Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [78]
Off to the first base side of the diamond, fans gathered on a grassy knoll to barbecue hot dogs, hamburgers, potatoes, and corn. They sat in the stands catching up with one another or set up lawn chairs on a berm overlooking the field. Most of these people were locals, as many as two hundred of them, gathered to cheer on their friends and family in the big game. One elderly man in farmer’s coveralls, his back stooped from a lifetime of bending in fields, proudly passed around a gnarly potato the size of a mature eggplant, a mutant spud he might have acquired from a roadside stand on Mars.
There was nothing homogeneous about these crowds. Their clothes told you that. We saw backslapping executives and their assistants in khaki shorts and pastel golf shirts, their arms in permanent crooks from too many gatherings spent holding cold beers in front of their sliding paunches. Soldiers had driven over from their barracks in Carlisle to watch some baseball and flirt. Just a glimpse of their wiry frames, bulging biceps, and burr cuts turned the knees of the local teenage girls liquid.
Some of the guys who worked for a tool and die company in Lancaster tried to outdo the soldiers by flaunting their own brawn in sleeveless tie-dyed T-shirts topping baggy camouflage pants. When you spoke to these boys, they looked through you with faraway eyes from underneath battered New York Yankees hats. Young wives, almost all of them in jeans and tank tops or midriffs, chased after giggling children, their faces already smudged with chocolate, mustard, and dirt, as they darted across the field.
The men and women who belonged to the Harrisburg banking set flashed yuppie chic in their Ralph Lauren jeans, Donna Karan tees, and stylishly scuffed Kenneth Cole loafers. Anyone dressing down wore spotless Nikes or Adidases. A brand-name crowd.
You could easily spot the car dealers from Harrisburg. Nearly all of them wore polyester double knits and heavy gold necklaces. Good people, every one of them. Quick to laugh, especially at themselves, and generous, the sort of men who would argue long and loud with each other for the right to pick up a check.
These car dealers had come to the field to have fun; winning was a secondary consideration. They brought along two elderly pitchers who, if you put their best fastballs together, could produce one good changeup. A catcher warmed up both of them wearing little more than a Kleenex on his business hand. But they let the seniors play and no one cared how many runs it cost them.
Spectators parked their cars near an old, sun-baked barn where the teams dressed for battle. Players emerged from behind the building’s doors like a troupe of swaggering Shoeless Joe Jacksons, sporting turn-of-the-century collarless flannel uniforms with raglan sleeves. Across their chests, a seamstress had emblazoned DOUBLEDAY in either black on gray for the visiting team or black on white for the home nine. Only the handlebar mustaches were missing.
The talk buzzing through the crowd was the talk I frequently heard at similar outings across the United States. These people casually spoke of illness and death, business deals and debt; of soap opera plots and Oprah guests, store openings and foreclosures, doctors’ visits and home repairs; of appliance sales and insurance costs, schoolwork and rebellious children, local politics and village bake-offs; of babies born and babies expected, the rising cost of living and the declining respect for family values; of celebrity gossip, infidelities, and divorce; of recipes and movies seen and books read and all the other everyday items that make up such a vibrant part of the vast American distraction.
Shover had