New Hampshire Day

This morning, the heat and humidity which has, for the past week,  made New Hampshire feel like Savannah in August, gave way to a seventy degree morning, blue skies and a refreshing breeze.

On a green field in Dover, men from ages 35 to 65 took advantage of the day to play baseball. 

Baseball is a game of frustration: The best hitters fail 2/3 of their attempts. Fly balls arcing gracefully three hundred feet in the air are caught, or not caught; ground balls skeeter by lunging players; base runners launch themselves toward bases 30 yards distant with varying success. Umpires miss some calls, make others,  and even the moderate heat takes its toll on cardiovascular systems.

The Phantom drank three quarts of Gatorade during the first three innings and did not feel the urge to visit the grassy area hidden behind the backstop to relieve a bulging bladder,  because that three quarts was simply replacing what was lost in sweat . 

The Phantom returned today to something he had done, probably with more grace and less effort, over half a century ago, and it was a reminder the time had not passed without taking a toll. But there ensued a peculiar sensation: Here was a game played 600 miles from where he learned it, with the same rules, the same skills, the same joys which obtained over that great distance of time and miles. 

The men on that field today shared little else than a love of baseball: Some were rich, some financially struggling; some were politically conservative; some liberal. Some religious, others not at all. Some were raucous, profane; others quiet, proper. Some were lithe and fast; others portly and lumbering. But everyone could play. As John Kruck told the lady: "I didn't say I was an athlete. I said I was a baseball player."

With basketball, football, hockey, you can anticipate, plan, project.  In baseball, it's all reaction, unless you are the pitcher.  You wait for the batter to swing, and you react.

And then there is that orb, spinning in space, that diamond laid out with those precisely measured intervals, as if you are playing in a galaxy devised by some power who has figured everything out, and you are simply trying to play within the rules set by that old, enigmatic power.

It's New Hampshire. It's baseball. It's wonderful.