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Time to hang it up


The signs were everywhere. It was time to hang up the glove.


The most obvious sign, perhaps, came during the closing innings of my final game last fall when both of my spikes disintegrated during another feeble attempt to reach third base safely. While still attached to my feet, they both simply exploded. I had to finish the game in soft soles.


That was the game I found myself penciled in to bat sixth.


I don’t fully understand why, but all season long I’d batted leadoff. All I can figure is that the coach, who is nearly as old as I, had some distant memory of my faster, leaner days, the days when I could take the extra base without worrying about cardiac arrest. But the coach couldn’t make the final doubleheader, and the lineup card fell to one of the smarter guys on the club. He put me down in the 6-hole.


That’s not a bad move, but, you know… We had won a total of two games in 26 attempts, and we were about to end this season against the Terrors of Evergreen Terrace. We were doomed before we woke up that morning. Shaking up the lineup wasn’t going to turn things around.  I took this as a sign that everyone knew what I did: I was losing my edge.


I knew this already. I had been receiving painfully apparent messages from my body for weeks. I hurt. I started to refer to my ankles as my ache-els. I didn’t have knees any more; I had needs. It took me two days to recover from one of these doubleheaders.


So reading all of those signs, I decided it was time.


This is a tough thing to do, to hang up the spikes, or what’s left of them. Playing baseball is in our national blood. There is almost a divine imperative to throw the ball and hit it with a stick. We are bred to believe in baseball.


By the time we’re old enough to walk, Mom or Dad is pushing us out the door with a ball in our hands. “Go out and play,” they tell us. “Have fun and don’t break any windows.”


So we did. We formed teams in the neighborhood, we joined Little League and maybe played organized ball through high school. Guys like me, who weren’t good enough to play at that level, rediscovered the game as adults in the form of slow-pitch softball.


This was a game I could enjoy even though I wasn’t 6 feet tall and flawless with the glove. The game was accessible. And it was competitive, too. We’d play hard and battle each other and feel like world champs whenever we’d win a little plastic trophy or stop some other bunch bozos from winning one.


The games could be the most important event of the week. Adrenaline flowed. There could be tough calls and body contact. Tempers flared. This was a game that made you feel alive. It’s that competitive nature of the game that I left last fall. And it is what I miss this spring.


Two weeks ago, I was playing catch with my son and daughter while visiting my in-laws in Goreville. It was one of those warm Sunday afternoons in April and the air just smelled of baseball. It was a glorious day, until…


I knew the throw was a little high, but I held out hopes that my daughter would be able to leap another 10 feet and catch it. But she isn’t in mid-season form yet, so my throw sailed over her glove. It crashed through the basement window.


It’s such a cliché: Boy swings bat, hits ball, breaks window. Never happened to me.

Or: Boy with glove throws ball, misses target, breaks window. Never happened to me. But now, after all these years of playing, it’s finally happened.


I take it as another sign. But one of a different sort. It made me remember the warning my Mom and Dad gave me so long ago. “Don’t break any windows.” I felt guilty, which made me feel like a kid. And that made it all worthwhile.


I’ve been really lucky, I guess. I’ve been able to play the game competitively for more than 40 years. And I must admit that even though I’ve played for mostly losing teams, I’ve been able to do that other thing Mom and Dad told me to do.


They said, “Have fun.” And I have.

Collected written works  |  Gary Marx

MORE


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Forget about coal

Farewell column

A tuba Christmas

Knee high by the

    Fourth of July

Hanging up the glove