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Why I Love Baseball

posted by Kate Good on 05/01/10 at 02:44 PM

When I was a little girl, my grandpa tried to teach me how to play baseball. He started with a basic game of catch. I stood under one of the big evergreen trees in the backyard while Grandpa lobbed the ball to me.

           

Grandpa was a strong man. He spent much of his life doing physical work, delivering milk and working on a farm before he moved into senior management at one of the largest dairies on the East Coast. As a butcher, he killed steers with a single blow to their foreheads. But he was also exceptionally patient, and he always tossed the ball gently into the soft, wide catcher's mitt that I held.

           

I can't remember how long the lessons lasted, probably just a couple of afternoons during the days that I stayed with my grandparents. I was, and still am, a terrible athlete. I'm impatient, easily bored, and prone to dismiss anything that I don't naturally excel at, which includes all team sports. As an adult, I enjoy running, yoga, and biking, but as a kid, I was a disaster.

 

Grandpa was a natural athlete. At the end of the night, I would happily give up home plate to him so he could hit a few balls before we went back inside. As I watched, he tossed the ball straight up into the dim night air and then as the ball dropped, he would swing, and with one neat fluid arc send the ball rocketing low and hard the length of the large yard. When the ball finally landed somewhere at the back of the yard, I would glance up at Grandpa and watch as his normally solemn face split into a grin.

 

I think Grandpa would have played catch with me for years if I had showed any real interest. But I preferred to disappear for long periods of time, holing up somewhere in the house and reading book after book. Grandpa never asked me why I gave up and I never tried to explain. 

 

In the years that followed, Grandpa and I rarely talked about baseball. I paid enough attention to know how his favorite team, the St. Louis Cardinals, was doing each year, and he and I would chat about their season briefly, but that was it. 

 

A month and a half before his 82nd birthday, Grandpa woke early in the morning to find that he couldn't move the left side of his body. When he reached the hospital, the doctors told my grandparents what I think they already knew. Grandpa had suffered a stroke.

 

The strong, able man I knew changed. Confined to a wheelchair, he regained little strength on his left side. Grandpa would never play baseball again. But that didn't mean that either of us had given up on the game. 

 

In those first few months whenever I went to visit him, uncertain about what to say or ask, I read to him from October 1964, David Halberstam's book about that magical 1964 World Series when Lou Brock, Bob White, and Johnny Keane of the St. Louis Cardinals beat Mickey Mantle, Roger Marris, and Yogi Berra of the New York Yankees.

 

Sometimes, on a good night, he would interrupt my reading to tell me how to pronounce a player's name or explain why Marris' swing worked better than Mantle's or how Bob White could intimidate batters from the pitcher's mound. While he talked, I returned to those few nights a long time ago when I worried too much about fielding the ball and forgot to just enjoy our time together. 

 

We can never go back to those evenings when we played catch in the late summer sun.  But I can sit for a moment and just listen while Grandpa tells me in his few soft words what he remembers. And then baseball, which I have always disliked for its endless innings and boring commentary, comes alive as I see the game play out in Grandpa's words. I know I may never hit another ball or watch more than a few minutes of a game, but I can love this game because my grandpa shared it with me.

Good_kate Kate Good lives in Lancaster City, Pa.  She is a member of Blossom Hill Mennonite Church, Lancaster. She is assistant publisher at Good Books.

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