Catcher In The Rain

For once, I didn’t do the dumb thing.  The Monterey Amberjacks, of the Pecos League, are having open tryouts and I’m on the wrong side of the fence,  Could be worse.  Could be raining. 

It starts raining.  The eight fans in the stands open their umbrellas while the seven professional baseball hopefuls ignore the precipitation.  The Pecos League is making its entry to the peninsula, and they need some product to put on the field.  My original plan was to pay the $65 and tryout, hoping to catch on as bullpen catcher for the home games.  Or the guy who protects the bullpen catcher from foul balls.  Whatever.  Any position that got me on or close to the field, and paid me to be on a baseball team.  A dollar a season would be fine.  I’d be a professional ballplayer. 

Turns out, the Pecos League has a rule that players can’t be older than twenty-five.  Rules.  I honestly don’t see the point of rules.  Eat your broccoli.  President Bush.  Color inside the lines.  Jackson Pollock.  Be this tall to ride this roller coaster. Dustin Pedroia.  Turn in your correction sheet or don’t graduate with your class.  That would be me.  Rules are bunk.   

The Monterey Amberjacks have seven hopeful and yes, don’t rub it in, young baseball studs ignoring the cold rain.  They also have, by my count, a grand total of four baseballs.  All of which are wet and slippery, and routinely fly out of trying too hard hands at the ends of yes, as yet unrepaired Zeus-like throwing shoulders to land a hundred feet past their intended target.   

I came down to watch a professional baseball tryout, just to see what it looks like.  That’s not true.  I came down to wonder if Colin could maybe make the team.  As we watched the Lincoln Saltdogs play I forget who on our west college tour, I offered up some old man advice that he should take his college senior summer off and play for an independent league team.  Just to do it.  You get old, you get a job, you get your throwing shoulder sliced up and stitched back together soon enough.  Live.  Play.  Make memories. 

The sun setting over Lincoln, Nebraska.  The stands half-full, rather than half-empty.  The guys who are never gonna make the big leagues, goofing off in the dugout.  A reliever, sleeping in the bullpen.  And me, summing up Catcher In The Rye in the bottom of the fifth inning.      

Colin could make the team.  Heck, I could make the team because, unless the Pecos League has some trick I’m unaware of, baseball teams need nine players and the Monterey Amberjacks have seven.  Sitting in the wet stands on the wrong side of the fence, I’m not too surprised that the tryouts look just like Little League.  Run.  Faster.  Catch.  Better.  Throw.  Stronger.  Hit.  Farther.  But still, just like Little League.  Just older.

What would a life tryout look like, I wonder.  There’d be a heartbreak or two.  A decision or three, in retrospect.  A fair bit of puzzlement about the rules.  Some rain.  Maybe sleet.  A dream to chase, a hand to hold, a smile to make things seem better than they are, and a laugh at the wonder of it all.  It wouldn’t look much different than a tryout for the Pecos League, on either side of the fence.