Baseball

To become one with nature I spent some time on an empty, non-lit, baseball field at night. I placed my chair in the middle of center field, and took in the dead silence and the empty surroundings of a place where I spend so much of my time. This experience helped me look at my inner self and find how much the game of baseball truly means to me.

I feel the cold night’s breath come in through my nose and feel it travel out my mouth. As I breathe, I can see my breath in the light that the moon casts down on this half of the earth. I hear nothing but the slight whisper of the wind in my ear. There I sit in the middle of center-field watching the place where so much of my life is spent. As I look at the empty dark baseball field I see players in the dugout, none of whom I recognize; just old time baseball players wearing pin stripes on baggy baseball pants and jerseys. I watch them warm-up; they say nothing to me. Suddenly they disappear, and within seconds I can picture a center fielder standing next to me in my chair. The other eight positions are filled and I can see a pitcher with a high leg kick mustering all his strength to throw a white thing with red stitches on it, as hard as he can. WHACK! I can just hear the sound of the leather ball making contact with the wood grain barrel of the bat. The centerfielder gets a jump on it and is running back, back, back, to the warning track and make the catch then throws the ball into the waiting second basemen. They all go away. I feel content and at home here. The wind picks up and I can smell the freshly cut grass and I know there is nowhere else in the world I’d rather be.

Shortly after I got done writing this, I picked up my bat and squeezed the handle, then looked at the barrel and thought to myself how could something so simple, capture my fascination so?