7. The Best Softball Game Ever Played in Lowville
The memory: I was sitting behind home plate, on a hill, in the park in my hometown, watching the local softball team play a visiting team. It was meant to be just a regular game of softball, part of a regional league, part of a run for a local championship and a pennant.
Unfortunately, the umpire didn't show up, and after some time, the players knew that there would be no game that summer's evening. Or not a game that counted. But they did not go home. After all, they came to play, and there was an audience of family and friends. It was a night out. So they appointed umpires from their own teams to officiate when their team was at bat, and they went ahead with the game.
Honestly, in all my life, I remember this as the most entertaining game of baseball I have ever seen. Why?
Why? Because everyone acted out the extremes of baseball as they played. No one cared who won, and no one had to play it safe, and everyone knew everyone else's weaknesses and strengths. And everyone over-acted, hilariously.
The designated umpire always over-stated his call of a 'Strike' or 'Ball' or 'You're Out'...with a flamboyant physicality, stretching his syllables for what seemed minutes, and adopting a slow-motion pose.
At which point one of the players leapt toward the umpire and yelled his disapproval in his face--the catcher if it was a ball, the batter if it was a strike. I'm sure anyone who knows baseball can imagine this. But it was unrelenting, and so enjoyable I can still see it.
This wasn't all, though. Every player, on every base and in the outfield, and every batter, played in the same style. The batters warmed up with several more bats in their hands than they could lift. Every play in the infield was a lunge with a spectacular fall. Every catch in the outfield was a choreographed dance that seemed to say 'the sun is in my eyes, I can't see!' But best of all, and what I remember most, was the catcher--remember that he was catching for batters from his own team. He never stopped talking, to the pitcher, to the batter, to the umpire. It was a verbal display that, honestly, I didn't know he had in him. Beating his fist in his glove, I remember something like:
"That's-the-old-pepper-old-salt-old-buddy-old-boy-pitch-it-right-in-there-pitch-it-right-in-here-it-comes-here-it-comes-right-across-the-plate-buddy-old-boy-and-SWING-[pause pause]-whaddaya-want?"
And so it continued, pitch after pitch, distracting the batter, and then turning to the umpire to challenge the call.
Arguments were concocted, dirt was kicked, outrage was performed. The 'game' ended, and everyone went home.
It was great theatre. Of course, there was real softball to be played, and games to be won and lost. But for the spectator uninterested in the stats, this was the best baseball.
The context: Softball was an important game where I grew up. Football was not important, because it was expensive to play, and as I understood the local culture, a game without history or any possibility of individual personality. Football was a game for institutions--like schools. Baseball--more correctly Softball, played with a larger ball that wouldn't travel as far, for use in smaller fields--Softball, then, was a game for the farming community and the inner city both. It was very important where I grew up, though I never played it. It was a way into the camaraderie of the local farming community. And it was a way out as well. I remember stories told to me by my father and brothers, of young men from families that had moved to the region a hundred years earlier--of young men being scouted for the professional and semi-professional leagues in Canada and the United States, and for college varsity teams. I don't know how much of it was true--but I remember it well enough that I believe the idea of making it as a professional ball player was a persistent part of the local culture. And I never heard anyone talk about any other sport in that way.
The 'game' that I described above was held in one of two well-kept ball diamonds in the community park created in the midst of this farming community. The park was made up of parts of several farms, purchased by (or given to) the township to provide a recreational space for the entire county. The diamonds were well-used by the local residents, so far as I could tell, perhaps created with them in mind. What I know is that this area was well-groomed, with a full diamond and pitching mound (though for Softball, no raised mound was needed). I remember that it had full fencing behind homeplate (just like the major leagues), a few wooden benches behind it for spectators, on a gently sloping hill that could accommodate a good many more. And there was a kind of wooden structure in the midst of these benches, that I believe had the ability to display the score, and had, under lock and key, some of the equipment necessary for the games. There was also, at least for part of the time I remember, lighting that allowed for night games, though the season generally ran during the height of the summer, when the days were very long. All in all, the game was important to the community, and the community supported the game.
All players had uniforms, for my home town in red and white. Beyond that, I have no idea what equipment was available to them. But I do have an old baseball cap from that period. I didn't play, but I must have been a fan...to keep the cap.
To me, the players that evening performed the extremes of the game that they were never allowed to display in competition. Under normal circumstances, as I remember, they didn't display emotion, they didn't smile, they didn't 'emote' in any way--a part of the professionalism of the ball player was to internalize all possible clues as to what might come next. They were poker players, never letting on what they thought about 'the play.'
But just for this one game, they could act out--not poker players, but wrestlers. And if they could intimidate the other player into a mistake, that was a fine moment....
UPDATE: Just recently, as I edited this for posting, I was told that those two baseball diamonds, in that park in the middle of that farming community, were being ploughed under. The park remains well-used, but now by an ever-sprawling urban community within easy driving distance, a community in need of open air and flowing water.
But not in need of a ball diamond. The farming community is gone, and with it all the boys of summer.
