By: Mike Carter
As I age in this world and continually gain experiences, I find that fewer and fewer things give me pause anymore. In a world moving so fast so often that is often beyond my limited comprehension, I find myself carrying out the tasks of the day, with little or no emotion. The things you have to do, that are rote memorization, that dilute and minimize the real life all around us. These are the things that whittle away our most important possession: time.
I wouldn’t call this depression, which I also work with, but more a series of things that dull the senses, that do not bring joy, but simply a checkmark off that master list. Errands. Appointments to make and take people to. Whatever it may be, let’s call it a thief of time.
Yet this last week, I had several moments that stopped me dead in my tracks and made me think about my time. I got to spend an evening, with some of the best people in our small town, at the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa on Monday night. I won’t mention the friends by name, because I do not know if they would want to be associated with my blogs, but they know who they are. And we shared something really special, that will not be repeated for many of us there that evening.
Those of you who have ever read my words on paper know that baseball has been called my oldest friend, a constant companion, since being introduced to the game at about age five by my dad. Having an athletic, bright younger brother (we are less than two years apart in age) helped develop the love as he picked up the same things I did as a boy. That’s more than forty years together playing the game, watching the game, discussing it and now coaching it as we both do. I blame my father for the obsession and devotion. And I got to say that I played on, and coached on, the set of the movie “Field of Dreams.”
Our spring season was trying and a bit of a grind. Our team was full of great kids and families but lots of mistakes that were not coached out (I blame myself) had really taken a toll on me. I was tired and felt like I needed a little break. And then this trip came up. And I no longer felt tired. I was able to get a spot on this trip through our local baseball league, and take Jack, my 11-year-old son, with me. It was an epic guys’ trip.
As a kid in high school, I had the privilege of going to a writing camp every summer at the University of Iowa. It was a weeklong, intensive writing camp for would-be print journalists. While there in 1989 or 1990, I don’t recall exactly, the author Bill Kinsella was doing a reading of his new book at the time. I had picked up a $2 copy of “Shoeless Joe,” written in 1982, at some point and went to the book reading and had him sign my copy after. Inside the leaf he wrote, “Mike, go the distance. Bill Kinsella.” It became one of my treasures that would mean nothing to most of the world. It meant nothing to anyone else but me. I get it. I was able to show it off this week; now I wonder if they think I am goofier than what they previously gave me credit for! I brought that with me to show other adults, hoping they were as giddy as I was about this moment.
I read the book while in Iowa City one week. It was surreal, unlike anything I had ever read before. Still one of the most magical books in a lifetime of reading. It was phenomenal, definitely a top ten night in my life. We were each introduced over a loudspeaker, and we played the national anthem as well.
We didn’t keep score. We have no way of knowing who won. I didn’t care. Never did. Wanted the boys to have fun, take in the experience, and know that this was a rare experience that was there for the savoring. I tried hard to not explain or talk through it too much, just let them experience it.
For me, personally, I kept replaying scenes from the movie in my head, taking pictures, sending them to countless people I wanted to share the moment with that evening. I was fine until the end, when with about ten minutes left in our rental of the field, Jack asked me to recreate the Ray/John catch scene at the end of the film, and I started bawling. I held it together enough, I think to not be made fun of by other folks there. But I didn’t expect Jack to do that, and he insisted that we do it. This will be forever etched in my mind and heart. I was catching the ball through wet tears, and it was my son throwing to me, insisting we stand in the same spaces they do in the movie. A good friend got picture and video, and I’ll admit, I have watched both probably 100 times in the last week. It’s something I will never forget.
I kept looking at the field, the boys on it, the families surrounding us, and wondering if this was, in fact, heaven. The sky was an ethereal orange and gold, setting behind the fields of corn, just like it did countless times in the movie. The wind rustles the corn stalks, and you wait to hear a voice. You stare out over the tops of the corn, see them sway in the breeze, and wonder if Shoeless Joe Jackson is coming to play left field when your team is out there. We will take him, by the way. It’s purely magic, I swear it is. There was a mysticism at play there that night. It was perfect.
It turns out you can also rent the house for the night; that evening, two elderly sisters had rented it and even came out on to the front porch swing to watch us for a while.
I was surprised how little commercialism had invaded this sacred space. There is a small concession stand, and a relatively modest Baseballism store there. Several of the parents there and I joked about how much money we were going to spend in the store, and how much we could spend. Being responsible people, there was a vast difference between those two numbers for most of us.
I wonder sometimes if I am teaching Jack the right things. I worry that passing this along to him is the wrong idea; what if he should become obsessed like I am? What if he realizes similar to Jim Bouton, the old pitcher and writer, that baseball had grabbed him, not the other way around? Is it ok to teach him these things? Is it useful? Will it bring him joy? I don’t know but I think I am getting closer to feeling like this is ok, and here is why.
We live in a country that is anesthetized by anger and violence on a daily basis. Mass shootings now occur weekly, including one this week not far from where we live. Is teaching a young man about a game appropriate in this day and age, in which violent and vitriolic rhetoric often wins the day? We prefer our guns to making actual connections with other humans; we prepare our kids to face down violent intruders in their school building when our elected officials (they are supposed to work for us, remember?) could easily change the system by which a person owns, or cannot own, a semiautomatic weapon. Before you tell me to get off my high horse or stop politicizing, stop reading here if you don’t like it. I have worked in a school for 27 years and this “preparation” is absolutely absurd and utter nonsense. And before you say teachers indoctrinate your kids, don’t you think if I could do that, I’d start by getting them off their phones and doing their homework? Maybe using their daily planners? That’s where I would start.
Anyway, as I drove back to Dubuque that night, Jack asked to put on the MLB channel and listen to the game that was on as we drive thirty miles back. Both tired from a long day of work and travel, and then baseball, he asked for more. How could I deny him? I had a smile he couldn’t see on my face. It was just so satisfying. I thought about all the guys I played baseball with when I was Jack’s age; I thought of all the times my dad hit me fly balls at the local park, the times my brother and I played catch or whiffle ball in front of our house. I thought of all the things that baseball has brought me in my life. I made sure to crouch behind home plate a couple of times because let’s face it, it’s the best seat in the house, and the view there was simply magnificent. It’s ok to share our love of good things with the people we love the most. It’s ok.
Going to bed that night, in a rented room in the middle of Dubuque, I had this sense of easy calm and peace over me. I decided that for the most part, I am teaching him the right things. And I thought about how I use, and do not use, my time. How rarely do we understand the gift of time. I am in the middle of my summer school session right now and taking time off can be very difficult at this juncture. However, I felt that I needed to do this, as if this opportunity missed might not pass this way again. I’m almost 50; recently two of my best friends on the planet have had open heart surgery and a knee replacement, respectively. It drove home the point I make here: tomorrow is never a guarantee to any of us. These moments in time may be the last ones, and we may not even know it. I know, these operations are routine, right? However, you just don’t know anymore. Seven people went to a Fourth of July parade this week in one of the most affluent suburbs in America, and they didn’t make it home. They didn’t get to watch fireworks with friends and families like many of us did. My point? Make the time to do what is most important to you. If I get 75 years on the planet, I’ve used almost two-thirds of my life. Have I done the right things? Have I made the right choices? I know one thing: I won’t abuse my valuable time doing things that don’t hold my interest or my love.
Stop taking time for granted. Stop telling yourself you will take that trip one day when you are retired. Stop saying you’ll make that phone call you have been meaning to make tomorrow. Do it now.
There isn’t a game with a more storied history than baseball, and I love it more than just about anything else in this world. Whatever you choose to do with the valuable time you have, make sure it is meaningful to you and yours.