bubblingover

I got an email the other day from my company. They are forming a company wide baseball team and they are looking for players. There are over 6000 employees at my company so I figured that they didn’t need any help building a team.  The team would play on Sunday Mornings and if they qualified they would go on to a special Statewide Olympics.  This looked like a wonderful opportunity for the young men who were probably in good shape and could still touch their toes and run the bases without getting tired or pulling a muscle. I watched the company emails with interest. I wondered how much time it would take for the email notification to be withdrawn. How long, I wondered, before this one leftover holdout of my boyhood would be officially off limits to me.  

I waited and waited and still the email would not go away.  Was it calling out to me in some insane way, forcing me to rethink my inability to play the game at this advanced stage of life? I knew that I could still play ball, but after college and kids the only ball I played was softball. Sure I played Modified Fast Pitch ( a no arc, fast throwing, no windmill game) that was faster then Arc Softball. I even played some Windmill (the style of softball that the girls played in the Olympics). I was a third baseman. I liked to creep up on the batter and play 50-55 feet away on a field where the bases were 60 feet apart and try to take away the batter’s concentration. It was a kind of Kamikazee Move, but I enjoyed the challenge of showing off my cat-like reflexes. Cat-like reflexes- sure when I was 25-30. To say that I was close to being there at this point in time would be like hoping that I was Dorian Gray and only my picture got older, not me. If truth be told, I still play softball. I play with guys that are much younger than I am. It is Arc Softball, the preferred game in my area of
South Florida. Do I like the game? When I think about it from a pitching perspective- not really.  I liked it when the pitcher challenged the hitter to hit the high hard one or a nasty curveball. I liked being able to drop a bunt down third and beat out an infield hit.  I recall the years when more speedy third basemen played the position and I became a pitcher. I enjoyed being able to control where my pitches went and be told that while I wasn’t really very fast, I was still sneaky fast. I used to like setting the batter up with my sneaky fastball and then pitch him outside and high and see if he would go for it. Then I would pitch him inside on the hands so he couldn’t get around on the ball and foul it off. Finally, I would throw the tantalizing change up and laugh to myself as the batter would either weakly hit the ball for an out of make a fool of himself swinging at nothing but air.   

Those were the days that I cherished, but back to reality. Here was the company email looking for ballplayers. I was glued to my seat with indecision. Could I still do this? I could go to a practice and see if I could take some ground balls around second base to keep myself out of harms way.  Perhaps the softball that I had been playing might translate into being able to make this baseball team. A Baseball Team. The real meaning of the words began to sink into my dream filled mind. Baseball is a simple game. You hit a smaller hard ball with a bat as the pitcher throws the ball toward you at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour. It is a game where the bases are not 60 feet away but 90 feet and you have to slide to break up double plays. It is a game that a ball could hit you in the head by a wildly throwing non professional who is probably an accountant in his full time work.  He is definitely not a pitcher with a fine mastery of the strike zone. I could visualize being hit by the shortstop throwing through me as I dive head first into second on the front end of a double play. I can feel the pain. I search my memory banks and pull out instances where it has already happened. I remember laying on that field of dreams and hoping that the ringing in my head cleared up and that the two shortstops standing over me might merge into one player again.Trying out for the company baseball team was becoming less and less appealing. As we know, old dreams die hard. I decided to consult with a friend. He was a former ball player for whom I had a great deal of respect . He and I play on the same softball team. Our claim to fame was that the two of us probably made up the oldest left side of the infield in the league. I saw him after practice one Sunday afternoon and he looked at me with a combination of  pity and shock at the lunacy of it all. He was quiet for a while and then he uttered one sentence that summed up everything that I was thinking but couldn’t bring myself to believe. He said “ I’m afraid that baseball has passed you by.”I wanted to be outraged. I wanted to yell at him and tell he was wrong. I wanted to build a case that proved beyond a doubt that I was at the gym 3 times a week working the weights, hitting the abdominals, running 3 miles each visit. All of which was true. You only had to check my log-in at the gym and watch me “sweat to the oldies”. The trainer’s knew that my physical conditioning and work out was far superior to the younger more athletically gifted in the gym. Even at practice wasn’t I the one who pushed the others. Wasn’t it me who led by example for more hitting or ground balls or more infield practice when the other younger men were ready to call it a morning. But there he was shaking his head sadly and knowing the truth. The truth that I refused to accept at that moment. You only had to look into his eyes to know that he had been at that crossroads before. Somehow he got over it and moved on, being satisfied with softball rather then the hardball of baseball. He had quit. He had given in to the weak little pitch in the air, the no stealing rule, the no bunting or sliding rules and the 60 foot base paths.  I had to look away. I couldn’t meet his gaze. I wanted to go out to that practice and feel the energy, watch the speed of the ball coming off the bat, and roll in the dirt. I wanted to feel the sting of the ball hitting the bat and running for first base. 

That was when it hit me. Running to first base. I could go 60 feet with the speed of a broken tank. How would I ever go the extra 30 feet without someone chasing me with a loaded revolver. I would be laughed off the field. Even if I could prove that I could dive for balls that would take away hits and be a stellar defensemen, a real gold glove, how would I get down the baseline. I don’t run my 3 miles at a 6 minute mile pace. I never did. I was the 12 minute mile type in high school. Today I do a 15 minute run and walk mile. Great for the cardio, easy on the knees ,but absolutely not a barn burner. Could I face the hysterical laughter of the 20 somethings as the old man stumbled on aged legs toward first base after he hit his hard bouncer to the pitcher?  

 I remember when my daughter was home from college and she came out to see Dad play in one of his softball leagues. I was on first base and the pitcher was wild. There was stealing in this game, because it was a modified fast pitch league. I was the team pitcher. Not really a star on the team, but I was a player and no one could take that from me. Here I was on first having hit the ball in the hole between third and short. The score didn’t matter. The pitcher had trouble finding the plate and the catcher had trouble holding on to the ball. On the next pitch the ball got past the catcher and I took off for second on old man legs. I used to play this game in college, but sliding was not a specialty of mine. It was one of those skills that unless you practice it you lose it.  It is not like riding a bicycle. Bearing down hard on second base, I threw my body. I wanted to slide feet first, but I also thought that maybe I should dive head first so I had less chance of getting hurt. My teammates and my 20 year old daughter watched the results. It wasn’t pretty. To describe it as a rhino tumbling ass over tea kettle landing on the base would probably be accurate. Fortunately, I didn’t get hurt physically. Emotionally was another matter. With my daughter leading the laughter, not only did my teammates laugh until their sides hurt, but the opposing team joined in. In my mortification I noticed that the third baseman had to sit down on the base and wipe the tears from his eyes when he could finally compose himself enough to do so. 

That incident, that one solitary event in decades of ball games throughout my life, glowed like a warning beacon.  I could not bring myself to go through that again. The humiliation was much too intense, but if I tried to play baseball I would be opening myself up to that and worse. I looked at the email in front of me with one last loving and longing look. I took a deep breath and deleted it. I can still be a force when I play, but it will have to be softball. Some dreams of mine have to be kept as just that -dreams. Perhaps after all theses 61 years, my wife would finally have to agree that I made a mature decision.   

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