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.

the introduction

"My grandfather's name was Melvin,too."

His response, after a pause, is a surprised, "Really? That's cool," and I've a hunch that his hesitation was some unspoken variation of, "Was he from Puerto Rico?" Either that or he was just double-checking: his English is just on the verge. I affirm that he is, then, the second Melvin I've ever met, and I tell him that makes me happy because it does. I rarely have opportunity to say that name aloud; repeating it now almost feels like a talisman, and I'm pleased by the feeling it conjures.

But mostly I'm pleased for the student who has been but a name on a list to finally be coming to life. I've anticipated the arrival of this freshman class in a steeling-myself-way for months: they outnumber my sophomore through senior roster combined, they have a laundry list of special needs and issues, they've mostly been in a middle school program I call, for cause, Lord of the Flies. But, as always, "they" don't really exist, despite their preceding reputation. Instead of a group to confront I've got indivduals to meet and figure out how to teach; as they appear, I remember. So far there's this not-really-a-namesake whose helpfulnes is so-far endearing, an unfocused, outsize Junior; a Dominican ballplayer (football, too) who carries himself with that self-assured, big league ease at the age of 15; the smirking boy who will not speak. There is, heaven help her, a fourteen year-old gonna-be teen mother and her possible polar opposite, a wanna-be doctor who's been out of Ho Chi Minh City less than a week. There are dozens more, counting both the old and the new, and much learning to be done on both sides of my desk.