Читать книгу 100 Miles of Baseball - Dale Jacobs - Страница 8

Henry Ford Community College Hawks vs Macomb Community College Monarchs

Papp Park, Taylor MI

Game Time Temperature: 48°F

As the players go through pre-game routines, I notice how often they look up to the sky for some kind of sign about the coming weather. They began play in early March with a series of games in South Carolina, but have only been back in Michigan for a little over a week. Two games have already been cancelled due to weather. A few of the Hawks players make a final pass with rakes over an infield that is more dirt than grass. Coaches from both teams meet the umpires at the plate to exchange lineup cards while checking watches against an unknown weather deadline. They have two seven-inning Michigan Community College Athletic Association games scheduled today, but everyone is worried about the prospect of rain.

Watching the umps gear up in the parking lot, I count five fans here. Me, Dale, and two very prepared people, parents I assume, and a chocolate lab named Bella. The parents have brought their own chairs, blankets, coolers, and umbrellas, and the woman has a scorecard. Waiting for the game to start, I watch fallen leaves gamboling around the chain-link fences in gusting winds. Bella rustles in the nearby underbrush looking for her ball. It starts to rain, gently but persistently. The third base coach says to us, “We should have played at 9 am. It was warmer.” There’s not a sprig of green grass or hint of a leaf bud to be found, no signs of spring birds. If you’d plunked me into this day at random and made me guess what time of year it was, I’d say early November.

We’re sitting so close to the field that I can hear the left fielder singing to himself with his ball glove resting on his head. I watch the players attempting to replicate the gum chewing and swagger of MLB pros. Some do it with aplomb.

The game begins without preamble. No anthem, nothing more than a signal from the umpire to the Henry Ford pitcher to deliver the first pitch of the game. There aren’t many places to sit—a couple of benches along the baselines on either side of home plate and two small stands even with first and third base. We are, like the narrator of W P Kinsella’s “The Thrill of the Grass,” first-base-side fans, but against our usual practice, we settle in at third. The woman near us sits huddled in a lawn chair, the hood of her raincoat pulled tight over her ball cap, umbrella up against the rain that has just started to fall. She’s keeping score while her husband walks around the park, presumably trying to keep warm.

Macomb is retired in order in the top of the first. I don’t know what to expect from this level of baseball or these field conditions, but a couple of nice fielding plays at short and second remind me of what these players are capable. Most are playing Junior College baseball in order to get noticed or to qualify academically so they can play in one of the NCAA’s three divisions. All but one of the Henry Ford players are from Michigan—and that player is from Windsor—and all were among the best of their high school teams. Even in these conditions, it’s clear they all love to play baseball and aren’t yet ready to give it up.

The Hawks’ pitcher hits a two-run home run in the bottom of the first. The home run ball bounces off a red car in the parking lot and a player runs across the dirt to get it, his cleats clicking on the small rocks that litter the ground. I watch him scouring the parking lot in search of the ball. I get up to retrieve our umbrellas from the car and realize we’re parked next to that red car. I move ours down the lot.

Between innings I take my cue from Bella’s man and begin to walk around the park, stopping for a few minutes at first base, then behind home, where I’m so close I can hear the catcher asking the ump where exactly a ball was out of the strike zone. Another homer in the bottom of the second, a monster shot to right field by Macomb’s first baseman in the top of the third, and a misplayed fly ball in center field in the bottom of the third make it 7-1 after three. The rain has turned from a light mist to a steady downpour.

I try to write while holding an umbrella. I think I finally understand what they mean by “fair-weather fan.” I totally get those people who took one look at the forecast and stayed home today. I wonder what the left fielder is thinking as he stands in the cold rain, without the benefit of an umbrella or gloves or puffy coat. As dry, winter leaves gather around his feet, does he also wonder why he’s here?

Incrementally, my soggy puffy coat becomes stuck to my body and I’m trying not to think about how unpleasant this feeling is. I also realize a fountain pen was a bad choice for a rainy day, as there are blotches of running ink all over my page. I look up from my notes and see a ball hit far into right field. The right fielder misses the ball and tumbles, somersaulting across the mud and dead grass. The third base coach yells, “Run, run, run!” In the time it takes me to watch how this double scores two runs, I forget how wet and cold I am.

A couple more people show up and sit on the stands. Friends maybe? No one looks like a hopeful girlfriend. If a girl shows up to watch you play in this weather, you know she loves you. There’s no working scoreboard and I am not paying sufficient attention to know the score. I ask Scorecard Mom and she tells me it’s 7-1 for the Hawks. I don’t ask what inning we’re in—it would reveal my lack of attention right now. Dale is standing by the other team’s dugout, which is more cage than dugout. I can tell he’s paying attention to the game, watching the plays, remembering how many balls and strikes. My notebook’s pages are flapping in the wind and my umbrella is struggling to liberate itself from my non-writing hand.

It occurs to me that it’s easy to pay attention to a ball game when it’s 70 degrees and a nice summer day. My wet puffy coat feels like an increasingly cold, soggy sponge. In contrast, Scorecard Mom seems perfectly content. I look over at Dale, who must be equally cold and rain-soaked, but even at this distance I can tell he’s very happy. I write a note to myself: “How does a Jane Austen fan from Edmonton find herself soaked and shivering at a junior college baseball game in Metro Detroit?”

I wander back to where Heidi and Bella and the scorecard lady are sitting. None of them look very happy. The players are as soaked as we are, but they’re clearly having fun, kids frolicking in the rain and the mud as their parents stoically look on. Every few minutes I hear “Caw! Caw!” but I don’t immediately recognize that it’s the Henry Ford players calling out to each other by mimicking hawk sounds. Their constant chatter reminds me of the Wayne State bench yesterday. They’re taking it seriously, but at the same time they realize it’s a game and that they won’t be able to play it forever.

We’re very close to the airport, and planes arc upward or downward overhead. The park is surrounded by those wide six-lane Michigan suburban streets with paperclip left-hand turns and miles of box stores and fast-food chain restaurants. Papp Park has a few more small ballparks like this one, plus a brightly coloured playground. The scoreboard isn’t functioning, and the coaches and players are trying to fix a gate to the field that keeps swinging open. One coach fiddles with it, and, believing it fixed, returns to the dugout. Two seconds after he turns his back, the gate pops open again, but I don’t have the heart to tell him.

As the game proceeds, I realize that the couple sitting next to us are likely the parents of the Henry Ford third baseman, Steven Milke, less because of his interactions with them than because of the way he talks to Bella. He looks like a ballplayer—tall and lean with muscular legs. As the infield become progressively muddier, Milke spends a lot of time grooming the dirt in front of him with his foot, running his toe back and forth to break up the slick surface. In his crouch at third before each pitch, he starts on the balls of his feet, ready to react to a ball down the line or in the hole between third and short. When he comes to bat in the bottom of the fifth, Milke hits a three-run home run to make the score 12-3. His mother, father, and, I suspect, even Bella, are hoping for one more run so that the 10-run mercy rule can be invoked and we can all go home.

I can hear the left fielder chattering to himself and making a strange “AA-oooo!” sound. His height and build remind me a little bit of Curtis Granderson and that makes me happy. I look at Dale and Scorecard Mom, convinced they’re both captivated by every pitch and every play. I imagine their appreciation of the beauty of this game is blocking out every raindrop and cold gust of wind, while I’m the only one distracted. The left fielder makes his “AA-oooh!” sound again and a teammate answers back. I realize this is the Hawks’ rally call and I am amused.

Dale walks back to where I’m sitting and says, “If they score a run, they’ll have a ten-run lead and call the game.” My attention is piqued: a mercy rule? For the first time in the entire game, I now have something to focus on. I notice that Dale, Scorecard Mom, and the left fielder are all stoically engaged in observing the finer points of the game and I chastise myself for merely cheering for the mercy rule. Yesterday’s doubts about having what it takes to do this baseball project haven’t gone away.

Henry Ford fail to score another run in their half of the fifth and in the top of the sixth, Macomb hit two more home runs to make the score 12-6. The home run total for the game stands at six. There is no bullpen at Papp Park so Jacob Hanoian warms up among the trees behind the backstop before coming in to get the final out of the top half of the sixth. There is little chance of the mercy rule now.

By the time Macomb take the field for the bottom of the sixth, it’s raining so hard that the Henry Ford players have to scramble to put Quick Dry down on the mound. The game should be called, but everyone involved seems determined to play all seven innings and no one in the small crowd is leaving. I’m more than ready to be out of the rain, but unwilling to leave before the end of the game.

Dale walks over to me and says, “It’s funny to see you here, soggy and watching baseball.” I concur though “funny” might not be the word I would pick. I keep thinking about how we have forty-eight more games to watch. I write “Forty-eight,” in my notebook and retrace the words with my pen until the raindrops blur my letters together. What have I got myself into? I begin to imagine a conversation that starts, “I need to back out of this project,” but stop myself.

Scorecard Mom pulls me out of my downward-spiraling thoughts by yelling, “C’mon! Let’s finish this up so we can get out of the rain.” My ears, like Bella’s, perk up. I’m not the only one cold and miserable and wanting to go home? I look at the field anew. The leftfielder, I notice, is calling everything. “Two more, two more, two more. Let’s wrap this up.” I look at the other six people in the stands and realize everyone, including, I think, Dale, is cheering not for a victory or a comeback but for a finished game. If I were the sort of person who yells in public, I’d be standing on the top of this rain-soaked, three-level bleacher yelling, “Git ’er done! Git ’er DONE!” like the guy behind me a few seasons ago at a Cincinnati Reds game. But I don’t yell in public. Instead I say, “Strike out strike out strike out” in my head, willing the game to be over. Dale stands beside me and says, “One more out and we can go. Maybe get some beer and some soup?” Now I can’t stop thinking about soup.

There are no real scoring threats in the last at-bat for either team and the game ends 12-6. As we’re walking to our car, two different men in trucks stop to ask the final score, and if they’re playing the second game. I tell them the score and try not to show what I think of their second question.

Nobody lingers after the final out. We walk to the car in silence and find a restaurant with a good beer list and big bowls of soup. As our core body temperatures return and my puffy coat gets a little puffier, I realize that this book is making me do things I wouldn’t normally do. If I’d left this game because I was too wet and cold, that would have been the end of this project for me. It’s unlikely we’ll be this wet or this cold again. I’ll stick it out. If you’re going to learn about baseball, you can’t just go on the sunny days.

Final Score: 12-8 Henry Ford