An Inkling of Spring

KEIZER--Driving down by the local ballpark with a few extra moments to spare this morning.   If Yankee Stadium is the St. Peter's of ballparks, then this is a strip-mall church-front.  Plenty of parking, blocky cement construction, and rather uncomfortable aluminum bleachers sloping lazily.

But it's all the same inside, right?  Without the banners from the local Painless Dentist's office, et al, hanging on the outfield fence, I can see the elements of this homely park patterned together to make a ball field: the mathematically precise corner at home base; the pitcher's hill sixty and one half feet away; the flag pole, empty today, upright next to the scoreboard; the short porch in left field with a picnic slope behind it; the on-deck circles and the casual, unfenced bullpens along the foul lines.

There is plenty going on in the world today: riots in Egypt are toppling the world's oldest country, the first twenty-five miles of road is paved in South Sudan, the world's newest country.  Earthquake refugees homeless in their homeland in Haiti, a congresswoman in hospital, shot, while I imagine her cold-hearted, pallid assailant languishes in the pink stripes usually reserved for captured Mexican immigrants.

And though its permanence doesn't fix any of those things, the ball field doesn't change.  Still ninety feet to first.  Still a loose-armed swing of the batter warming up as he looks down to the pitcher and reads the infield.  Still a cheerful hum from the stands, a pattern of licorice and popcorn sold, shirt numbers called over the loudspeaker, batters cheered.  All together, a soft summer sound like the breeze in the trees or a brook over stones.  I can hear it in the memory of my ears.

The world is not perfect today.  Baseball will never be as important as riots, infrastructure, or earthquakes.  Indeed, there is a strong argument to be made that sport is unimportant, petty, a simple diversion for the little-minded.  But here at the ball park, the lines will be precise, the measurements on the outfield walls exact, the chalk lines bright and square.  The umpires will be just and impartial.  The grass will be bristling and full green, the lights will come on, children will clap and smile, players will dream of bigger things and bigger parks.  The world will be no more perfect tomorrow, though perhaps this ball park, and a hundred others—school yards to Camden Yards—can encircle some small spheres of near-perfection in the midst of it all, just for a few hours at a time.

This morning was cold and bright, a sunny anomaly that we Northwesterners recognize as a false prophet of summer, a week of pseudo-spring that belies the rainy months yet to come.  The field was still patchy and yellowy-green, the infield dirt was crumbly and pitted.  The parking lot was empty.  The digital billboard blasted ads for an upcoming RV show.

But.  But the sky is blue, the sun is shining (coldly yet) on the grass, and pitchers and catchers report in two weeks.