The joy of the ball game learned from those who love it best
By Peg Guilfoyle
It wasn’t the Twins, so it must have been the Kleons who taught me to look at baseball. It was supposed to be Klingons, but when the team was registered in the University of Minnesota Softball League in 1972, somebody couldn’t spell. Instead of being a pack of alien space warriors, it became the “Kleons,” and the obscurity of the name only affirmed my complete disinterest when I married onto that team 1 0 years ago.
Softball? Frankly, who cared? Early-period field hockey in high school had not inspired me -to a life of sport, and nothing about major league sports ever changed my mind.
The Kleons were interesting, though, in a backwards kind of way. Instead of watching the ball, or the bat, or the score, I started watching the players. There’s a Rick, a Jack, an Ed, a Jerry. They are undemonstrative regular guys, including a banker, a contractor and a couple of small-business owners. It was intriguing to see how they loved to play, rushed to the field after long workdays, and lingered over pop and a bag of corn chips as the sun’s light got low after a late game, hitting a few balls out to their children. It was interesting how, every year, somebody came up with a new design for the team shirt, and new affectionate jokes for the team dinner.
I watched them for a couple of years before I realized how beautiful they were. By then they were all pushing 40, and not a matinee idol among them, including my own good husband. But they had the unself-conscious grace of absolute focus, moving like one creature on and off the field. Concentrating and playing hard, they were filled with energy and attention, hope and cunning, facing some younger team with slimmer middles and more fashionable hair. Something in the game made them beautiful.
There have been other influences. I picked up some of Roger Angell’s elegant prose for my husband and read it myself, skipping the numbers but lingering over the infused rhythm of the game. There was Mr. Puckett’s real-guy smile, and his rock solidness in the Annie Leibovitz photograph on the cover of a local magazine. And more recent- in the Ken Burns documentary on the history of the game, I was struck by the rich-, reflective tone of the voice-over and the pure glee of men like Robert Creamer, talking about how they just plain love the game.
And everywhere, in the summertime, there is the utter hilarity of kindergarten T-ball, where balls roll by unheeded while shoes are tied, and parent assistants spring from the field with little players in tow, aiming desperately for the nearest bathroom. In the first-grade level, a team we played had a child in a wheelchair, who was brought, grinning, up to the “T” where he tapped the ball off. As it rolled, his teammates rushed to the plate and pushed him, careening and screaming, around the bases. Major league ball just never looked like that much fun.
We found some of that fun last year at St. Paul Saints games, although we’ve never been there when the weather’s been good. It’s been raining, or it’s been freezing. But even against a chill wind blowing up the bleachers in my face, you can see what the Kleons feel, and what child players thrill to. The game is beautiful. It has pace and rhythm, and drama and ambition. It has tension and humor. In the Municipal Stadium, watching the Saints, these things are near enough to be tangible and entirely real.
We even bought a hat, although licensed sportswear products are mostly annoying. Desire for a T-shirt seems based on what team has the most pugnacious graphics. But my little son wears his Saints hat to school every day, under his stocking cap with the long tail. He knows the Saints and the Kleons are his teams. He and his little sister wear their father’s old team shirts for pajamas and sick days.
I remain an irritating companion for true believer fans. I’m not interested in statistics, and am liable to be distracted from play by such nonessentials as wondering what they’re actually saying to each other out there on the mound. At Saints games, I often could not tell you who the opposing team was, or name a single player. But my family watched the players scowl and scramble,’ had our faces painted, and laughed long over that shark race, imagining some poor Saints staffers running around the outside of the fence, holding up wooden fish on sticks. And looking up beyond,,the diamond, we saw the lights of the State Fair Midway spinning and twirling. The Fire Department was working out its practice building right next door. A freight train tumbled by, hooting. There ball was plenty of time to watch each long rise above the field, all faces turned upward and then fall toward someone’s outstretched glove. It was beautiful.
I’m not very interested in what’s going happen over at the Dome this year. But we’ll be buying snacks to feed kid teams,and putting umbrellas and blankets in the trunk for a Saints game or two. And this year, in the Mounds View Recreational Softball League, with the help of some pretty, elaborate knee braces, the Kleons will play their 25th season as a team. They’re quite likely to make it into the finals.
So, thank you, Mr. Veeck. Mr. Puckett. Mr. Burns. All members of the Withrow T-ball teams. And thank you, Kleons. I couldn’t see it before; it has come on very slowly!, But now, I’m looking forward to the season,.
Peg Guilfoyle is a writer who lives in Hugo.
