Saturday, in the Park

Moms are scattered throughout the bleachers, using umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun; the rains that had flooded the outfields of Corona Del Sol High School and caused the cancellation of the first three days of the Boras Classic have passed, leaving the umbrellas free to resume their usual Arizona purpose. It’s almost just another March Saturday.

A few feet from the home plate stands, a group of teen girls huddle in short denim shorts and yoga pants, pony tails perched high on their heads, the day’s light reflecting back from sunglasses. Their grouping doesn’t seem especially concerned with the next pitch. Instead, they chitter about school gossip that is about to meet its own disruption.

On an adjacent soccer field, a group of boys, all of whom occupy that odd time in life when it is hard to tell exactly how old they are, goof around with a Wiffle bat and ball. One of those assembled comes set and pitches in; the batter he’s facing mimics charging the mound, but peels off a few feet before he reaches his friend. After all, their game isn’t serious.

Hand shakes pervade the scene, but they carry with them the air of habit, or good manners, rather than defiance. A few offer an elbow or a fist — “No one knows what to do” is uttered in an amused tone by one scout — but submit to an open hand offered by less bothered compatriots moments later.

The usual bad pop country pumps over the PA system. “Make ya wanna slide on in, like girl, what’s up. Yeah, tonight is bottoms up” intermingles with the announcement of the next batter.

Behind backstops and in the tournament’s hospitality tent, scouts are grumbling. A prep arm, one of the more compelling prospects at the tournament, threw unannounced the day before, though some evaluators somehow managed to find their way to the field on time; he likely won’t be seen again before the June draft. There is a sense that this will be the new normal – a return to a less scheduled, less collegial time. Travel, at least by air, has largely ceased, and what is there to fly to anyway? As the day’s games progress, the PAC-12 will announce that it is canceling all the spring games remaining this academic year; organized team activities will cease until at least March 29.

Folks chatter about private workouts, and junior colleges still staging games; some faces look somber, but you get the sense that others like the hunting and hiding. That if you could see the eyes hidden behind those black shades, that they’d carry a twinkle. One scout, who has donned thick boots to keep out a rare bit of muddy mess, mentions that he’s ready to hit the road: “If there’s live baseball, I’m gonna go.” Believing there will be something to see at the end of that drive, that he’ll be able to take it at all, carries with it an optimism that proves to be misplaced: On Monday, Major League Baseball will send word that it is effectively shutting down scouting, leaving a handful fewer cars to be stretched out on highways that really ought to be vacant, anyway. Perhaps the league anticipated the twinkle.

One of the coaches opts to use gloves when selecting a sandwich from the lunch spread, carefully extricating his chosen sub, before grabbing a couple of unwrapped red vines from an open jar. We’re complicated creatures.

Dads in swishy athletic pants and shorts that reveal purposely trained calves lean against the chain link sides of the backstop and discuss how their boys are doing, which colleges they’ve looked at and how many players from the prior year’s roster remain – near the field and each other. From where I stand, it looks more like six inches than six feet. I become aware of my own distance, calculate whether it is sufficient. I wonder if I should be here at all.

The playlist shifts from country to Fitz and the Tantrums. “I can make your hands clap” the song blares, though no one does.

…

To ascribe a defiance or an optimism to it seems like a reach. There’s no optimism in assuming the world is set to resume something resembling normal, no fussy, obstinate stomp the virus’ way; apart from the signs absolving the Boras Family Foundation of liability should someone get sick (the sandwich board acknowledges that attending the day’s proceedings puts one at risk for contracting COVID-19), and a flyer advocating that spring seasons not be canceled if schools are still open (“Our kids have worked all year for this. There are memories and scholarships at stake…”), there’s little thought being given to the virus at all. Mostly, there’s baseball happening in front of them. It’s here and the disease and its disruption is elsewhere, at least for now.

Here in service of young, strong boys (even as white and gray hair bobs in the stands, or holds station in the dugout or up the baselines), water bottles still tip over, abandoned, and seeds are still being spit; the space beneath the bleachers is littered with its customary debris, though I think more than usual about how well-mouthed all of that detritus is.

Kids climb on things – on each other, on their family members as they lean forward waiting for a pitch, on handrails. They do so much touching. The sky feels open and healthy, but the bleachers are crammed.

Time ticks down, but not desperately. The only thought of droplets seems to be of rain, which banged much of the tournament’s action, making these pitches and at-bats feel more urgent. Not because they might be the last ones we see for a while, though they might be, but because what would be done with all these jugs of Gatorade, with orange slices and sub sandwiches — with this mild spring afternoon? With days before college commitments kick in and names are called in the draft? Even now, time seems to be measured against understood markers – predictable, knowable. Decayed fruit, spoiled youth, the arrival of hotter summer days.

The usual calls emanate from the dugout. “Get itttttttttt” and “Lets gooooooooo” ring out, with consonants and vowels luxuriously elongated, and uttered so gutturally as to elicit grins from the assembled parents, albeit knowing ones. This might be silly, but it works. Rituals don’t have to be dour after all, especially when the goal is to unlock the bravado of young, strong boys. Indeed, containing it is the greater chore.

…

We’ve never done this before, tried surviving a pandemic. As I sit, watching a ball get tossed around, in a place that feels mostly familiar, despite me having never been exactly here, I wonder if others have grappled with the instinct to re-contextualize everything in reference to this virus. Projectable means something a little different now; a strong body with room on the frame telegraphs a different purpose, one of survival rather than extra ticks on the fastball to come. Touches, handshakes, seeds and spit are vectors, these early days of the season now goodbyes.

But also, this is just a place; it’s just another point in time, before we know that anyone is sick. It’s another day. A Saturday at another tournament where young, strong boys show what they can do now, what they might do later. A day when you breathe a sigh of relief for having gotten games in after so much rain, but also one where you’re conscious of how close the breathing around you is; I move to a different set of bleachers as the seats around me fill up. I wonder again if I’ve made a mistake in coming here, if I haven’t breached a duty to others. If I won’t look back and cringe. If my re-contextualizing is anywhere near done.

Still, I will miss it. As I leave the field, I’m aware that this will be the last live baseball I see for a while. But these boys are so young, their siblings more so. Their parents aren’t so gray. Their jerseys are already printed. Many of them will be back. I wonder what that day will look like.