GOLDEN GATE BASEBALL
Saturday, I enjoyed baseball the way it's meant to be enjoyed.
It's been unusually hot and sunny in San Francisco. I had planned to go to the main library to study, but couldn't bear the idea of being inside when upper 70s and no humidity is as rare in San Francisco as an arch-conservative. I filled my backpack with study guides and textbooks, packed ice and beer in a portable cooler, and, with a blanket my grandmother stitched, headed off to Golden Gate Park in the Pup Bug, top down.
On the east end of Golden Gate Park, somewhere between the California Academy of Sciences, the Bowling Greens, and the grand carousel, not far from groves and twisted paths which weave through children's playgrounds and art studios, is a dual baseball field. It occupies a huge space near 3rd Avenue and Junior Drive, where, told on municipal placards hung high on the the trunks of Eucalyptus trees, softball, football, and soccer are clearly forbidden.
I sat at the foot of a tree on a mound of emerald green grass just barely moist from the morning sprinklers. Two old men, shirtless, proudly flinging their bellies west toward the ocean, sat atop a hill behind the fence flanking home plate. They drank from cans of a nondescript Midwest brew, and muttered like grumpy dogs in a dialect I don't know.
In the field below them, two teams of lanky young men vied for a win whose consequences escape me. They were too old, these players, to be Little League, unless Little League these days nurtures six-feet-tall superkids. And they weren't old enough to be a college team. Their ages were mixed, from what looked like junior high to high school, with one or two adults thrown in for good measure. The ball boys were about 12, perhaps younger. The kid who fetched nondescript Midwest brews for the fellas with flagging tummies, he was not of drinking age.
One team wore grey with red pinstripes. Their pro threads sported "San Francisco," in Giants script. The other team, equally well appointed, wore black uniforms with blue piping and "Oakland" on their backs. When I arrived, it was bottom of the 7th, score unknown.
As I sat there, squinting through the glare of sunlight and motes, I found the most alarming form of peace. Without all the commercial paraphernalia of pro baseball, the game felt suspended slightly out of time, antique.
I can't say I ever figured out what the score was. And I sat there at the edge of the quiet field long after the guys had packed up, bats and bags slung over their shoulders. A couple of people stayed behind, an older player and a coach. They talked on the dugout bench for a while, about what, I don't know. Perhaps a spectacular play from earlier in the game. Perhaps a better way of doing something. Or maybe they were just talking about nothing, basking instead of blathering in the afterglow of baseball.
It's been unusually hot and sunny in San Francisco. I had planned to go to the main library to study, but couldn't bear the idea of being inside when upper 70s and no humidity is as rare in San Francisco as an arch-conservative. I filled my backpack with study guides and textbooks, packed ice and beer in a portable cooler, and, with a blanket my grandmother stitched, headed off to Golden Gate Park in the Pup Bug, top down.
On the east end of Golden Gate Park, somewhere between the California Academy of Sciences, the Bowling Greens, and the grand carousel, not far from groves and twisted paths which weave through children's playgrounds and art studios, is a dual baseball field. It occupies a huge space near 3rd Avenue and Junior Drive, where, told on municipal placards hung high on the the trunks of Eucalyptus trees, softball, football, and soccer are clearly forbidden.
I sat at the foot of a tree on a mound of emerald green grass just barely moist from the morning sprinklers. Two old men, shirtless, proudly flinging their bellies west toward the ocean, sat atop a hill behind the fence flanking home plate. They drank from cans of a nondescript Midwest brew, and muttered like grumpy dogs in a dialect I don't know.
In the field below them, two teams of lanky young men vied for a win whose consequences escape me. They were too old, these players, to be Little League, unless Little League these days nurtures six-feet-tall superkids. And they weren't old enough to be a college team. Their ages were mixed, from what looked like junior high to high school, with one or two adults thrown in for good measure. The ball boys were about 12, perhaps younger. The kid who fetched nondescript Midwest brews for the fellas with flagging tummies, he was not of drinking age.
One team wore grey with red pinstripes. Their pro threads sported "San Francisco," in Giants script. The other team, equally well appointed, wore black uniforms with blue piping and "Oakland" on their backs. When I arrived, it was bottom of the 7th, score unknown.
As I sat there, squinting through the glare of sunlight and motes, I found the most alarming form of peace. Without all the commercial paraphernalia of pro baseball, the game felt suspended slightly out of time, antique.
I can't say I ever figured out what the score was. And I sat there at the edge of the quiet field long after the guys had packed up, bats and bags slung over their shoulders. A couple of people stayed behind, an older player and a coach. They talked on the dugout bench for a while, about what, I don't know. Perhaps a spectacular play from earlier in the game. Perhaps a better way of doing something. Or maybe they were just talking about nothing, basking instead of blathering in the afterglow of baseball.
posted by Andrew at
4:16 PM
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