Play ball! A lifetime of loving baseball

[Originally published in the March 31, 2002 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.]

While time may begin for some on opening day, my field of dreams is humbler than any big-league ballpark. I can see the village diamond out of the window of our living room.

I enjoy professional baseball as much as the next guy in a town where the team hasn't finished above .500 for nearly a decade. But the game I truly love is a homemade thing, not the store-bought variety.

In the Little League where I grew up, every child, by rule, had to bat at least once and play in the field in every game he showed up for. All you need to know about my level of baseball skill as an overweight, near-sighted boy was that I batted ninth and played three innings a game in right field, the least damaging place for any competitive coach to put me.

Yet he who is least desired often loves the fiercest. Playing the game is threaded through my life in an intimate and powerful way.

I don't like sports-as-life-lessons-learned analogies, but when you bat ninth, it's hard to avoid picking up on a few things.

For example, some coaches don't care about the guys at the bottom of the lineup. In one game, I misplayed a ball in right field, and the batter ended up safe at second base.

Before my red face even had time to cool off, the next batter smoked a ball my way. I fielded it cleanly on the run, turned and threw out the first runner at home plate. The coach of my own team had nothing to say to me about either my error or the best throw I had ever made -- but the opposing coach came over to our bench between innings to compliment me, an act of sportsmanship I'll never forget.

Continued