The smell of the grass and…

There are certain places that hold the spirit of the past, characters like ghosts transparent in the shape of another time. One of these places has a pull beyond resistance and every time I am in NY I have to follow the call…

The old baseball field sat in the lower part of the village and on game day you wound your way down the streets following the falls rushing and thrashing alongside. Decades later the descent was different, more than trading two wheels for four, and youthful agility for aching bones. The empty buildings and boarded-up windows should have offered a clue. Last time I was in this space my boys were young, and the land still resembled a field. Now it’s just a fossil beneath some steel structure and blacktop.

That field was my home, my hope for something bigger and better in life. I use to count the moments until I could fly downhill on my bike to smell fresh-cut grass and chase baseballs in a summer sky. It went so fast. It always does. Endings don’t announce themselves and hope always whispers “Another day…”

That last day, the last one on that field, alights often, a strange mix of age 15 and later life. Coach Rudy leans into the chain-link fence of the dugout, tears rolling down his cheeks. His whiskers tremble. Although I felt disappointed knowing our team was so close to something extraordinary, I was sure that opportunity would come again.

It didn’t.

And Rudy must’ve known. This special man, who gave all his free time to coaching a bunch of teen misfits into something special, felt the ending. I remember riding my bike home and wondering why a grown man would cry about losing a ballgame. It took years for it to make sense and the image always visits. It was more than a game. It was life. It was meaning and purpose that just happened to play out on a diamond in a tiny village, and a time and space that no longer exists. Except in the heart…

Photo Credit: Frankie Lopez (unsplash.com)