I need to write about baseball. But I haven’t been breathing baseball. Been teaching Casey at Bat. Been getting lost in sports pages’ as we search for money words for the writing project. Maybe it’s just the baseball I was breathing had no words. Or none I could use in class. Maybe it was getting lost in Kadir Nelson’s paintings last Sunday. Got so lost in the paintings, thought for a second I was there. Thought I could hear Paige dispensing some wisdom as he waited for Gibson. Maybe it was listening to Sharon Robinson talk about her father breaking the color barrier, and having enough time to still check at home for broken ice on the lake. Maybe all that, chicken and beer silenced my baseball being. So like Paige, I won’t rush, the game won’t start without me.
Like most days it was a nine-inning sort of day.
- Getting out of bed felt like watching Verlander arrive on the mound, suddenly I felt wildly unprepared for the day.
- Not even nine, and already a student mocked me. Like Valentine mocking our city with his New York talk. But I didn’t have sports radio on my side to call in. So I just called the kids mom.
- The treat of delivered Dunkin Donuts was the fresh start of a .000 ERA.
- The iced tea almost being split over my laptop by a student was Price Fielder at bat.
- Realizing I had a meeting during my prep period was Ortiz striking out in the sixth.
- Running across the street for a coke, sausage, and the first pitch before the meeting, well, that was before the mighty Ortiz struck out.
- Trying to explain a radio to my students, that was the five-second TV time delay of the game.
- Having students crowded around my computer at dismissal, silently but excitedly watching the gamecast with me, all frustrations of the day forgiven, was Sweeney’s late triple.
- Running across the street right after work only to see the collapse of Mudville, was the absence of Bard’s 100MPH pitch.
Luckily, it’s a long season. And we don’t need to rush, not just yet.
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