Baseball in the park

I sit in the park on a drizzly Sunday morning watching six boys play baseball and finishing a book. A large steaming cup of coffee and a toasted pumpernickel bagel sit next to me on the bench. The baseball boys range in ages and sizes. I wager a guess that they are between 10 and 14.

It is nice, even in the cold and wet, to sit on the bench. I am reading in spurts, pleasantly distracted by the loud arguing over where to put the bases.

“It’s too far,” a medium-sized boy with long hair shouts, standing on a large rock that will double as second base. “This isn’t the major leagues.”

“To your right!” a boy who seems younger yells.

In the book, which is a Swedish mystery novel, Wallander, the detective, is closing in on the killers. He has figured out how they knew the victim had a lot of money. And he is hot on their trail when it starts to rain.

Dark wet spots start to dot the pages of a crazy car chase with a horse, and I struggle to keep the pages dry by turning them faster than they can get wet. Losing, as each clean page is turned over damp, I put the book away and pull my hood over my head.

The weather has turned the park gray. The baseball boys don’t seem to notice as the tall one divides up the teams: the four shorter kids vs. the two taller kids. The boy who seems younger stands off to the side. He barely says a word.

I watch a woman play with her dog. She throws a stick high in the air and the dog races after it. The dog catches it in his mouth on the second bounce and trots back toward the woman.

There aren’t enough gloves to go around. And the boy who seems younger puts up no fight to get one. The tallest one bats first but I’m surprised as the boy who seems younger confidently strides to the pitcher’s mound. The other kids on his team put up no fight as he loosens up his arm.

The taller boy digs in and swings the bat menacingly.

The boy who seems younger stares in at the catcher. He winds up and fires a strike past the late swing of the taller boy. It is much faster than I was expecting and I realized the younger boy’s nonchalance was not shyness but quiet confidence. He strikes the taller boy out on three straight strikes.

The rain starts to let up. I take the book back out. Wallander had identified the killers with the help of a bank teller with an incredible memory. He and his partner are searching the city for the killers. They find them in a flea market. An intense chase ensues.

The shorter team is now arguing over who will bat first. The boy who seems younger lingers silently off to the side, not taking part in the bickering.

The taller boy stands defiantly on the pitcher’s mound but I smile as I notice he’s standing much closer to home plate than the boy who seems younger was.

A woman in a large puffy red coat walks two small dogs. They pull her in opposite direction and she yells at them as if they can understand.

Wallander gets a confession from one of the killers by telling him that the other has already confessed. The rest of the plotlines wrap up quickly and suddenly there are no more pages to turn.

It’s a good feeling to finish a book. I slip it carefully into my bag as the boy who seems younger steps up to bat.

He stands comfortably in his stance as the taller boy throws a pitch much too high for the younger boy, who swings at it anyway. I can feel his concentration focus as he stands waiting for the next pitch.

I know he is going to hit it before he does. The ball sails into the outfield, over the tall teammate’s head. The boy who seems younger races around the bases and is home before the ball is even found. The homerun makes me smile again.

The taller boy throws his glove down in disgust, the boy who seems younger slaps his teammates fives. I finish my coffee and walk past the woman with the two small dogs, now pulling her much too quickly in the same direction. She stumbles to keep up, still yelling at her dogs as if they can understand her.

The rain is letting up and it looks like it is going to be a beautiful day.

- Zachary Stuart-Pontier