THE THRILL OF THE GRASS

So . . . this afternoon I attended a girls high school fastpitch softball game. It was the final home game for my daughter’s friend Devin, the team’s catcher and senior co-captain, and I had promised her that I would make it to a game before the end of her career. Unfortunately I had to leave after only three innings, but Devin was calling a good game behind the plate and she had gotten on base twice: evidently she has a reputation as a slugger, and the other team pitched to her cautiously and ended up walking her each time. It was nice to see Devin get recognized before the game as one of three graduating seniors on the team, and I had a funny moment during that little ceremony when I asked a woman sitting alone in the stands who she was “at the game for.” She replied: “I’m here for Devin. I’m her grandmother.” That made two of us, anyway.

I have to say that being down close to the ballfield for the first time since the final game of my youngest daughter’s career in youth softball—5 or 6 years ago—brought back many memories related to what preeminent writer of baseball fiction W. P. Kinsella phrased “the thrill of the grass.” (Kinsella first uses this phrase in his wonderful and wonder-filled novel Shoeless Joe and then borrows it from himself to re-use as the title of both a terrific short story and a fine short story collection.) Perhaps my favorite memory is of a game about 8 or 9 years ago when I was head coach of my middle daughter’s team. We were a lousy team and I was a lousy coach and on that particular evening some of the spectators at the game thought I was a lousy parent too. What happened was that my daughter, who I had put in left field to avoid any appearance of nepotism on my part, had been busy twirling her hair or chewing on her glove’s rawhide lace or watching the ice cream truck pull into the parking lot (or all three at once) and had thus allowed a catch-able ball to roll past her for extra bases. I suppose I shouted at her from the bench: “Wake up out there!” When she came in at the half-inning, she used her outfield error as the reason why she should have a turn in the infield. So the next inning I put her in at third base—and of course within a few pitches she got hit on the ankle by a low line drive. And of course I shouted from the bench, “That’ll teach you!” Which of course prompted some gasps and tut-tutting from the other parents (from both teams) gathered behind the backstop. What could I say? Well, what I said—as if it made the matter any better—was: “Hey, she’s my daughter . . .”

And hey, we ended up winning the game in the bottom of the last inning! Trailing by multiple runs to a team that, as one of my assistant coaches observed, looked “like East German Olympians”—for 10-year-old girls, they were built like Amazons—I pulled out all the stops . . . literally: somehow our players were getting on base—mostly on dropped third-strikes, I think—and coaching at third base, I waved player after player to keep running for home, shrewdly calculating that the odds were not very likely for the fielders on the other team of 10-year-olds to execute both an accurate throw and a successful catch on the same play. At the end of the day we truly ran away with the victory—a victory made that much sweeter by the utterly baleful look the opposing coach gave me during the obligatory post-game handshake.

I ended my coaching career as an assistant for my youngest daughter’s team a few years later. But that losing coach from a few years earlier is still involved in the game, leading the girls varsity team at a local private academy. I see her in Starbucks pretty much every week. I can’t imagine that she remembers me. If she did, I’m sure that she would still hate me.