On With The Game

On a baseball team after 45 years — not even baseball, really, its handicapped cousin, slow-pitch softball, effortlessness does not come easy. On the field, my body still leans with each pitch, instinctive as a rabbit, toward where the batter's swing points, but my arm won't get the ball all the way from third to first, the fly balls wobble in my field of vision as I chase them, and at bat sometimes I hit pop flies — because I dropp my shoulder, a helpful teamate said. The past two Sundays in our practice games, the premonition in my belly turned out a truthful augury — I was chosen last, a catastrophe I never had to deal with as a boy. The guys are friendly. It's not high-pressure sport, to say the least. But in America, each time a man walks out onto a baseball field, he bears a world of skills and instincts, or their lack, and gains admission to the tribe — its social world, not just the game — or not. I think of how our old coach used to tell my boyhood neighbor, 'You throw just like a girl! ' and how that boy's trek out to center field each inning must have felt like miles to him. I never thought about it much, though, not till now.