The Rookie and the Geezer

I never liked baseball. Got hit in the head a lot because I was so nearsighted that I could never see the ball unless it was in my hand. I had no idea where it was in the sky until it blew up my tortoise framed eyeglasses. Before I was twelve I decided that balls were flying bombs and contrived to lose my first-baseman’s glove (although it did smell wonderful). I gave my baseball to a friend and thus never learned to spit.

Years later I bought a basketball. It was a bigger ball so I thought it would be easier to see, but in play it moved very fast, and when it hit me, it zonked my whole head, and my eyeglasses, and my right knee. Something told me to stop fooling with my balls, I gave the basketball away and consequently failed to learn two important skills of the American athlete— I can’t either dribble or spit.

Back then, in the nineteen forties, nobody noticed that I couldn’t see, and I thought everybody saw the world the way I did. When other kids caught a ball I believed they were supermen (so did they) while I wanted to hide in a telephone booth. These humiliating experiences in full view of the boy-world convinced me that I better not play games or pretend to care about their rules. I even began to sneer at all rules. I rationalized that I doubted the value of gams in which one person or team could win only if another were to lose. I just couldn’t cheer for the winning side or celebrate their victory because I was consumed by empathy for the losers. I never knew that games are not life.

I’m telling you this because it all changed completely while I watched the Red Sox in the playoffs and the first three games of the World Series.

Dustin Pedroia made me love baseball! Now I even have a baseball hero and he’s just a kid with a let’s-go-play attitude. Yeah! I remember how that felt!

What can a skeptical nerdy 70 odd year-old geezer like me learn from an athletic rookie who seems to have no doubts? First, Pedroia knows how to focus on every immediate joy he can find in the game. And he leads with his dream-foot forward. He leans into pitches and into life—both are lessons to re-learnin after fifty. He launches all of himself into every gesture. No wonky limping about there. And speaking about alert—the guy is AWAKE! He watches everything while he is jumping up and down!

In interviews Pedroia seems to be surprised and humble in his success, and is warmly generous to both teams without being snotty or gloating, and remains respectful of the high skills of all the players. He would probably feel kind of like all aw-shucksy, about being singled out for this praise and add that it wasn’t just him that won the game. That lack of brag is the opposite of blame, another lesson worth learning at any age. Baseball is a game, not a war. But someone can even be afraid of a game, and they can get over it. Us geezers need to stay active and alert so that the fatigue of middle-age doesn’t steal all our bases while we nap.

I’m wiped out from staying awake late for so many nights watching these games. It’s Sunday afternoon. I have to take a quick snooze.