{"id":18351,"date":"2020-09-01T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-01T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sasee.wpenginepowered.com\/?post_type=essay&p=18351"},"modified":"2024-03-26T15:08:39","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T19:08:39","slug":"play-ball","status":"publish","type":"essay","link":"https:\/\/sasee.com\/ro\/essay\/play-ball\/","title":{"rendered":"Play Ball!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Knowing all that, for some reason, I\u2019m beginning to have a need to see a game — to experience America\u2019s pastime once more.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I was never much of a sportsman. It wasn\u2019t for lack of trying. Being the fastest kid in the neighborhood, I tried out for the track team. The coaches had me pegged as a half-miler. In my first race, I shot out of the starting blocks like a shiny new Ferrari. On the first lap around the track I gained a huge lead which only increased as we rounded the second lap. By the third lap, I was so far ahead of the pack, the coaches were wondering if they had an Olympic candidate on their hands. But as we went into that final lap, that shiny new Ferrari not only ran out of gas, its engine blew up and all four tires fell off as I finished dead last barely crawling across the finish line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t count the number of hours I spent playing touch football in the front yard of my house, catching passes and dodging defenses, scoring touchdowns, so I went out for the football team. After five days of practice, all we did was an endless stream of calisthenics and blocking exercises. On the sixth day, after crashing into a tackling dummy until I could barely stand, a coach ran up to me, grabbed the face mask of my helmet, whipped my head around and got nose to nose with me. In a voice loud enough to puncture my eardrums he screamed, \u201cMy little sister could hit harder than that!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I unstrapped my helmet, dropped it on the ground and said, \u201cThen let your little sister play football for you,\u201d and I walked off the field, ending any chance I might have had of one day becoming an All-American.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I tried wrestling, learning moves like the half-Nelson, the full-Nelson\u2026 the Ricky Nelson; it was all the same to me. Even with all the twists and turns of the sport, it left me flat\u2026on my back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the tennis court, I thought I might serve up a good game. I had a great backhand, a powerful forehand. If only I could have kept the ball in the court. In the end, tennis was never a love match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it came to baseball my luck was no better. Maybe it just wasn\u2019t my game, but my Dad was a baseball fan so I played on a Little League team for three years. My problem was fear\u2026of flubbing a ground ball, dropping a pop fly, or even worse, getting clunked on the head by totally misjudging a catch. I started off on second base. After dropping a bunch of easy catches, I was moved to left field, then eventually to left out, warming the bench and finally striking out completely. Despite my total lack of skills on the field, it didn\u2019t take away from the time my father and I would spend together sitting on the couch watching the Brooklyn Dodgers on TV trying, season after season, to bring home a pennant for us. Then one day, the Dodgers announced that the bums were leaving Ebbets Field in the rough and tumble Brooklyn neighborhood and were heading for some snooty California park called Chavez Ravine. We couldn\u2019t believe it was true. It broke my heart\u2026so bad, in fact, that I lost all interest in the game. Over the years, I\u2019ve watched a couple of innings here and there, a World Series or two, but it was never same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The funny thing is, now with the corona virus, there are questions about whether there will be much of a baseball season at all and just how long it will actually last. Knowing all that, for some reason, I\u2019m beginning to have a need to see a game \u2013 to experience America\u2019s pastime once more. I want to see a field of green grass, white bags at the end of the baselines, see the boys of summer playing out on that field again. Like Joni Mitchell said, \u201cDon\u2019t it always seem to go, that you don\u2019t know what you got \u2018til it\u2019s gone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like everyone else, I can\u2019t wait until this pandemic ends. Until it does, we\u2019ll just have to tough it out. But I will tell you this. When it\u2019s over, when we finally come to terms with it, and things are normal again, and stadiums are filled with cheering fans, I\u2019m going to take myself out to the ballgame. I\u2019ll take me out to the crowd. I\u2019ll buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks. I don\u2019t care if I ever get back, and I\u2019ll root, root, root for the home team. If they don\u2019t win it\u2019s a shame, for it\u2019s one, two, three strikes you\u2019re out at the old ball game. There\u2019s a song in there somewhere. I hope it won\u2019t be long before we\u2019re all singing it again.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Knowing all that, for some reason, I\u2019m beginning to have a need to see a game — to experience America\u2019s pastime once more. I was never much of a sportsman. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tec_requires_first_save":true,"_gspb_post_css":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","footnotes":""},"essay_type":[46],"essay-category":[],"class_list":["post-18351","essay","type-essay","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","essay_type-features"],"blocksy_meta":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasee.com\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/essay\/18351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasee.com\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/essay"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasee.com\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/essay"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasee.com\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasee.com\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sasee.com\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/essay\/18351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasee.com\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"essay_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasee.com\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/essay_type?post=18351"},{"taxonomy":"essay-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasee.com\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/essay-category?post=18351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}