with a blonde ponytail swinging out of the back of her batting helmet. She made the first run of the game for her team with a confident bunt and stealing bases like lightning. I cheered for her, but softly, under my breath. She was the only baseball-playing girl I had seen here in three years.
The game was running late. The other fields had cleared off. The other parents had gathered their things and gone home. Night deepened. I began pacing to keep warm. Under the lights, the coach was calling out to our batter: "You can do it! You're the man, you're the man, bring it in, watch it all the way in!" When the kid struck out, he patted the boy on the back and told him good try.
Watching the big man bending down over the boy offering affection and encouragement, I got the sense that this was a diamond at the heart of the Universe. The surrounding sky was vast and cold, the world out there is enormous. People are hating and fighting each other in the Middle East, in the Balkans, in Sierra Leone, in the trailer park out on highway 9, and in a three story house in the richest neighborhood in Spartanburg. Under these lights in a small town in South Carolina, though, something was going right. I might be starting to understand the game of baseball after all.
From "Waking Up the Karma Fairy" Skinner House, Boston