Take me Out

I went with Thing 2 on a field trip with his pre-school today. We were going to the Indianapolis Indians ballgame. I adore baseball. I played softball most of my teen years, and even managed to get on a team that was second place in the little league my final year. That was a complete fluke, they just needed an extra player and got stuck with me. I was a terrible softball player, just awful. I was fat, I was slow, and I threw like a girl. My structural delicacy had me longing to learn to slide but absolutely certain it would mean my doom. I did slide, once, that final year. I actually faced my dread of the solid earth meeting my delicate back and threw myself on the ground willingly. I was out anyway, I think. I didn't care, I SLID into base. You couldn't have beaten the smile off my face.

Thing 1 has expressed an interest in baseball, but not really much fortitude in learning the game. We missed the season last year, but this year I hope to actually get him involved in little league. The parks and rec team is dumb. If you're going to play ball, PLAY BALL. Thing 2 was just thrilled to be going on a field trip. When they asked me if I would be willing to come with them to help chaperone, I agreed since I knew I didn't have anything better to do with my time. See, I'd forgotten somehow that I love baseball.

It's funny how you forget things that you like. Maybe it was because I've been distracted by things like breeding, physical injury and heartbreak, but somewhere along the lines, I had forgotten the feeling of the beating sun over the field, the dust kicked up by players sprinting for base or ball, and the thrilling sound of the crack of the bat and the smack of the ball hitting glove. I'd misplaced my memory of passionately wanting to be a good catcher. Of wishing, above anything else to be a part of that intimate dance of pitch and catch, of taunting batters and being the most distinctive person on the team. The catcher is a breed of player into themselves. A catcher is a character judge, they are the most intimate point of contact with the opposing team. With the right analysis and communication with the pitcher, a batter can be completely unnerved. I loved that kind of bratty power trip.

A catcher has legs like tree trunks, powerful legs for leaping in the air and catching foul balls, for carrying extra pounds of equipment to keep their bodies reletively safe from flying foul balls, swinging bats and other hazards of being in the line of fire between the pitcher and the hitter. The cockiness of a catcher is lovely. They are the ones who are going to keep you from scoring, the only one who stands in your way between third and home. The one who will catch your foul ball and make you out before you even leave the bat on the ground. I loved that cockiness and that competance, that strength and grit. I wanted to be like that.

They warmed up a pitcher right near where we were sitting in the third row. The catcher was directly in front of us. His last name was completely unintelligible, but I wanted him. I watched him catching with a singular passion. I wonder if he noticed the girl with the straw hat in the third row watching him so intently, wanting to be him and if not to be him, then to at least be near him. Probably not.

The pitcher he was warming up, number 39, was terrible, just awful. He was certainly too bad to be put on the mound, I thought. But I was wrong. We were leaving at the bottom of the 7th (3-0, their favor) when he started pitching. I actually saw the catcher have to leap into the air to catch the PITCH. Unreal. I watched him walk two hitters.

Standing near the gate, my pretty yellow skirt with little blue flowers blowing in the breeze, my charming brown wide brimmed straw hat shading my face, looking feminine and every bit the part of a massengil commercial, I turned to the group of preschoolers and their parents and said, "That guy pitches like my ASS."

Which just goes to show that you can take the girl out of the trailer park, but you just can't take the trailer park out of the girl.