I
believe that in baseball we find order in a chaotic universe. Like a
amazingly orchestrated ballet, or the tide to the shore, baseball
lets people work side by side in a constant rhythm of movement.
A
baseball game is only as long as it needs to be for one team to win.
There is no clock, no timekeeper, no buzzers or no bells . There is
only the rustle of the ball as it moves towards the plate, the crack
of the bat as the batter hits it or the muffled thud of the glove if
he doesn’t. One player at a time works to help his team. The
pitcher sends the ball. The batter tries to hit it. The catcher
catches it if the batter misses. Someone else tries to catch it if he
doesn’t. Every victory and every success is there on the diamond
and the team holds together no matter what.
The
unhurried cadence of baseball was my lullaby in a childhood made
uncertain by adults. On warm summer nights, as I bunkered down in my
tiny bed trying to disappear amidst the covers, my grandfathers old
box TV—tinny echoes bathed in static—revealed the soothing, deep
voices of baseball announcers. All must be well with the world, I
thought. A baseball game is on somewhere.
Ty
Cobb, Sam Crawford, Al Simmons. The very swing of their names brought
me comfort. These are the giants in baseball. Here were men who were
exactly where they were supposed to be: left field, center field,
first base, the pitcher’s mound, and doing exactly what they should
be doing: throwing, catching, hitting, running in that unspoken and
unhurried poetry that is baseball.
The
elders (such as my dad and uncles) in my life used baseball as a way
to vent and show their emotions through yelling and protesting the
umpires calls, and I have grown older I have somehow adopted their
methods. Although it produces a constant joy that we seldom find
anywhere else. The baseball diamond becomes our church and our deep
observance of the game becomes our ritual. I could see the relief in
my grandfathers brow when we would watch re-runs of old Tigers games.
TY caught the deep fly ball to left field. I noticed the smile on my
grandfather’s face when Sam Crawford smacked one into the gap
between right and center field. When one Tiger or another did his job
well, our shaky ground solidified.
Baseball’s
calm , its lack of fury, taught me that in small ways we can find
redemption. We find it in the constants in life, the movements, the
rituals, the traditions that remain long after all else is gone.
