(Sunday Paper, Year VIII, Issue 11)

Growing up I never really played on nice ball fields.

The ones I played on weren’t really fenced in, and if they were it was only kind of fenced in on one side.

The grass was sparse and the dirt was choppy.

One year I played on a travel team and we played at these beautiful fields of the type that I only ever saw driving past.

That’s continued as an adult - I always notice when there’s a nice little league ball field.

And, I suppose, when that ball field goes away.

That’s what you see in that picture above. (Thanks to my daughter for taking the picture on the way back from one of our fall football-watching trips down to New York.)

It’s in Connecticut, along I-84, I think in Vernon?, on a road I’ve been driving for the past 20 years. (That’s a conservative estimate…I got my first car in 2002 or 2003, I think. Probably 2002. Before that I passed it driving in the passenger seat with my dad or backseat with both parents, so maybe even more than 20 years.)

For the past 15 or so years, that ball field has just been a field.

You can see the clubhouse with the green roof to the right in the picture - use that to orient yourself. (Or to buy the field - the for sale sign has a phone number on there.) Over to the left of that there’s a dark open space - that’s one of the dugouts. The white rectangles you can see to the left and right of the dugout are scoreboards. I guess maybe it was a complex with multiple fields now that I think about it.

I slowly watched over the years as it went from baseball diamond to empty field to overgrown field. First weeds, then grass that obscured any trace of an infield, and eventually making it almost unrecognizable as what used to be a ball field.

It’s been amazing to watch as a natural phenomenon, and I’ve been meaning to write about it for some time.

I didn’t think it would be March already by the time I wrote about it.

But I like that I’m telling you about it now - because it becomes a reverse metaphor. A dead ball field, at a time when everything is coming back to life…and a place where no baseball is happening at a time when baseball is returning everywhere.

I’m particularly excited about this baseball season. I have some fun plans on the docket. I’ll let them unfold over the next couple of weeks, just in time for Opening Day.

I hope you’ll enjoy it all as well.

What I’ve Been Enjoying

Am I allowed to enjoy something I’m not doing? Sure, I make the rules. I was scheduled for jury duty on Monday. I was supposed to call on Friday to find out whether they needed me. This happened back in June, and when I called I wasn’t needed.

I tried not to get my hopes up on Friday, but I did…and it paid off! No jury duty for me. Unfortunately this means instead of not being called back for three years I’ll be getting another summons in December, probably.

Jury duty makes me anxious to begin with. The time between getting that letter and making that call is also anxiety-causing for me. But getting that message that I don’t have to report…well, that almost makes it all worthwhile.

Notes

*Here’s a fun one (I could have put this in “What I’ve Been Enjoying” but I already mentioned women’s basketball so let’s just call this one a Note): BU beat Army on Thursday night in a close one. (The game I went to a couple of weeks ago was also BU-Army and it was also a nail-biter.) After blowing a big second-half lead BU missed a shot at the end of regulation and the game went to overtime. Then, in overtime, BU outscored Army 16-0! That win advanced BU to the Patriot League final, which is today at noon. My older two daughters have no interest in the stress of a playoff game - no matter how little interest they have in the teams playing - but my youngest knew how much I wanted to go and told me she’d come with me. So we’ll be watching someone cut down the nets at Case Gym this afternoon as they advance to the NCAA Tournament - hopefully it’s Boston University!

*That reminds me that in 2009 or maybe 2011 I went with my friends to a men’s final (BU was in America East back then) and saw BU advance to the Tournament. I have the pictures somewhere - maybe on Facebook. I think this was a close one, iced in the final minutes with free throws.

*And that just reminded me that years before that I went and saw Vermont beat BU (again on the men’s side) in a heartbreaker - I think BU missed a potential winner at the buzzer - in another America East final.

*Dare I even say that Pilates might be working for me? I don’t know…but I’m at a little more than a week of regular classes and maybe (?) I’m feeling a tiny bit more flexibility? Stay tuned. I haven’t been doing much else yet following the marathon, but I suspect I’ll be back to doing a little running soon.

*The social media links are below. Thanks for following along!