Spirit Animals

Don’t Google image search “torn hamstring”.  It’s much better to be genuinely surprised when the event occurs.  That’s the operating premise behind the “Sea Otter League”, as near as I can tell.  A group of are you kidding me old ball players despoiling the Seaside High School diamond on summer Saturdays.  Why they picked a spry sea creature with a 15 – 20 year lifespan as a league namesake rather than a walrus is not yet clear to me.  Some of these guys have let themselves go. 

Two Saturdays ago, I started the day at Pinnacles National Park, buying an annual national parks pass as a welcome to The West present for Amanda.  The annual pass, at $80, is a screamingly good deal for all it buys you; entrance into any national park or monument for an entire year.  You can’t swing a dead California Condor round these parts without hitting some purple mountains majesty, shining sea or spacious sky, so stock up on sunscreen, and get to it.   

Soledad bills itself as “The Gateway to the Pinnacles” (they’re currently looking for a city manager, btw) and you get to drive through some nice parts of town on the way to and from the west park entrance.  There’s a corner where I was supposed to turn left, but going a half block straight led to a Little League field with a game about to begin.  I’m nothing if not a baseball sentimentalist so, the left turn would have to wait.

I take a seat next to the announcer / scoring table and the father / son duo chats me up.  It’s an All-Star elimination game; hence the crowd and fanfare.  Then, randomness strikes.  I mention where I’m from and that I’m helping the Seaside Spartans baseball team and the dad / announcer says “hey, you know Gaskins?”  “Sure”, I reply, “he’s a great ballplayer … batted second, played great defense and had an inside the park homer.”  Dad / announcer advises he was his Little League coach. 

It’s a big world.  It’s a small world.  It’s a comically random world.  All I know is, it’s my first “I’m a local” experience in California.     

Later that day, I’m driving back from REI (trekking poles to go with the national parks pass) along Hwy 1 and notice a baseball game going on at Seaside High.  Have I mentioned the baseball sentimentalist part, yet?  I pull up, walk down to the stands, and double the crowd.  Some wife, not sure of the score or inning, thankful for her iPhone to give her something to do. 

I had heard of old men playing baseball, and even seen archival footage of said phenomena, but had never yet actually witnessed it.  It’s an acid trip.  The ball moves like you are accustomed to, what with gravity being a constant and all.  But everything else is … how best to describe it?  Strange doesn’t quite capture it.  Incongruent is close.  Suessian, perhaps. 

Slow.

Slow’s the word I’m looking for.  The walk from the on deck circle to the batter’s box is roughly two minutes.  The pitcher readies himself for what is more than likely the last ball he will ever throw before his frayed shoulder just falls off by saying three Hail Mary prayers.  For each and every pitch.  Which, as you might imagine, gives the runner on first a fairly good jump on stealing second.  Were he so inclined.  But he’s not.  Because his knee braces aren’t there to deke the catcher into a false sense of security.  His knee braces are there because he’s the pitch runner for a walrusian guy who, apparently, is the designated hitter.

I might as well be nine.  Sitting, watching the game, hoping to be asked to play.  Of course, if I was nine, I wouldn’t be sitting and hoping to be asked.  I’d be playing.  Frisky Dingo is my joke answer at the ready for when someone asks what my spirit animal is.  But my true spirit animal is a kid playing centerfield.  Doesn't have to be me.  Any kid will do.  The ones earlier today in Soledad.  The knee-braced ones here at Seaside High.    

The foul balls give me a chance to demonstrate my work ethic and speed.  To be fair, iPhone wife doesn’t stand a chance against me in running them down.  I thus watch the three last innings as the score stumbles to something like 28 to 24.  When I was nine, I didn’t have a business card to hand to the team managers, but I do now.  So I do.

They e-mail me, advising the ratio of pulled muscles and strained ligaments to players is such that there’s always a need for “fill-in” players as the season staggers through the summer. 

Nothing ventured.  Nothing gained (and / or ruptured).