9:40pm: Field No. 2
Paulo & Rod-Man
Sorry I haven't posted anything in a week, but I've been busy with a new book. Of course, the last one is yet unfinished, but an idea struck me, and if there's one thing I've learned about fiction it's to strike while the iron is hot. So, I plugged in my Sunbeam and pummelled it about the apartment for a while, and then set about the business of the book, and have been busy working on it lo these many days. But, there's a light at the end of the tunnel, it's called the weekend, and this weekend it consisted of softball, a triple-header on Sunday at Hecksher, Fields No. 2 & 4. Rod-Man joined me for the late games on field 4 and we had a great time on the sun-blanched diamonds of Central Park, with kids frolicking in the playground nearby, the local footmeisters playing soccer on the little league-sized field No. 1, and a bunch of locals and tourists sitting in the bleachers watching our game, including this poor, sweet old guy sitting in the third row with his nephew. It was during batting practice before the 3rd game, I was on deck, just acting as backstop to return unhit balls to the pitcher, and the batter fouled a ball into the bleachers. I yelled "heads up" and this old guy in the white suit didn't look, didn't duck, he just dove for cover, taking a nose-dive off the edge of the bleachers and face-first into the dirt. Jesus, I'm thinking this guy was brainwashed by Frankenheimer's Manchurians in WWII and "heads up" was his signal code; it was like I activated this guy and he was back in the trenches in Okinawa or something! So I immediately ran over to this guy, he was 75 if he was a day, and he was pretty well shaken up. I helped him up and he was checking all the moving parts, and to my great surprise and relief it seemed like everything was still connected. I gently explained to him that "heads-up" means cover your head or something, don't take a swan dive off the high board.
Meantime, this same batter is still taking his swings, and I told him he now had reckless endangerment, possession of a low batting average, and harrassment of a war veteran on his rap sheet. This, however, proved to be no deterrant, as two pitches later he fouled off another ball, this one straight up behind the backstop where people were walking, two Asian women included, and right in the path of this falling missile. "Heads up," I yelled again (like it did me any good the first time) and luckily they did not put their "heads up," because the ball glanced off the top-front of one of them, and if she had looked up at that moment (as I'd unwisely advised her to) the rest of her Sunday afternoon would likely have occurred in the emergency room.
I looked at the kid in the batter's box. "Well, that's failure to put the ball in play, failure to yield to the Mendoza Line, and bodily assault with a badly batted ball," I told him. "And by the way: strike two."
I am by this time seriously debating the use of that phrase as a warning signal, considering the adoption of something less directive, like "the sky is falling" or something. Of course, there is the fowl possibility of acquiring another derogatory nickname but, oh well.
And it didn't end there, either. Must be there's gonna be a full moon tonight, because in the bottom of the fourth, just as I was stepping into the batter's box, another guy rode by on his new mountain-bike, tried to pull to a stop, and crash-landed in a heap behind the backstop. I ran over to him to see if he was all right, and he had some scrapes and bruises, and a little gash on his left knee, but again all the moving parts seemed to be functioning. Seems he was unused to the stirrups on his pedals, and I have to admit my own give me fits if I try to stop to quickly and am slow to pull my foot out of the damned thing, and it's cost me a tire on at least one occasion, and just last week at that, but that's another story.
So anyway, we're playing our game, and along about the bottom of the fifth I'm running after a long fly ball to deep right field and nearly crash into the left fielder from Field No. 2, as the Hecksher fields overlap in the outfield and always have and always will, so the outfielders are dancing between the raindrops to get a bead on their own popups and stay out of the way of the other guy's, and so forth. Well, after the play I turn to thank the guy for clearing the way and find it is none other than Paulo, a teammate of Rod's and mine on our Mo's Amigos softball and It's On, Old No. 7, Brother Jimmy's and Mo's Giants football teams. Yikes! It's a small world (but I wouldn't want to paint it). So after the game Rod-Man and I walked by Diamond 2 and said hello to Paulo (whence the photo above) and that was a nice little spontaneous confluence of the planets, and all right here on our own little postage stamp of America. It's called Central Park; and by the way, it's real, and it's spectacular.
Posted by cronish at July 28, 2002 10:47 PM