Baseball Backwards

Painting the Black: Throwing pitches that catch the very perimeter of the strike zone over the edge of home plate, which is made of black rubber.

            What is the shape of a life?  Is it a straight line, where all events are laid out one after another, with no weight given to one over the next, other than chronology?  Is it an analog signal like sound with crests and troughs, and different story lines running alongside one another at different wavelengths? 

Perhaps it’s a baseball park.

            I don’t mean a baseball diamond but the whole park, from the plate spreading out along the baselines to the outfield wall, from foul pole to foul pole.  Perhaps if our lives are in this shape, we start not at home plate but instead out in the bleachers - baseball backwards - where our futures are as wide as the entire wall from the first base to the third base line, open and full of potential. We climb over the wall and drop down onto the warning track, an ominous beginning. 

            Ominous maybe, but the early part is easy, free, and forgiving.  These are warm days and cool summer evenings with nothing but open, grassy fields on which to run and play.  Experiment is the word of the day, every day.  Try something and if it doesn’t work try it again or try something else.  We get comfortable in the saddle, we work the clutch, and we learn where all the roads go and where the shortcuts are, both good and bad.

            Those who grow to love us and care about us root from the dugout.  The home team.  They cheer at our successes and groan at our losses, where we are obviously the victim of bad calls.  Those cheering from the stands want us to succeed but don’t love us as much as love the game.

            But when we reach the infield, the diamond, it’s all business.  There it’s warriors…um warring.  Mistakes are not often forgiven, the penalties for taking chances are harsher, but so are the rewards.  You might get caught off second, skittering back and forth in a rundown, a pickle, desperate to avoid being called out, bargaining, “I don’t really want third, hell, I’ll even go all the way back to first if you just let me keep playing.”  You might be standing on third with less than two outs, watching a lazy fly ball drop into the outfielder’s glove against the centerfield wall, allowing you to all but meander home.

            Somewhere along the base paths is where we supposedly peak.  But does everyone have a peak?  Does everyone have a point in their life where they reach the “Be All You Can Be” moment?  What if you peak out there in the outfield, just this side of the 325 foot marker on the short porch that is the right field wall? (Your son is very intelligent Mrs. Wright, he just needs to apply himself).  What if you peak over there at third, stranded?  Can you have more that one peak, an apogee cluster perhaps, go three for four in an MVP performance, jog down the baseline, toss your helmet and hop on the plate like you’re stomping the last piece of a perfect puzzle into place?

            Are there those of us who don’t peak, or have low foothill-sized peaks?  Humble successes like good parking spots or two yokes in an egg?  Can a life be a success if that life never reaches a point where it’s on anyone radar, where it’s just day after day of showing up and keeping the waters still?

            Does it matter?  After all every game ends.  And every game ends in the same place; home plate.  The vanishing point of the baseball field, the smallest dot of measurable ground rule, a tiny black corner of worn and abused rubber; dirt smattered, cleat chafed, umpire brushed, and clay stained.  A warrior’s shield discarded and as forgotten as the man upon whose arm it once hung.