Friday, June 16, 2006
Big League Baseball
Every few years my old college buddy and I drive off to a big city ballpark for some major league baseball. This time we chose the new Busch Stadium in St. Louis. We met in Chicago and zoomed across the flatlands of central Illinois, two middle-aged guys on a rare road trip without the families. We took turns driving and filling each other in on career developments and family news. Though it had been more than a year since we’d seen each other, there was no distance between us. This was a perfect setup for a couple of days of baseball.
Around dinnertime we came up over the rise and saw the Gateway Arch on the St. Louis Riverfront, the city putting its best foot forward for guests coming from the east. Soon we were crossing a highway bridge over the muddy Mississippi, and the blue steel of the Arch gleamed majestically in front of a cluster of skyscrapers. Tucked in along the edge of the big downtown buildings was the stadium, a brand-new old-style brick building meant to make a person nostalgic for a bygone era – or perhaps for a place that never existed except in the imaginations of fans listening to scratchy radio broadcasts of play by play announcers who are now all dead and gone. Holy cow, that stadium could tug at a midwesterner’s heart.
We parked and joined the shiny, happy pedestrians heading toward the gates. As we found our seats, the ballplayers were having batting practice. The big guys were hitting every third or fourth pitch into the bleachers, where kids and former kids would run after each ball or moan if one bounced away into the bull pen. Above the bleachers and the center field scoreboard, the stadium opened up like the ballparks of the past, and we could see office buildings and the Arch.
Before the national anthem, I hustled up to the refreshment stand. Every single thing on sale there was $5 or some multiple of five dollars. What’ll it be, buddy? A couple of drinks, a hot dog, a burger, and some peanuts? Five items, $25. The math has never been easier, or the dent in your wallet more substantial. So much for the good old days.
But we were there for the baseball, including the chance to see a couple of likely hall of fame players. There was Albert Pujols, batting right-handed, and scaring all the pitchers he faced. His feet looked too far apart, but when a good pitch came I could see the pivot and snap of his hips and how that power drew his torso around and how his arms and the bat followed as naturally as if they were being drawn forth by gravity. He was like a force of nature, except that the precision of his swing was a blend of talent and practice and will – his whole being, really. I’d like to do something, almost anything, half as well as he swings a bat.
We saw a night game and a day game, 20 innings of baseball in less than 24 hours, with lots of innings where pitchers outplayed the hitters and lots where they didn’t. The second game went into extra innings. Finally, in the bottom of the 11th, the Cardinals put runners on first and second with one out. One batter lined out to the third basemen, and the next got behind in the count, threatening to spoil the chance for victory. But he was hit by a pitch, and now the bases were loaded with two out. The center fielder came up – he hadn’t had a hit in either of the two games. He took the first pitch, a ball, and the second pitch he hit sharply up the middle for a single, driving the runner home to win the game. He had redeemed himself in the way that baseball lets a person do. Fireworks rose from the scoreboard towers in center field, and a cloud of teammates surrounded him. Fans paused to soak up the last moments of joy before we all returned to our lives.
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About the series
Michiana Chronicles is a series of radio essays by Jonathan Nashel, Louise Collins, Joe Chaney, Jeanette Saddler Taylor, Jeff Nixa, April Lidinsky, and Ken Smith.
Michiana is the region of north-central Indiana and southern Michigan roughly centered on South Bend, Indiana.
Michiana Chronicles airs on Fridays at 7:35 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on WVPE (88.1 FM), the home of public radio in Elkhart / South Bend, Indiana.
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