There’s something beautiful about baseball fields in the summertime.
It’s something every purist, every fan, every man and child who’s ever stepped out of the stands and onto the field senses in the deepest part of their heart. It’s the way the outfield grass rolls out in the richest of greens and soft as cashmere, a gently glowing emerald sea; the perfectly manicured infield, not a pebble or bad hop to be found in the burnt orange land where shortstops and second-basemen roam; the ivory baselines that race from home plate to foul pole, straight as an arrow; the smell of fresh cut grass that mingles with a subtle earthiness in the warm caress of the afternoon breeze. It doesn’t take much to imagine the boom of the loudspeakers and picture the pristine uniforms of the eighteen that toe the foul line, swaying almost imperceptibly in unison to the regal chords of the national anthem. Then, with a fierce yell, charging across the chalk battle-lines from whence they’ll return with jerseys soiled and pants torn, dirt caked to a fine sweaty veneer from the labor of their love. The smack of leather on leather, the crack of maple that echoes off the outfield fence; it’s a scene almost too beautiful for words. Even in trying you feel guilty, knowing the impossibility of doing it justice.
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To be a child is to dream, and like millions of kids I grew up daring to hope that I would someday make the big leagues. I was going to be a ballplayer, one of the chosen few that play out their love in front of audiences in the millions, and get paid for it no less. At night I dreamt of walk-off homers and shoestring catches, and images of stadiums alight with the flash of camera bulbs like so many fireflies danced behind my closed eyelids. The most powerful, though, were the scenes in which I stood tall and defiant upon the mound, scoffing at the titans of the game that were delivered to the plate to face me on what seemed to be a never-ending conveyor-belt, their heads hung low in shame as they retreated back into the darkness of the dugout three blazing pitches later. That The Babe and Hammerin’ Hank were long before my time and the stuff of legends was of little consequence – I struck them out both with the same resounding conviction as I did the others.
This was boyish fantasy to be sure, but the funny thing is, there truly existed a small but certain possibility of realizing the stuff of my dreamscapes. The dream of becoming a ballplayer is somewhat different than others which tempt childhood imaginations; there’s something tangible in it that’s lacking in dreams of astronauts, firefighters, detectives, and other glorified professions. The child who refuses to eat anything but freeze-dried foods and powdered milk is perhaps a little off; the kid who sets fires only to practice putting them out is a pyromaniac; the Law & Order wanna-be who tracks murderers and thieves has a death wish; but the one who paces off the distance between the mound and home plate in his backyard and fires pitch after pitch through the center of an old tire-swing, well, there’s something to be had there. You can work, and work tirelessly, at being a big leaguer, and for me that meant it was a dream I could touch and could taste: it was real.
For a time my summers were an endless parade of baseball camps and clinics, long days spent in the scorching noontime heat laboring through drill after drill in an ecstasy that fought off the sun’s angry glare better than any sunscreen ever could. I was camper #37, #72, #21, but the anonymity of paper numbers tacked to my shirt birthed the urge to make myself known, to attach a name and face to the blocked script on my back that ordered me from station to station and field to field. I was eager to learn and eager to impress; I waited for the tiniest morsel of knowledge I could glean from my instructors that would give me an advantage, anything that would give me a leg up on my competition and bring my dream closer. Half of my coaches were only high school or college kids – players little removed from my own situation and likely still running the path of their own dreams – but I never second-guessed a word. In fact, it was something I respected, for they knew what it took to reach the next stepping stone along the way, and they left footsteps I could follow.
I had determination and a strong right arm, and together they placed me on all-star team after all-star team from little league on up, teams that took me all over the northeast and battled opponents from east coast to west. I was the fireballer in those days, and the top draft pick in my youth baseball’s coaches meetings – a draft in which the number of figures behind a dollar sign meant nothing; the only signing bonus was a jersey that actually fit. To this day I can remember a friend offering the then substantial amount of ten dollars for the promise that I would take a little something off my fastball for his next at-bat (No one mistook me for Nolan Ryan, but I could pop the catcher’s mitt a little), but it was an offer I couldn’t bring myself to accept. I was no Shoeless Joe.
As a sophomore I started for my high school’s varsity team, pitching in the three-man rotation over several upperclassmen who surely had other ideas about my role on the team. It was a goal I had set long before and had always determined to realize, and the night I saw my name listed on the bulletin board outside the coach’s office was one of the happier ones up until that point. The anxieties that had plagued me through a week of tryouts were finally put to rest, and I devoted myself more than ever to the task at hand. This was to be the year that I proved myself, separated myself from the pack in a way that would nudge me further down the path of my big-league dream. I had been given a golden opportunity, and I was determined to make the most of it.
Truth be told, it was an up-and-down year. I had competed against older players before, but this was the first time I struggled to adjust to the elevated competition: there was a challenge I had naively failed to anticipate. I was facing opponents that were several years my elders and in some cases very much men, and at a time in which a year or two of growth and development makes a world of difference. This was a year of firsts, and my sophomore year also marked the first dimming of the light which shone so radiantly upon my dream. I found that I wasn’t as invincible as I had imagined myself to be, for my opponents were practiced hitters and I could no longer get away with curveballs that flattened out and fastballs that drifted accidentally over the heart of the plate. In effect, reality had struck me over the head, and I realized the rarity of a talent that could command a path without obstacle. Perhaps I had held on a little longer than most and invested in it more of myself than is typical, but all at once I understood the futility – I understood why only one in thousands ever reach a level at which baseball becomes a paid pleasure, and why an even smaller percentage ever reach the sport’s most upper echelon. Make no mistake: I was a ballplayer, and though my dreams were now grounded more in reality, they were there nonetheless. There was more for me than high school baseball; I was sure of it.
My senior year confirmed what I had known all along: I would be a college baseball player, my faith, my time, my blood, sweat, and tears all to be rewarded. I was a unanimous all-star selection in my region, named to the all-state team, pitched my team through the playoffs to a sectional championship. I was the first in several years from my relatively small high school to make the enviable transition to college ball, one of the few granted the privilege of continuing down the path laid out in so many dreams, one paved with fastballs that painted the black and an unconditional love. There hadn’t been any disillusions about playing big-time college ball, or an invitation to the Cape – those were the uppermost ranks of the collegiate elite, the highest tier of skill and potential – but there was never a doubt I’d make my home somewhere. I had put in my time. I was ready.
But in the summer before my freshman year something happened. Something in my right arm – the one that had been courted by college coaches and which held the promise of four more successful years – went dead. There’s no other way to explain it: it was as if there was a drain hidden somewhere in my arm, in the crook of my elbow, maybe, or in the back of my shoulder, and someone had pulled the stopper. Not all the way; no, it was as if someone had in passing jarred it loose, just barely nudged it aside. There was no tidal wave of release, only a slow and steady trickle as the life which had before roared in my arm ebbed quietly away. It was gradual, cruel in the way an older person, once vibrant and full of life, will fade in old age, withering away until they’re only a shell of their former self. There was no rationale, no medical diagnosis, only…nothing. The baseball gods had slighted me in a way that was difficult to accept, and without any tangible explanation for the woes of my pitching arm, closure was a near impossibility.
I lasted two years in the ranks of college baseball, time spent trying to recapture what had been inexplicably lost and filled with new arm slots, altered grips, shortened and lengthened strides, and completely new mechanics. This wasn’t the melodrama of an afternoon soap, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t haunted in a way by what I had been and still should’ve been, perhaps because there was no sense of closure. I had no reason, no explanation, and there was only one direction left to take. Sure I was hungry and I worked hard, pushed myself even harder than I had before when natural skill sufficed, but for the first time in my life I was nothing but just another in the long line of mediocre players, those who had abandoned their dreams long ago. I was chasing fool’s gold, and I knew it. Baseball had issued me my walking papers, and all that was left was the leaving.
For twenty years I’d been molded and defined by baseball, forged in the fire of Rawlings and Louisville Sluggers. I'd lived my life around camps and practices, around summer tournaments and varsity schedules, and around the infamous northeast indoor pre-seasons. In high school I’d walked through my small town world on the laurels of my athletic accomplishments, and in college, going home for holidays and for the summer it was always, “How’s baseball? You playing a lot? Still throwing the heat?” (laugh and playful shove). It was simply who I was; people cared, but it was never “How do you like your major? Any idea what career you’ll pursue? How’re your grades?” I was a baseball player, plain and simple, and in a way it was ironic. In earlier years I’d committed myself to earning an identity within the game that was more than just a number, but now the identity I had worked so diligently to form had all but consumed me. In a way baseball had eclipsed who I was off the field, a moon strung together with red stitching that shadowed everything else I had managed to shine in. I was an athlete, and baseball defined me – it was my pleasure and my pain, my successes and failures, my identity and my calling: it was me.
In a way I had to be reborn, baptized again by a hand that had never gripped a curveball. There was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it looked nothing like the green outfield pastures and orange clay infields of my youth. Baseball fields in the summertime were still beautiful, but from a distance now as if I were looking from some far-off point. I’d hung up the cleats and surrendered my dreams, but there was also a beginning to be found in this regrettable end – the beginning of a life after baseball in a world much larger than 405 feet to center.
