Cheetahs In The Mist
We lost Jimmy. The marine layer rolled over the dunes and enveloped the Seaside Spartan ball diamond in a fog so dense our centerfielder was no longer visible. As practice came to a ghostly end, the first thing we could make out were his fluorescent orange and yellow cleats trotting in from the gloam. Hey, if you’re gonna play center, you gotta have some style. The cleats sure were fun to watch as a blur chasing down balls, and stealing second on a whim.
The marine layer is hard to describe to Iowans. Not rain. More than dew. Sorta fog, but more like a cloud, just amblin by at ground level. Driving in it, you’ll need your wipers intermittently. Riding a bike in it, you’ll get wet. Catching baseballs in it, you’ll need your instant calculation of ball coming off the bat two hundred and fifty feet away eyesight to get to the spot where it will land, because you won’t be able to see much of it from about ten feet in front of home plate to about five feet in front of your mitt. If it was an easy position to play, somebody else would be doing it.
The locals have a love / hate (mostly hate) relationship with the marine layer, as they jockey around the peninsula trying to optimize their solar exposure. Just add another oddity to the list, because I think it’s fantastic. It took me fifty years to experience being in or above a cloud while not in an airplane, so I’m still in “isn’t this interesting” mode. Fog is time travel if you do it right. Run as fast as you can through it, and there's a new future with each step. Sit and read a book in it, and you're taken back in time to all the references and spurred memories, as the world shrinks around you.
Walking through a Big Sur forest shrouded in the marine layer wafting through, I recall Jimmy going invisible and Tony calling practice to an end. Here’s the thing – no one asked Jimmy if he wanted to stop. Heck, just put on a batting helmet and keep at it. You only get so many days as an eighteen year-old, and chasing down flyballs based on initial observations and whatever echo-location capacities you may have would be something to remember. I remember at the time I made some joke about Catcher In The Rye and Centerfielder In The Fog that went over about as well as you’d expect it would to high-schoolers.
You don’t give your only son the middle name of Caulfield without Salinger’s work having an impact on you. But the forest fog and the centerfield cloud have me pondering metaphors. Catching kids in the rye, reading narrative with a distinct style and being honest about how adults seem hopelessly trite is all well and good in high school. It made English class seem relevant, for at least a week or two.
English class, it turns out, goes on forever. Past the SAT / ACT and college. Past the employment applications and interviews. Past the courtships, where the best lexicons win, to the marriages and / or significant others. Choose your words and your metaphors carefully, for they are the paths through the foggy forests of this mortal coil.
The kids are grown and one of them bears a Salinger scar as a middle name to remind them to be authentic, observant and at least a bit of a rascal. So, when someone calls you off the playing field for their perception of your limitations, question whether their limitations are your limitations. LIfe isn't all sunny days. And the fog of life is not to be feared. It's to be soaked in.
