NOT EPHEMERAL :

Brothers : On Opening Day, You Remember the Gifts that Even Time Cannot Take Away (Andre Dubus, Oct. 8, 1997, Salon)

At a baseball game in Fenway Park, I feel like a boy, watching grown men on a playing field, and watching grown men and women in their seats in boxes and the grandstand, and faceless bodies across the field in the bleachers; watching them watch, cheer, eat, talk, drink; watching them go up and down the steps, for food, drinks, or the restrooms. The sound of the crowd is steady, the calls of roaming vendors rising higher, as the cries of certain people do: those who yell at umpires, players, managers and those who call to the players, Good eye; you can do it, as if they -- we, I do it -- had been infielders years ago, when the voices of infielders were part of the game, calling to the pitcher, Come babe, come boy, we used to say in spirited voices, our bodies poised, our weight on our toes, our gloves ready. During ballgames at Fenway Park, strangers talk to each other about the game; people cheer when one catches a foul ball; vendors standing on steps hear an order from someone sitting in the middle of the row; the buyer hands money to someone in the next seat, who passes it on; the paper and coins move from hand to hand to the vendor who places in these hands popcorn, hot dogs, peanuts, beer, soft drinks. Sometimes at Mass I think of Fenway Park, for at Mass there is the same feeling of good will: People are there because they want to be, and I feel among friends who share a passion.

For me, baseball is real in a deeper way than much of what I do. I do not begin a baseball season hoping the Red Sox win a pennant and the World Series. I enjoy each game. Next day I wait with excitement for the game on television that night or afternoon. Then I watch what happens and what does not happen in a moment. I rarely concentrate on a moment of anything but writing and exercise and receiving Communion. Yet watching a game I do. A batter steps out of the box, looks to his left at the third-base coach; the coach moves his hands, touches his arm, his chest, his face, his cap; the batter steps to the plate; the catcher's right fingers signal to the pitcher; the pitcher shakes his head; a runner on second creeps away from the base, glancing at the shortstop and second baseman; the catcher signals again, the pitcher nods, brings up his hands, kicks, throws. I watch the ball, and the batter. The ball is moving 93 miles per hour, but there is time for me to focus on it, maybe hold my breath, enough time so that it feels like waiting; then I am amazed: the batter not only hits the ball, but times his swing so well that he pulls it, a line drive right of the third baseman who somehow has time to dive for it, but he does not touch it; he is lying on the ground, the ball hits the grass a hundred feet behind him, as the left fielder sprints toward it, to stop it before it bounces and rolls to the fence.

The reality I am watching is moments of grace and skill, gifts received by men who do not turn away from them, but work with them for the few years they are granted. One spring the batter will not be able to hit a fast ball, the pitcher will not be able to throw one; the gifts are gone, as if they existed independent of men, staying with one for a time, then moving on to another, a boy in the womb, and when he is in elementary school you can already see that he has it.

A Zen archer does not try to hit the target. With intense concentration he draws the bow and waits; the target releases the arrow, and draws it to itself. A few summers ago, during an All-Star Game, retired pitcher Steve Carlton visited the television broadcasting booth. One of the announcers askedhim if hitters had ever intimidated him. He said he had ignored the hitters and played an advanced game of catch with his catcher. "It's an elevated form of pitching," he said. I have told this many times to young writers, and have also told them that Wade Boggs watching a pitch come to the plate, starting his stride and swing, probably does not know his own name, for his whole being is concentrating on that moving white ball. I could have said this about any good hitter, or fielder, or pitcher: men whose intense focus on a baseball burns their consciousness of the past and future into ashes blown quickly up and away from the field. This happens over and over in a game, and these moments are so pure they may be sacred; and they are not ephemeral; they seem so, because they exist in Time; but so did my friend Jim Valhoul; a river took his life, but it did not take the life he lived.

The entire story, by one of our greatest short story writers, is online. It's terrific. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 16, 2002 8:58 AM