When was the last time I ran the bases on a ball field?
6am on the morning of December 22nd, 2020. It is the first full day of winter and it is dark.
A nearby neighborhood has a ball field. Rarely is it used.
But it was on this day, in freezing temps, while on a run, when no one was looking, this 64 year old man, did something that would have looked odd in daylight. I ran the bases. Twice. Not just this day, but the next as well.
It brought back memories of a sandlot in Myrtle Grove, Florida where from age 7 to 11 I spent almost every Saturday, and many weekday afternoons. There were no schedules or teams or coaches. Just some boys with a bat, weathered from hitting rocks and oyster shells across the yard, and any kind of ball. Sometimes I would walk to the field alone, lay on the grass, stare up at the clouds, and wait for someone else to show up. Eventually David Cosson or Karl Hoewt, my best friends, would. We called it "the field" and ignored the claims of Tonya Jackson that her daddy owned it and that we needed her permission to play there (even if he was the richest man on the street and our landlord). Something about that place is stuck in my memory and it seems so much bigger, as if my whole world was somehow connected to that spot of sand and centipede grass, sand burs and horned toads.
I have been back to the neighborhood several times growing up. I believe the field is gone now, replaced by houses. Funny though, I am not certain of this. Perhaps it is that the impression from my childhood is so strong that I cannot perceive anything else there, just the familiar worn out spots in the sod where the bases go, and sandy paths that link them in our version of a diamond.
Every kid needs a field like that. I hope that there are some children near here who see this one as I did. Who will think on it fondly in 2070 or 2080, and maybe, when no one is looking, run the bases.
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