Softball!

So yesterday, I was up at the crack of dawn and on the road. It was the first day of practice for Ty's Ballbreakers. Outside of the Dugout, where we meet up, I was a hell of a lot pluckier than my fellow teammates, most of whom had rolled out of bed and over to the Dugout. I met four of the New Guys on the team (one of whom is pretty spicey), and extended warm greetings to returning teammates. And then we all piled into our cars and headed up to Randall's Island.

It had rained on the way up, and it was drizzling outside of the Dugout, but when we got to Randall's Island, it was a great day for softball. Just beautiful.

We stretched. And ate donuts. And then spent time throwing the ball back and forth. Then came batting practice. We positioned ourselves out in the field, and one by one took turns in the batters box. One of the first balls came sailing out my way to where I was in right center field, I charged for it... and Yikes! My legs wouldn't do that. The ball dropped in the grass before I could get there, I scooped it up and fired it off to my cut-off man at second. Then, I turned to one of the other outfielders and said by way of explanation, "Y'know I'm turning forty this year."

That became my schtick for the day. When the ball went by me at the plate, when I missed an easy catch: y'know I'm turning forty this year.

And gosh, I'm turning forty this year!.

Now, I'm cool with that. A new decade. My life divides pretty neatly into decades. My teens, my twenties, my thirties. Each one is a novel in and of itself. inciting force, conflict, rising action, denoument, resolution. And I'm sort of feeling a kind of fin du siecle ennui. Time to start the next chapter. Solve the next great karmic riddle.

I made a good catch of a pop fly that came my way. I did pretty well when I took my turn at bat, just relaxing into it and clearing my mind, letting my body memory do the work. I got some really good hits.

Even though I'm turning forty this year.

Throughout the day, I had this sense (and all the twinges and aches in my body wouldn't let me forget) that I am, in fact, getting older. There will be less and less that I'm able to get my body to do. In every successive year, I won't be flying down the baselines like I did the year before. And then, one year, I'll have to hang it up. (Hopefully I'll be 78 or so then. Life without softball is a mistake.) I am getting older.

But there was a moment, while I was out there in the field, feeling the warm sun on me, hearing the campy banter of the Ballbreakers, feeling my muscles tense at the crack of the bat connecting with the ball, the comfort of my leather glove... I realized I was wrong. To take to the softball field is to leave time and the sorrows of age behind. It is to enter eternity. Whether I'm forty or eighty, when I lace up my cleats, grab my glove, and go trotting out into the grassy field, it will always always always be Eternal Softball Summer.

And when my heart beats for the last time, that's the way I'd like to spend that eternity. Out there, in the sunshine, playing softball.

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