Like many other kids growing up, I used to play baseball. I played ‘catch,’ I played in PE, and when I got older I played four years in little league. I was a thoroughly average player, but that didn’t bother me too much, even if it was a little sad as a child to doubt that I could be the next Will Clark. I did my best not to let the obvious limits of my talent interfere with my enjoying the game, and I would spend weekends in elementary school calling up all the boys in my grade to assemble at the park for an unsupervised game.
We didn’t always play baseball, but we made sure to complete a full round of something (football, frisbee, street hockey) and followed playtime with a visit to the pizza parlor. I remember a group of ten boys swerving in and out of traffic in an unruly pack of bicycles, zig-zagging its way across town to the main avenue that hosted the city’s eateries. Ordering was a hassle, but it was a thrill, too. This was so long ago and so early in life that the sensation of administering and executing a collective order was like an electric rush -- a surge of responsibility and respect. Respect because the pizza cashier, who I’d later realize was typically a teenager and therefore perhaps the lowest form of life in existence, would have to wait on you and scribble down whatever bizarre and stuttering request you made. They’d call your number over the loud speaker and you felt as though you’d won something. And then, when it came time to pay the bill, ten children would frantically empty their pockets of coins, crumpled Ones and Fives, and maybe a few Win-A-Free-Sprite bottle caps, which someone would argue should count for legal tender.
Baseball was often simpler than all that. I played baseball when I was mainly younger. I played catch with my father, but, when my brother was included, our dad would pitch the ball to a batter, whose hits would be fielded by the other brother. We played this game in the street, which made the two most common sounds of a summer evening “strike!” and “car!” We kept (charitable) statistics and even minted little faux baseball cards modeled on the 1991 Upper Deck series. This game was originally played with a whiffle ball and bat, though my brother and I escalated the stakes by swapping in a tennis ball, which could definitely break a window, if it struck glass with the right amount of force.
Incidentally, I once threw a tennis ball at a good friend’s head. This was many years later, mind you, and I wasn’t aiming to hit anyone in the head. But, sure enough, I chucked the thing in his direction, and he turned around just in time for it to smack perfectly into his forehead. It even bounced high into the air, giving everybody a moment to contemplate the rubber violence they’d just witnessed. I couldn’t have nailed him any better if I’d tried.
My brother and I never did break any glass with a tennis ball (though he did later shatter the porch sliding door when he drove an apricot into it with a 6-iron). We did, however, take to playing our game of baseball with the neighbors from across the street, who were Mexican, or Indian, or Philippino (or something). Race, incidentally, is not an easy thing for a kid to wrap his head around. Gender, however, was something of which we were all already terribly aware.
I’m talking, of course, about the no-crying rule. Baseball is only nominally a "full contact sport," but it boasts its share of injuries, like any other macho diversion. For us in our street game, it was always The Skinned Knee. It happened all the time during street play, and there was only one very-spoken rule: do not cry. Crying was for babies and, given the universal consensus that nobody took babies seriously, nobody wanted to get caught crying.
The neighbors’ daughters, however, made it their guiding purpose to catch one of us males in tears. They monitored our play like scavengers circling a dying man, hoping for an unexpected injury, when they’d pounce from nowhere for a close inspection of our eyes, always ready to unload a barrage of abuse on the whiner who couldn’t man up.
The neighbors’ daughters waited.
No comments:
Post a Comment