Opening night of the 2018 Vancouver Canadians baseball season at Nat Bailey Stadium
We are in the midst of grave times of momentous import, and mad times.
In our daily lives, from the time we rise at the beginning of our day, we all step up to the metaphoric ‘home-plate’. We go to our jobs, enjoy our families, and go about our daily lives. We hang in there. We press forward.
From our metaphoric use of baseball as our game, to the quintessentially Canadian food we eat at the stadium, baseball resonates deep within us. Pop culture extends and illuminates it in every far corner of our society. I grew up watching baseball, and playing it — baseball is deeply rooted within me, and on some days, good days, game days, baseball serves to act as respite from all the madness and hurt and pain that surrounds me.
Baseball: it’s not just metaphoric idioms, nor is it the crowds at Nat Bailey Stadium — although they are fine and full of good cheer, the families and the young couples filled with love that brims over with hope — nor is it the popcorn, the warm peanuts in the shell & hotdogs, the crack of the bat, the wave, the hot summer days with cold beer and upside down ice-cream helmet cups. It runs deeper. Baseball symbolizes a way of life and, for many of us, has come to act as metaphor for the human condition.
Sometimes, when I walk down the street, people drift by me in a trance-like, almost catatonic, state plugged into the broader digital collective, and oblivious to most things going on around them. There is a near-constant stream of communication fed into our brains via our smartphones and tablets, and the opiate epidemic of our time: information overload. You just can’t escape it, none of us can escape it. Because now, it’s a way of life.
And then you set about to attend a Vancouver Canadians baseball game at Nat Bailey, and upon arrival at the stadium and having taken your seat, you hear someone near you marveling over a ball that was just hit deep into the outfield, and how it bounced off the wall, and ricocheted away from the left fielder. And for just a moment you are transported, life is transcended.
‘Filmed’ with an iPhone, the camera work a bit shaky. Vancouver Canadians baseball.
And sitting back on the uncomfortable benches, you take a moment to gaze upon the perfectly manicured, cross-hatched, green grass on the field reflecting the sunlight. And the shadows from the stadium’s upper façade slowly overtaking the rest of the diamond from earlier innings. You see the Canadians pitcher’s pre-pitch routine unfolding, as he nervously spins the ball in his hand, adjusts the brim of his cap so it sits just off to the left of his head. And for one very special moment, there is a hush in the crowd.
Then the gangly young batter comes up to the plate, some 19-year-old kid from Texas with dreams of “the show”, setting about to rap the bat against his cleats to shake loose the dirt stuck in the heel. Stepping up to the plate, he looks directly at the pitcher as if to say, “Give me your best. I can take it, and knock the ball clear out of the stadium, into tomorrow and beyond.”
For many of us, baseball offers us refuge from the madness of our times, because it’s antithetical to the way much of life is today, antithetical to the never-ending flood of rage that we have come to accept as the new normal.
During a baseball game there’s no Trump, no surtax protesting rich folks, no developers, no rank unfairness, no despair, no railing against social injustice, hurt, wont, regretful child poverty and need — not that these issues recede into the background, for they are always there and of present concern — but amidst the madness of our days, there is at times just baseball & you, running to first base, stealing second, watching home runs sail over the far green fence, double plays, curveballs, sinkers & sliders.
Baseball. It’s nice and slow, and easy and safe. And some days, game day, that works just fine for me, and I’m willing to wager, it will for you, too.
Twenty years ago this week, Kevin Costner’s Field of Dreams was released into theatres
