Love Letters to Sports

You look up one day and you’re 45 and your hair is gray and your belly is big and the corners of your eyes look like paper airplanes. Your father is long since gone, more than a decade ago, and the best chance your mom appears to have for a positive ending lies in assisted living.

You’re way past being all grown up now, married for 12-plus years now, a father now, a father of three in fact, and the oldest is in double digits and boy crazy, the middle one already knows more about math than you ever did and the youngest could probably take on the whole crowd if pushed.

You live in a place far from home, you’re well past being caught up in the corporate world and you’re enclosed with seemingly no exit in a maze of bills, stress and the daily crisis de jour.

When and where it all started oftentimes seems so far off now, it might have even been a dream. But every now and then something comes out of left field, and yes that pun is intended, to remind you that there are threads to this life that are there. And not just there, but also right and good and touch points of, no matter what else comes your way, a wonderful life.

One of those moments came in recent weeks when my lifelong friend Dave Ginsberg called me from Opening Day at our boyhood park in Los Angeles. His son, Max, was there, standing along the white line I’m sure as the pomp and circumstance did its thing. Dave made the point that perhaps I wouldn’t recognize the place what with the new outfield walls and such but I knew at the time that I would. I would because it’s still Rancho Park and as long as Diamond 5 is down the slope near the playground and Diamond 2 is where the annual ceremony is held and Diamond 1 is in right field and Diamond 3 is in deep center and Diamond 4 is down the left field line then as far as I’m concerned all is well with the world no matter how they dress things up.

Besides, of the many, many things I’ve been blessed with in my life, I was lucky enough to be able to return as a young adult to these very same cathedrals of sand and play on a softball team with not only a bunch of pretty good players but also a bunch of guys who happened to be - and remain so lo these many years later - my best friends.

So yes I would recognize the place, and I’d do so in an instant. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t moments from the place that I only recall with a sense of hazy wonder. One of them is the day the Dodgers’ left fielder - there’s that left field thing again - showed up on Opening Day to give a speech and wish the little tykes in our Pacific Coast League uniforms and logos well in our upcoming season. I have no idea what year this occurred, but only remember that we were in awe that we were standing not at Dodger Stadium but on our own field of dreams in direct company with a real major leaguer. And I remember that he was hurt, and let’s face it that might have been the main reason he ended up there, and in fact was getting around on crutches. I don’t recall a single word he said; I do, though, remember being toward the front, and pushing and pushing toward him, as he and his crutches gingerly climbed back into his car after he was done. At the last minute, I swear that I was the last kid that stuck his glove through the window before it was rolled - manually, I have to assume in those days - all the way up. And the next thing I knew the glove was back outside of the window and it was back firmly on my trembling hand and it was signed by this real major league baseball player who played for the Los Angeles Freaking Dodgers and whose name was Bill Buckner.