The place is hard to find, and it isn’t much to see. It’s tucked away in an alley near a cemetery in Long Island City, Queens. The area is a no-man’s land: warehouses, gas stations, coffee roasters, etc. The facility, which I nearly mistake for an abandoned butcher’s shop, is one long room, and a net separates the batting cage from the rest of the space, which is narrow, fluorescent, and pleasantly warm. To get to the small gym in the back, you must brush past the other men lined up against the wall, waiting to take their licks in the cage against the coach, a late-twenties guy with a beard who throws accurate, slow pitches commonly referred to as meatballs.
I shake hands with a couple of them and introduce myself. It feels like there should be music. Nobody is really speaking. The coach comes out and takes down my name. He asks me what position I play and how long it’s been since I played organized baseball. I tell him third base, pitcher, and six years. How could it have been that long? I responded to the coach’s email a couple of weeks ago after signing up for the NYC Metro League as a free agent. This is the first practice of the winter, and I’ve already spent a hundred dollars on equipment and practiced a couple times on my own. I’m unsure how hard it is to make the team. It’s an adult recreational baseball league, the first that appeared on my Google search for adult baseball. I went searching for it in the hopes that I could make a friend or two and maybe resurrect some childhood memories. There is truth in cliché, unavoidably. I’m an American man and some of my fondest memories of simpler times are on the baseball field.
I can’t hit worth a shit, never could, but I send some line drives off into the net against the coach’s generous lobs. The real show comes when I step on the mound during the latter half of the “try out” and throw as hard as I can fifteen or so times. This is something I’ve been doing since before I knew how many times 10 goes into 100, and I am suddenly, briefly aware of this fact. I throw some strikes.
I also send some back over the catcher’s head and into the wall. But my motions are fluid, and I think it looks like I’ve done this before. I am struck by the feeling of eyes trained on me, of strangers watching me throw a baseball. It is a nerve-tingling sensation, no matter how desolate the environment. I’m no Sandy Koufax, but the sound of the ball pounding the glove delivers a ready-made feeling of purpose. I’m not on a turf mound in Long Island City with a bunch of strangers, I’m throwing a ball to my brother behind the church in West Palm Beach until his hand bleeds. I’m determined and convinced, however irrationally, that this is what I’m supposed to be doing.
This is the same body, however gangly, that was once squat and compact and used to strike everybody out in fourth grade, that dreamed of making the big leagues, that copied Dontrelle’s Willis windup in the living room while the Marlins were on. It’s just gotten less fluid over the years. Surely this can’t be much harder than it was then? Forget my middling-at-best high school career, stunted by waning interest, forget the years that have opened between my commitment to baseball as a physical pursuit and the twenty-six-year-old standing here now. But it’s true, my arm didn’t forget how to throw. My fingers didn’t forget where to grip the seams. For now, I am reminded of this feeling of possibility. I let it rip.
The catcher, Todd, takes off his helmet, and he tells me not to hurt myself; that’s enough for today, and I look like I know what I’m doing. He says he’s seen enough guys come out here and blow their arms out and then never show up again. I duck under the net, and the coach calls me over to his corner. He gestures reassuringly and offers me a spot on the team. He says they always need pitching, and it seems like I know what I’m doing out there. Just like the other guy said. I’m happier than I thought I would be—it strikes me physically, with a bodily clarity, how badly I wanted this. On the drive home, I blast music and ride the high of affirmation: I’m trying something new, something old, it’s going to be fun.
I attend all but one of the winter workouts. Different faces show up every week. Most of the guys on the lower division team, the one I’m on, have never played in the league before. A guy named Kyle shows up. He seems cool. The season begins and I give Kyle rides to the games. We discuss our on-field performance and off-field experiences assimilating to life as twenty-somethings untethered from everything, inevitably landing in New York City, though it’s a bit of a homecoming for him. I have nobody besides my girlfriend, for the most part. I can be a bit curmudgeonly. The atmosphere in the dugout is one of competitive male comradery. We dig for odd fragments to verbally hurl at one another: hey, no-batting gloves, be a hitter out there. Come on, kid, here you go kid. It’s something you learn to do in Little League, but at this age feels goofy and somewhat self-conscious. That doesn’t stop anyone.
Our team is pretty rag-tag, and the competition is uneven. Sometimes we get completely dismantled in a non-competitive way. Sometimes we squeak out comeback wins. The team’s jubilant working actor always gives a pep talk. I begin the season in the starting rotation, and this is likely too affirmative. I know I’m setting myself up to fail. Making it something it’s not. But still. The last time that happened to me was my junior year of high school, for the Junior Varsity team. But that was the year I hurt my elbow early in the season and hardly played. I’m feeling like this is just the shot in the arm I needed, a vote of confidence from someone who hardly knows me.
I don’t practice much during the week, but I think about the upcoming game while I make coffee at my job. I’ve had many jobs just like this one over the last seven-odd years. I know it won’t take me anywhere, and I don’t want it to, but it pays the bills. It is a place to get lost in dreams, to rent my time and avoid the trappings of a real career commitment. My life happens outside, and inside of work I simply exist.
But my routine vibrates with this new possibility, with the variety of outcomes in front of me: the promise of waking up early and putting on my uniform and showing up to the field. I talk about this new adventure with regulars, coworkers, anyone who will listen.
Regardless of how the early games go, there is joy to be had: I’m standing in the sun, I’m squeaking out some base hits, stealing second base, tearing the skin off my butt cheeks, running, scoring, cheering people on I hardly know. This is a child’s game, and I’m reminded of how much joy it brought me when I was just a boy, trying to show my parents that they had something to be happy about—a son that was good at something.
I soak in baths after the games, my body stiff in places that have been out of use for years. Especially the hips, the shoulder. If I ever had to do this when I was younger, I’ve forgotten. My elbow is fine. I bring my mitt to Tampa for a bachelor party, wanting to maintain my arm strength. This is one of the most important things in my life, out of the blue, and I’m unashamed to let others see that. I want to hold onto this feeling.
Being on the mound, pitching, it’s like this: the catcher throws me the ball. I stand on the rubber and stare down my glove at whatever finger sign the catcher flashes me. I have two main offerings, and there is usually little disagreement about which to throw. I roll the ball around in my fingers and find the seams. It hangs there, cradled, wanting to fall. I go through my motion, trying not to think, to simply feel my body fall and move and unfurl in a synchronized way toward the batter, who I want to both disregard and eliminate. I lift my front leg, pull all of my force up high and tight and balanced over my back leg. My chest fills with air. My shoulders square to the plate.
I appear briefly still but have already begun to move forward. Some pitchers really do stop at the apex of their motion; they toy with the batter and adjust their timing between each pitch. I try to keep it moving. My hands separate. I bring the ball behind my back, and then up over my shoulder, and then as I hurtle toward the plate and down the mound, I release it and feel the seams fall away from my fingertips when it will finally, hopefully, go where I want it to. It’s a lot like bowling with a ball the size of a fist. It’s also nothing like anything else.
Success comes in waves, and so does failure. I strike out more people than everyone else. I also walk more people than anyone else. I’m polarizing, tantalizing. It’s like I’m an adjustment away from figuring something out, from being good by the league’s standards. I don’t know what that adjustment is, and nobody will tell me. I don’t ask. I don’t take a lesson; I simply trust that I’ll figure it out.
Week after week, I’m convinced that something will change, though I don’t practice, except when Kyle wants to come with me and split the cost of the cage. The one time I pitch to him mid-week, I peg him in the thigh when he’s not paying attention. He’s a good sport and doesn’t hold the yellow and purple bruise that spreads across his leg against me. It won’t last. We stick to hitting against the pitching machine from then on, though we know it’s not really helping. We need to get better at hitting against real people. It’s clear that neither of us are satisfied with our level of play. Ego has entered the building. The coach keeps track of everyone’s stats and posts them online. We are not lighting the league on fire. I get bumped from the starting rotation and into the bullpen. The coach tells me it’s to “build up my stamina.” It’s really because I’m not getting better. I am what I am. This blow to my ego is the first of many.
The beginning of my strained relationship with the coach centers around a convergence in my own perception of my abilities with his, the latter of which is based on the results of my performance, whereas mine are rooted in fantasy, in nostalgia. This game once saved me. It was a stabilizing force. Dad didn’t come home? You don’t have any friends? The field was only down the street. There was a game to prepare for.
And I was electric. Short, stocky, a whip for an arm. I was angry. If one or both of my parents didn’t show up to the game, which was very important to me, I’d just delight at the dumfounded faces of the opposing kids’ parents before they hung their heads in the bleachers while their kid dragged his bat back to the dugout after I struck him out again. I was also the kid who, on days when he didn’t have the magic, would argue with the coach about keeping me out there, insisting that I could figure it out. Incorrigible. I would stomp on the mound, hang my head, toss my hat on the dugout floor. My emotions were no bottled-up secret. I would sometimes not speak for the rest of the day. Now I see the similarities in my inward attitude, but the days where I could redeem myself with a dazzling performance on the mound, or assert that I have this, just let me find it, are seemingly over.
Later in the season, with our chances at the playoffs slipping away, the coach starts to bring in new players. One of them is another pitcher. I notice this and am hurt by it. I feel my opportunities dwindling. I only get to pitch when we’re losing badly and almost surely will not win or are completely out of options. I watch from the outfield and imagine that I could do better.
The outfield is a game of attention maintenance and disassociation, of mind games. How to stay engaged when nothing is likely to happen on the next pitch that requires your attention, but might? Three or four times per game something happens that requires a reaction, a catch, a scoop and a throw. The pitcher is involved in everything. I am envious and disgruntled. My coach knows it. I question why I subject myself to this; why try to resurrect something long dead, why lash against the cruel fist of time? When I was a kid, this was a way to take my life’s too-big problems and turn them into promise, but now it just feels like a waste of time. Like my life is happening somewhere else, and I’m here, on a baseball field, in a costume. Why insist that I can do this when all recent evidence is to the contrary? Why care? Sport without investment is pointless. It’s caring that makes it matter. That makes it fun. I try not to care and fail at it. I try and I care, and I fail, too.
My final pitching appearance of the season goes like this: I throw one inning and allow zero runs. This, for me, is an achievement. The coach congratulates me, saying, “Keep it up.” I assume, erroneously, that this will lead to more chances next week, and then I watch him turn to anyone but me. I sulk in the outfield. I can’t hit. I get some burn as a pinch runner, and I even score the winning run in the first game because the other team’s catcher fucks up. I rejoice with my teammates as they mob home plate and smack me on the back. I’m glad to have helped in some way, to feel like a kid surrounded by other kids, celebrating a win. Then somebody reminds us that we have another game tonight, and we cut it out. The second game is more of the same: the coach puts in three pitchers, one who already threw in the first game, one who I consider a much worse option than me with little to no supporting evidence, and one who does fine. We win by the skin on our teeth in a high scoring game.
I am hot and the air quality is terrible. Winning doesn’t matter to me. All that matters is my own feeling of failure, which is overwhelming, and only counteracted by my feeling of shame at caring enough about recreational baseball to feel like a failure because of it.
At the winners’ circle, the coach gives shoutouts to the players who helped the most. He mentions my pedestrian accomplishments. I offer my best golf clap to my teammates and avoid eye contact. Everyone’s going out for drinks afterward, but Kyle and I have no interest. I tell the coach I have to drive home. As I walk off the field, he calls me over. Hey, man, you okay? I tell him yeah, I’m fine. He says I seem a little upset, that he bets I wanted to come in and pitch, but that he thought going back to Roy was the better option for the team. He tells me that I did well last week, that I need to keep working my way up.
I know right then and there that I’m done working. I nod and tell him thanks. It’s humiliating. I’ve shown enough disgruntlement to need consoling from this well-meaning guy. No hard feelings.
Acceptance comes with its own form of relief. I’m not an eight-year-old with dreams of making the big leagues. I’m twenty-six, and free time is a precious resource better used elsewhere.
There’s nothing wrong with giving something a go. I gave it a good one. I tuck my uniform away under the bed, with my winter clothes. It’s been months now, and tryouts are again on the horizon. I’m still on the email list. Like a biological clock, I listen to the voices telling me to give it one more shot. That there’s still juice in the arm. Quieting them is simple enough: I can just pull up my stats. Those are forever.
