Stroll Through Old Ballgame Of Life

Fifty years ago on a warm Saturday night, my best friend Jeanne and I gussied ourselves up in dotted Swiss and ruffles and shyly walked into a dance at the neighborhood Youth Center. We were 14. We wanted to meet boys.

We met Richard. He was tall, dark, and handsome.

Fifty years later, on another warm Saturday night in South Miami, four old friends are standing behind the dugout fence at a Little League ballgame, our faces rising and falling with the ump’s calls. Occasionally, we’re moved to question his eyesight and, once or twice, even his legitimacy.

The kid on the mound - the one with the good arm - is Richard and Jeanne’s grandson. He’s winning.

The team’s coach squats just inside the fence barking out heads-up advice and cheering the team on. He’s the pitcher’s dad, Richard and Jeanne’s older son.

Life is good, I’m thinking.

In 1948, Jeanne and I were concerned with dresses and dates. What we were going to wear to the game and whether or not our hair would stay curled in the south Florida humidity were tops on our priority list. We’d never heard of posterity.

That same year, Richard was heavily involved with a green ‘41 Chevy convertible. Jeanne has a well-worn black and white photo of him standing beside it, proudly flexing his 16-year-old muscles for her camera. Neat kid stuff.

No thoughts of generations to come.

Who does the boy look like, I’m wondering as I lace my fingers through the chain link and study his face - all concentration as he winds up to throw. His grandfather? The tall, dark, and handsome one? Or maybe Jeanne’s side of the family. Smaller. Softer features.

I can’t tell for sure.

Maybe he resembles an aunt or an uncle, as children so often do. I search his face for a familiar feature or a remembered expression. Maybe some recalled body language. That sometimes happens, doesn’t it?

Caught up in a time warp, I watch as the boy shakes off a signal from the plate, pauses, then nods acceptance and leans into his windup. The fans are seeing a ballgame. I’m seeing my old friends’ investment in immortality - the result of their life’s work.

And I’m thinking: Well done.

The ‘41 Chevy is long gone now.

Richard is still tall, with mahogany-colored skin, the result of a Cherokee grandmother and a lifetime of south Florida sun. The straight black hair has gone white and there’s a rakish mustache to match. But what about the rail-thin boy with the muscles?

He’s still in there. You can spot him in the man’s eyes every time he looks at his Jeanne - his best girl in the dotted Swiss and ruffles. His wife - the one who pinned a pair of wings on his uniform 44 years ago and kicked around from one air base to another with him. The lady with whom he shares three children.

The grandmother who enrolled in college and became a nurse at 55.

Steee-rike! The ballgame’s over. Our side wins.

Time for crab cakes and fried conch. And time for four old friends to sit around and dredge up memories of those careless years when we were too young to suspect that one day the sum total of our entire lives might be warming up on a pitcher’s mound in a south Florida ballpark.

xxxx