To Cure What Ails You

SALEM--Spring training started yesterday.  Not the sunny one down in Southern Southizona, with the charming man-boy millionaires of summer jogging in mesh jerseys.  Spring training started yesterday in my back yard.

It started when I came home from work all of a funk.  Too many hours in front of a computer screen, too many days of wearing a tie, too many evenings in a very fine recliner.  Despite my poor patient wife’s ministrations I was irreconcilable.

I have learned in my years that there is a certain simple joy to be found in the essential tasks of sport: a clean dive into a chilly pool, the union of a receiver with a tightly spiraling football, the neatly described arc of a 21-foot bank shot; but the triumph of them all is a well timed reversal of a pitched ball just over the heads of the infield.

This will cure what ails you.

My wife is the Commissioner of this league tonight; she drafted me, the 8-year-old, the 4-year-old, and the baby, who I put in an oversized stocking cap, propped up in the stroller, and instructed her to call my balls and strikes.  (Her zone was a little narrow, but it’s early on in the season.)  The wife drafted us straight out to the back yard so she could get dinner finished without my grumbling wrecking up the flavor.

The 8-year-old, he comes from the left side, with a duck-toed stance and a dangerous bat for anything I left up too high.  The 4-year-old is a rookie right-hander with a close stance, a fat bat, and a pair of Oshkosh overalls.

I pitched—from the stretch, and fielded the zingers both of them tapped all the way back to my long-suffering neighbor’s fence.  Those two whopped good long hits, even for the little guy; and they scrambled around the tree and back to the wall, which our ground rules state is a single and a home run all in one if you can make it back to the wall without me throwing the ball at you.  (I’ll admit I went all out to tater the 8-year-old, but missed mostly, and only half-stepped it after the 4-year-old’s grounders.)

The 8-year-old cracked one of the hard plastic wiffle balls almost all the way around, proud when I showed it to him nearly bisected into hemispheres.  The 4-year-old mostly wanted to wear the batter’s helmet, kept it on even in the field a la John Olerud.  Mrs. Commish came out to let us know dinner was ready, and to watch the rookie sensation hit.

We tromped inside.  My midwinter blues had dissipated amidst the sharp cold air and the sharply batted balls and the boys’ heels turned up speeding along the base paths.  Here is another thing I’ve learned in my years.  Here is something better than a clean catch or a square hit, here is a subtle joy pieced together bit by bit, not unlike the game itself: to watch your son strike a plastic curve ball, to see his knees twist and bend in the follow-through, his hand dismiss the bat, to see his small face upturned to follow his clean single through the chill blue air.

That will cure what ails you.