Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Or
Or it might rain, cancelling games, disrupting schedules and making most of yesterday's post moot. I'll always have "Field of Dreams" though.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Baseball bloodlines
A year to the day since the last post, I come here with the need for expression. Maybe no one will ever see these words, and I don't really care. That's not my motivation. It's baseball season, and that has me feeling nostalgic.
My soon-to-be-old-enough-to-vote-and-die-but-not-drink-high-school-graduate-by-the-hair-on-his-unshaven-chin son was quoted in the local paper after leading his team to victory in last night's season opener. There's nothing noteworthy, I suppose, about a 5-4 win over a team one class below yours to open the season, unless your coach runs the season-opening practice and then takes an unexplained leave of absence within 24 hours before resigning shortly after.
And Cedar Rapids may be Iowa's second largest city (trailing only the state capital Des Moines), but there's nothing big city about a place where the sports reporter doing the interview, the prep athlete spewing quotes and his dad who used to work at the same daily newspaper all belong to the same fantasy football league.
To say my kid led his team to victory is not entirely parental pride. He was 2-3 at the plate with 2 runs batted in before making his first relief appearance of his senior season. As frustrated as I often get by his lack of urgency, it takes a cool customer to put out the fire of a 2-on-none-out situation with your team nursing a 1-run lead. Cooler heads also prevail an inning later when a homer cuts your 2-run lead in half with victory close enough to touch.
Live tweeting the game for anyone who cares to listen -- though I often question if anyone but me cares -- I'm struck that this is the beginning of the end of a long baseball road. Jordy, Dan, Cole, Sam, Mike, Dakota and my Zach form the nucleus of a team that has been together for the better part of a decade. After the game, a player from tonight's opponent says hello and shakes the hand of his youth soccer coach, me. That Dane and Zach played soccer together and are now friends from rival high schools is a marvel when you realize neither would even exist if Dane's mother and I had had more than a fleeting relationship way back when in high school (same town, different school, much different world).
Among the things afforded by Monday's win, regardless of tonight's outcome, is the opportunity Wednesday to play at the local minor league ballpark. Its not the major leagues, by any stretch, though you can get there from here, as many have. It's also not the same park I frequented in my youth, usually for free as marketers of the day didn't have a stadium to pay for and didn't understand that people associate value with the price of admission.
But it's a place that has come to hold great meaning in my life, prompting me to open my purse strings to help build a new stadium to preserve minor league baseball in my hometown a decade ago. It's a place where easy interaction with players helped fuel many a father and son's love of the game, and each other.
"Is this Heaven?" is the most famous line from the most famous movie ever filmed in Iowa -- "Field of Dreams." Twenty-two years after the film's release, Ray Kinsella's followup question to his father, remains most relevant.
"Is there a heaven?" asks Ray.
"Oh yeah," says John. "It's the place where dreams come true."
Ray looks around, seeing his wife playing with their daughter on the porch. "Maybe this is heaven."
You know the rest.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Whatever this space is to anyone else, it's a treasure trove to me. I return now and then either to discover or remember; in that sense, I'll never move on. I am writing elsewhere now though, as the change of scenery did me good. For various reasons I'm not making the connection from here to there public, but if you'd like the link, let me know.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Race Day Commentary
Random thoughts from the Go! St. Louis Half Marathon, a race I registered for months ago in the Nike Women's afterglow and then, for reasons mostly medical and partly lackadaisical, didn't train for.
1. What goes up must come down is not topographically true. Nothing like a foot race for realizing the streets I've been driving for 25 years are not even remotely flat: they're all uphill. Both ways!
2. Mic Ultra may not be beer except under the strictest definition, but when it's ice cold, fresh out of the tap, free, and the first non-Gatorade beverage one has had in 13.1 miles, it's not bad at all.
3. Body Glide is a miracle substance: just don't miss a spot.
4. The guy with a KISS Army tattoo owes us all a story, don't you think?
5. So do those women packing four water bottles that were still full at mile twelve.
6. Bagpipes are cool.
7. And so is running through the brewery compound, even if it's not really A-B any more, and even if I never buy their beer. It's just red brick St. Louis in a way that means I'm-not-sure-what to me.
8. In the category of High School Age Race Day Volunteers, San Francisco wins hands down over the Lou. Yes, kids, there are "so many people," so pour the Gatorade already. And try to weasel out of the end of your shift after you hand me my medal.
9. A big thank you to those who are willing to cheer for anyone who passes your spectator spot, and not just your one friend/relative/significant other. For those of you who won't, I bet it'd make your day a lot more fun if you did.
10. Same goes for 9/10 of the TNT staff. I know the power's in the purple shirt, but damn. Didn't you see the Team in Training keyholder on my shoe? ; )
11. Having my too sedentary girl say, unprompted, that she'd do a Half - "but just walk it" - sometime is a pretty cool prize, and a testament to the power of actions over words. I do this for me, but if she follows, maybe it's not selfish.
12. Having come late to the participant party, I love the start just about as much as the finish. Maybe more.
13.1. Today felt like coming out of retirement. Hell yes, I'll do it again.
Friday, April 09, 2010
invitation
"I was going to come up to school and invite u," she texts, and it might even be true. I know I'd be welcome, even if it turns out I'm inviting myself: we go way back, this girl and I, and though the ties have loosened in the absence of day after school day, we are still connected across place and space and time.
She doesn't blink, I can tell, when my, "This is Ms. P" message barges into her inbox, demanding to know whether the rumors of her impending marriage are true. I believe them-- she is, after all, nineteen-- but I'm not going to rely on the third-hand report when I have a number and a phone in my hand. Instead I ask, and our first exchange in a year is a good natured interrogation. "Who's the boy?" and "Do your parents like him?" and "When?" and "Where?" As if I have the right, because I do.
She answers all my questions in her same old girlish chatter, all my questions except the time and the place, since beyond, "next Saturday," she doesn't quite know. I can nearly see her shrug off the details in that familiar but foreign Latina way as she explains, "My friend is helping me set it up." In other words, "it'll happen." In the meantime, no worries, no offense.
I check in with her, days later, when the promised logistics don't appear-- turns out all the banquet halls are booked and wedded bliss may be delayed. I allow myself an, "Imagine that!" in reply but that's all I'm compelled to say. She is, of course, too young, too barely educated, too minimally employed, but that may matter or that may not in the world she occupies. After all this time, I'll still looking through a window, and though I'm welcome, I'm not qualified to say.
Saturday, April 03, 2010
loss
In my mind's eye, I see his van in the driveway- is it silver or black or faded maroon?- and the question on her face as she pulls up to the house that I likely will never visit and would need a map to find. I see her walking up steps that may or may not exist to the bedroom where he is but should not be. I think of 911 and paramedics, rising panic and spreading alarm.
I see her students, shocked silent in a classroom I haven't entered for years now. I think about her kids.
I haven't talked to her since last Fall when we spoke of students transferred from her to school mine and the money I was raising for LLS; money was tight she told me, but they'd already donated: "My husband has leukemia."
It didn't kill him.
But Wednesday night they went to bed, and Thursday morning she left early for a conference. Thursday afternoon she decided to go home for lunch and discovered that she is a widow. The universe is cold and cruel. Such a sudden loss wouldn't be any less sad of a story if the woman surviving it weren't someone I admire, a force for good who'd also been a help to me, but we all see the world through our own lenses, and I see a friendly face forever changed.
I haven't talked to her since last Fall when we spoke of students transferred from her to school mine and the money I was raising for LLS; money was tight she told me, but they'd already donated: "My husband has leukemia."
It didn't kill him.
But Wednesday night they went to bed, and Thursday morning she left early for a conference. Thursday afternoon she decided to go home for lunch and discovered that she is a widow. The universe is cold and cruel. Such a sudden loss wouldn't be any less sad of a story if the woman surviving it weren't someone I admire, a force for good who'd also been a help to me, but we all see the world through our own lenses, and I see a friendly face forever changed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)