August 10, championship day, the Classics versus the Hot Shots in a one-game playoff. The teams had finished the season in a tie, both going 19-2, the Classics losing twice to the Hot Shots but beating them once, the Hot Shots losing
once to the Classics, and once, inexplicably, to the last-place Ancient Mariners. At 7:30, the sun, a happily frequent refulgence in this climate-changed summer, toasting the skin on the back of his neck (71 degrees already, a glance at his watch told
him) and bouncing brightly off the emerald and henna carpet of Meadowdale's Field 1, the old man, having performed his pregame home and Starbucks rituals, clad in black cap, white pin-striped jersey sans undershirt, black shorts, and black ,
neuropathy-countering, compression socks, windmilled his Mikan Freak with either hand alternately, loosening up, then rehearsed a few swings, feeling his form--load, see, snap--before taking BP. For him it had been a boom and bust season, uplift followed
by recession, uplift again followed by depression, his batting average in the high .700s early, falling to .500, climbing back to .600, dropping to .450, then steadily rising to .650. He had continued to memorize his swing. In addition to team
batting practice, he hit once a week at Civic Field with Zee, farewell gestures of homage in the months before work crews were to begin fashioning the space into an elegant multi-purpose park. He had been, and remained, happy with his physical rewiring.
His grip and hip rotation and bat snap were sound and automatic. His muscles remembered. He had not been happy with his mental rewiring, his timing and focus. The wires of his concentration too often short-circuited. He choked.
He panicked. He swung too early, he swung too late. He pulled off the ball, he fell away, he flailed or hacked. He failed in the clutch, he failed when the team had a big lead and there was little at stake. His craven need to succeed,
he, a lifelong scoffer at paradoxes, had finally admitted to himself, caused him to fail. Not always. He had a game-winning RBI single against the Codgers, he had rally-extending doubles in comeback wins over the Old Timers and the Legends.
Manager Larry Miller had moved him to the bottom of the order when his average tailed off, elevated him slightly when he seemed to be regaining his groove. And he was regaining his groove--by not trying to regain his groove. By imitating
the late, great Tommy Thompson, the apotheosis of a mindful softball player, seemingly always able to realize his intentions.
When Zee had finished rattling his 10 short line drives and hard top-spin grounders, the old man stepped
into the batter's box, where he loaded his body and emptied his mind. After falling to .450, his career abyss, he had in desperation abandoned his old hyper-conscious approach. He was no longer tinkering with mechanics. He was letting
go. He was hitting holistically now. He had no swing thoughts. Thought was his enemy now. He faced the pitcher in an angst-free Zen state of no-mind, obviating any insinuating fears of failure, precluding any stress-induced
premature firing of neurotransmitters. His heart did not race, his stomach did not crater, his jaw did not quaver. He settled into the moment, embraced it, embraced the joy of presence, how wonderful to be here! He chillaxed, accepting
himself, allowing reality to connect with him. He was in a relationship with something beyond himself. He! Him! Sylvia and Diane would be stunned, would feel vindicated, would be tempted to wag a finger and say "Mm-hmm."
Gone were the inauthentic bad faith sins of self-doubt and self-correction. Being and doing, he had sensed at last, were a Taoist yin-yang unity. He could be and do, do and be, simultaneously. At the plate he was attuned to the vibe
of the pitch, not just with his eyes and his brain but with his whole body, the highest expression of human capacity. He was not in his body, he was his body, ready to adapt, to read and react as naturally as a cruising bee diving into
the welcoming nectar of a flower or a coiled snake launching itself toward a fat mouse. He was swinging by feel, balanced, smooth, free of tension. He no longer automatically waited for a strike. Balls and strikes were irrelevant artificial
constructs. He trusted his innate sense of pitch-worthiness and swung at the pitch that felt right. He no longer said "Wait, wait." A mantra was a distracting imposition. The right timing came through intunition uncontrolled by reflecting
intelligence. Attuned to the pitch's affordances, he calmly regarded its parabola, felt it come into his presence, patiently stayed with it all the way, even through the temperate violence of his hip rotation and stride and wrist snap, and catapulted
it, with a velocity unexpected from a man his age and size, in trajectories that streamed over the infielders and between the outfielders. Not always. There were instances when he unaccountably tuned out, swung at an inauspicious pitch that
was a bit too short, a bit too deep, too far inside, too far outside , swung a little too early or a little too late, swung over or under the ball, instances when his attention had strayed, resulting in dribbling grounders, feeble popups, sleepy flies.
But these he dismissed with a shrug or a chuckle (you can't be perfect, he could now accept), confident that he could slip right back into the moment when next at bat, waiting, watching , whaling, unburdened by thought.
Larry's first pitch was short,
uninviting, offering no affordable access. The old man let it go. "Sorry, Wayne, that slipped," Larry said. The next 10 were all swing-worthy, and the old man lashed them from left to right, according to their affordability, with the exception
of one that he got on top of and beat into the ground, prompting him to nod and smile in self-forgiveness.
As he pivoted to return his bat to the third-base dugout, a voice from the aluminum bleachers behind home plate called, "Nice job, Coach!"
"Liz Ann! My God! Didn't expect to see you here."
She was wearing a cardinal-red Stanford baseball cap and large, round, pink-rimmed sunglasses.
"Saw the announcement in the Beacon. Had to come. Couldn't
miss it. Love seeing you in another championship game. What's going through your mind--entropy or the Battle of Agincourt?"
"Neither. I'm seeing with my third eye, now. I'm thinking without thinking now."
"You? Mr.
Chalk Jock? Playing spontaneously, without fear? Incredible!"
"I'm a new man."
The Classics took a short infield practice after everyone had hit. As usual, the old man and Zee were to alternate at second base and catcher.
He took his ground balls attentively, feelingly, wordlessly, shrugging them up. His "Down, down" mantra had been wiped from the hard drive of his mind along with his "Wait, wait" mantra. His shuffle steps were quick and smooth, his crossover pivots
sharp and balanced, his throws, seamless motions that started from his feet and ended with a crisp wrist snap, direct and accurate. His teammates were up, confident. There was positive chatter all around. "Nice job, Wayne," "Attaway, Zee,"
"Great range, Gordy." "Good arm, Pat." (After Tommy's mid-season death, the old man, with Larry's approval, had again asked Pat Dahl to join the team, stressing their need for a replacement. Pat had agreed, on condition that his wife Darlene,
who ran a part-time catering business from their home in Emerald Hills, had lettered in fast-pitch softball at WWU, and kept fit by running weekend 10Ks and playing tennis at Harbor Square, be allowed to join as well. Reluctantly, Larry had
consented. After just one game in which he rotated Darlene as an extra through the outfield, the league permitting unlimited substitution, Larry had installed her as a starter in right-center, relegating Merle Oberon to the role of pinch-runner.
They hadn't been the same team since. They had been better.) Larry then hit a few balls to the outfielders. The old man and Zee took turns covering second on throws from left and left-center. "Great peg," he yelled as Johnny threw him
a one-hopper from deep on the foul line. They went out for relays on throws from right-center and right. Darlene was 5'7", a firm 140 pounds, round-faced, lithe, electric, her black ponytail, threaded through the space at the back of her adjustable
cap, swishing whenever she moved. She overthrew him on her first ball, the old man getting off the ground about four inches, to no avail, and she screamed "Motherfucker!", her teammates trying not to laugh and glancing at the growing crowd embarrassedly.
"Sorry, Dar."
"Not you, Wayne, me. I flat-out missed you."
" Dar, don't hold back, say what you really mean," Larry yelled, to the amusement of the crowd. "Try another one."
Darlene raced to her right and snagged a line
drive with her extended glove just a foot off the ground, jump-stopped, pivoted, and roped a throw that the old man quickly relayed to Gordy at second.
"Beautiful, Darlene," Larry said.
They were ready. They jogged into their
dugout while the Hot Shots, wearing white caps, red jerseys, and white shorts, walked over from their practice on Field 2. They gathered to read the two lineups that Larry had posted in the dugout.
Hot Shots
Classics
LF--Dick Dodge
RC--Darlene Dahl
SS--Buddy Budnick
LF--Johnny Merlot
1B--Chuck Metcalf
LC--Billy Fontaine
LC--Rabbit Watson
SS--Gordy Goldsmith
RC--Guy Fletcher
3B--Pat Dahl
RF--Doc Holiday
RF--Vern Rapp
C--Tim Clark
1B--Dale Hills
3B--Frank Baxter
2B/C--Wayne Adams
2B--Jim Montgomery
C/2B--Gary Zylstra
P--RJ McCoy
P--Larry Miller
"Hey, this is what we've been waiting for," Larry said. "The game of the year against our good friends and arch-rivals. It's our time. We know we can beat these guys. We miss the great Tommy Thompson, our special player and
our special friend, but I know he's with us today. He's looking down right now and smiling upon us." They tightened their circle, raised their right arms, made a bouquet of their hands. "Lord, keep us all safe today, and may we play in a
manner that honors You."
"They've got us twice so far. Now it's payback time," Darlene said, bouncing on her toes. "Stomp 'em!"
They laughed and brought their hands down in unison, shouting "Amen!"
The old man looked at the
growing crowd. There were perhaps as many as 100 people present, Bernice and Margie and Gloria, of course, and other teammates' wives and some of their adult children with their children, another contingent of 40 or so in support of the Hot Shots, a
few curious players from other league teams, and Mary Bright, the Parks and Recreation director, with the championship trophy next to her.
Larry and Rabbit met with the umpire at home plate for the coin flip. "Call heads, heads, heads," Darlene
said.
"Does it matter?" the old man asked.
"Yes! We want to be the home team."
"I mean, don't we have the same chance whether we call heads or we call tails?"
"No. Larry usually always wins when he calls heads.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
The old man smiled. Never mind the laws of probability, never mind the difference between correlation and causation, he loved the girl. So intense. So fierce. So free of doubt. So unlike
him. That was to say, the old him. The new him was not fierce by any means but was loosely intense, eagerly relaxed, bemused by paradox.
Larry didn't fix it. He called heads and won the toss. "We're in the field, guys!" he yelled
to the dugout as he and Rabbit shook hands.
"Yes!" Darlene said, and grabbed her glove, hugged Pat, and raced to right-center. The old man walked out to second in her wake. He turned and looked at the crowd. He was at ease.
Not fierce, but not scared either. He wasn't worried about how he would perform for his team, how he would look to Liz Ann and the other spectators. He was serenely alert, fully absorbed, as he read the ground-hugging, skidding, spinning slice
hit to him off the end of the bat by lead-off hitter Dick Dodge, shuffle-stepped to his left, welcomed it into his glove, and threw his man out smartly.
"All right, Wayne," Darlene yelled. "Great start."
The next batter, Buddy Budnick,
lined one over the old man's head that Darlene charged but had to one-hop. "Shit!" she said, "Should have had it." Buddy had rounded first hard, as if to go to second, and Darlene ran in toward him, the ball cocked in her left hand, yelling "Go
ahead, Buddy, try it!"
"Not on you, Dar," Buddy said, retreating to first with a grin.
Chuck Metcalf then grounded sharply to Pat at third and the old man hurried over to take the throw at second, just ahead of rapid Buddy, for the force-out,
Classics wives kazooing their appreciation.
"Okay, guys, two down. Infielders play deep. I'll cover second," Larry said.
But he didn't get the opportunity, because Rabbit Watson ripped a single to center and Guy Fletcher lofted a
deep fly over Billy's head for an inside-the-park home run, Hot Shot supporters cheering gleefully, before Doc Holiday flew out to Darlene to end the inning.
"Only down three, we're fine," Larry said. "Let's get 'em back. Here we go, Dar."
The team, the crowd, quieted excitedly to see what the explosive Darlene, a reticulation of quick-twitch fibers from her toes to her tongue, would do. She imploded, grounding directly to Dale at the first base bag, rendering her great speed meaningless.
She jogged back to the dugout with her bat still in her hand.
"Jesus fucking Christ!" she said. "Fuck me! That won't happen again."
Johnny and Billie both flew out to end the unproductive inning.
The Hot Shots continued to
attack in the second, Tim Clark and Frank Baxter hitting hard ground balls through the infield for singles and Jim Montgomery moving them over with a groundout to Dale at first. When pitcher RJ McCoy came to the plate, the old man, playing catcher, said,
"I hope you throw me a lot of knuckle balls today, RJ."
"What're you trying to do, Brer Rabbit me?" RJ said.
The old man laughed, cocooned in equanimity. "Not at all. I'm ready for anything."
"Good for you," RJ
said, then lined a double to left between Johnny and Billy, scoring both runners, giving the Hot Shots a 5-0 lead, before Dick popped up and Buddy flew out.
"Let's go, Classics!" boomed a young man's voice from the crowd as the teams changed sides.
This time they did. Gordy doubled to right-center and Pat scored him with a single to right. Vern moved Pat along with a single, and Dale walked to load the bases, bringing up the old man. The bleachers rang metallically as the Classsics
fans stomped their feet.
"Wayne, I think RJ purposely walked Dale to get to you," catcher Tim Clark said. "No respect for his elders."
"Probably did. Not to worry."
"What are you--Alfred E. Neuman?"
"In a manner of speaking."
He loaded his body and emptied his mind. His receptors were attuned. Nothing existed except the ball. Perhaps wary of Brer Rabbit, RJ did not throw the knuckler. He arced a smooth pitch with topspin toward the middle of the plate,
a pitch eminently affordable, and the old man was all over it, his Freak trampolining the ball with a resounding crack, the left-center fielder, who had drawn in a couple of steps, also in disrespect of age, desperately turning and running back as the ball
climbed over his head and landed two hops from the fence, the old man scooting around the bases for a triple as three runs scored. The dugout was roaring. The bleachers rang again with prolonged stomping. Bernice, Margie, and Gloria kazooed
cacaphonously.
"Yes, Wayne, yes!" Darlene screamed, and Gordy, coaching at third base, slapped hands with him.
The old man steepled his hands briefly and inclined his head slightly. Did he actually whisper "Namaste"?
He did. Was his pulse rapidly slowing as he drew a couple of deep breaths? It was. Were the surge of adrenalin and the flood of dopamine already petering out? They were. Was he giddy? No. Was he, after the merest flash
flush of success, back in the moment? Yes. Did he need to look at Liz Ann for validation? No.
Two pitches later, he scored the fifth run of the inning on Zee's hard ground single to right.
"All right, guys, way to answer,"
Larry said.
The Hot Shots sassed back, scoring two, and the top of the order for the Classics again failed to produce, making the score 7-5 after three. But they shut out the Hot Shots in the fourth, Pat smothering RJ's smash down the third base
line and throwing him out and Darlene robbing Buddy with an all-out sprint to her left, extending her right arm as far as she could, snagging the ball, somersaulting when she lost her balance, and from a sitting position waving her glove for all to see that
the ball was in it. Vern and Zee ran toward her to help her up, but she sprang to her feet and jogged in. The crowd whistled and clapped and cheered.
"Okay, guys, we've got the momentum now. Let's ride it!" Larry said.
Was that
the spark the Classics needed? Was Darlene's play an inspirational turning point? Did it mark a change in momentum? Was momentum an actual thing? Could one good play be the catalyst for another and then another and then another?
Could it be an attuning fork, turning attention toward clear signal and away from crackling noise? His teammates certainly believed so. Or was momentum just a subjective impression created by a statistically abnormal clumping of events, like a
coin turning up heads six flips in a row or batters stringing together six hits in a row? Truly random if seen in a context of a million consecutive flips or at-bats, but seemingly other-directed if viewed myopically within the limitations of six flips
or a single inning? The old man had always thought so. But now, in the moment as he was, he could almost sense himself vibrating with his teammates on the same iron string.
In any case, the Classics proceeded to string consecutive
hits, starting with doubles by Gordy and Pat and singles by Vern and Dale, Gordy and Pat scoring and Vern getting to third. As he came to the plate the old man embraced the beauty of the day, the extraordinary ordinariness of the day, the towering dark
green hemlocks and firs bordering the field beyond the fence, the glow of the emerald and henna carpet, the brilliance of the red and white uniforms of the Hot Shots, the look and heft of his smudged white Freak with the lyrical lime green horizontal stripe
at the bottom of its barrel. What more could he ask for? He took his stance.
"You're getting the knuckler this time, Wayne," Tim said. "No more Mr. Nice Guy for RJ."
"Whatever."
RJ grinned at Wayne and threw him
an ordinary top-spinner, too deep to be affordable. It clunked on the back of the plate for a strike.
"Knuckler for sure now, Wayne," Tim said.
It was. RJ adjusted his grip and tossed the ball with no follow through. Deprived
of spin, the ball floated and quarked in the currents of the air. As it made its final jump toward the outside half of the plate, the old man, staying with it, paying divine attention, swung, contacting it at maximum bat speed precisely at its equator,
and it gapped the right-side outfielders, who were surprised that the ball could be upon them so suddenly, and rolled to the fence.
Another triple, two runs scoring. Darlene, coaching third, said "Beautiful, Wayne," and bear-hugged him.
The old man was brief in his "Namaste," quick to catch his breath while the crowd roared. RJ looked toward him and lifted his cap in salute. The old man nodded. Zee lined a single to right, and the old man scored. They had their
five runs and led, 10-7. The Classics engaged in an orgy of high-fives and daps, the Hot Shots trudged off the field. Had the momentum shifted?
It certainly seemed so, the Hot Shots going down in order in the fourth. But then the Classics
did the same thing in their half. Where was mo'? "Let's not lose momentum, guys," Larry said, as if it were simply a matter of keeping track of their car keys.
In the fifth, momentum strayed, or the Classics let it get away, or
the Hot Shots stole it, or statistically normal regression to the mean occurred as the Hot Shots scored three runs on a single, a walk, and Rabbit's mad dash around the bases, hat in hand, grimace on face, arms pumping, knees churning, on his long drive to
straightaway center. The Hot Shots all ran out to greet Rabbit at home plate. Their fans were stomping: momentum was theirs! Guy then doubled, and Doc hit a low line drive to the old man's left. Attuned and welcoming, he read the angle
of the drive as best he could within the limits of his mac d, made a crisp crossover step and ran hard, gloving it at full extension on a hop as it passed through his retinal blur and into clearer sight, jump-stopping as in days past on the basketball court,
reverse pivoting, and throwing the runner out by a step. "Great play, Wayne. That's a momentum breaker," Larry said. "Let's get those runs back."
They did. Finally, the top of the order produced. Darlene, grunting on her
swing, laced one into the right field gap and sprinted all the way to third, up on her toes, head still, arms punching, legs driving. Johnny singled her home and then scored on Billy's double, and Gordy sliced an off-field triple down the left field
line, to tie the score. But Pat and Vern, too eager to loft a sacrifice fly, each popped out to shallow left, too short for Gordy to gamble on, and Dale stranded Gordy with a grounder back to RJ.
Where was the momentum now? Were both teams
getting tight, or was that an unwarranted post hoc ergo propter hoc conclusion from the abnormal clumping of errors that followed? Zee let Doc's grounder roll right between his legs. Tim, out of sync and reaching desperately, landed a
swinging bunt four feet in front of the plate that the old man pounced on, only to have Dale drop his throw. Bax grounded to Pat, who stepped on third for one out but got the ball stuck in his glove and was late on his throw to Zee at second. Trouble.
But when Jim dropped a flare just back of Zee, Darlene charged, scooped the ball off the ground, and zinged a throw to Dale to nip Jim at first for the out, Tim and Bax advancing to third and second.
"Nice play, Dar," Larry said.
RJ was
next. He waggled his black and orange Mikan DC41 and looked over the field before stepping into the box.
"Watch out for Larry's knuckler," the old man said.
"Larry doesn't have a knuckler. Larry doesn't have anything." And he
lined Larry's first pitch up the middle, scoring Tim and Bax. Quod erat demonstrandum.
Dick forced RJ at second for the third out, but the Hot Shots had the lead, 12-10.
"Okay, right now, right now," Larry said as the Classics
tossed their gloves on the dugout bench. "We don't want to wait till the seventh. We take the lead now, we put the pressure on them. Wayne, it's on you. Get us started."
Phenomenal, his stream of consciousness then, his awareness
of body and self in time and space, of this fiction that he believed in, this invented microcosm bounded by clean lines and clear rules within which, by relinquishing control, by not getting in the way of his attention, he simply was, fearless and
delighted, attuned, rapt, potentially potently kinetic. He rejoiced in the beauty of the day, the human-made richness of the situation. He neither sought it nor shunned it. He accepted it. He would eat his breakfast, he would wash his
bowl.
"No triple this time, Wayne," Tim said as the old man came to the plate.
"Odds are you're right," the old man said. "Three triples in a row would indeed be a glaring statistical anomaly for anyone, let alone a guy my age."
He took his stance, loaded his back leg, emptied his mind. RJ shrugged, grinned, and threw his knuckler, a darter that landed in the middle of the plate for a strike, the old man, trusting his feeling, letting it go.
"Another one coming, Wayne?"
Tim said.
"I wouldn't know, Tim." He would not distract himself by guessing. He would simply watch.
It was another knuckler, outside and deep, a ball.
The third pitch was a high spinner that reached the very top of the allowable
12-foot arc, and the old man waited and watched, and waited and wound his hips as it descended to chest level, and lashed it up the middle over RJ's head into center field for a single.
The Classics fans cheered. "All right, Wayne, good
start," Larry yelled.
Zee followed with a ground ball up the middle past RJ. The old man, attuned to the speed and direction of the ball, got a good jump and ran toward second as hard as he could. Rabbit raced in, gloved the ball on the
dead run, and without even planting his feet fired to Buddy at second for the force. But the old man, who hadn't slid in a game since he turned 70, fearing injury to his brittle bones and tight ligaments, surrendered to the moment and dropped into a
perfect figure four to get the tip of his right shoe onto the base just before the ball arrived. "Safe!" the umpire, having hustled out to call the play, yelled.
The bleachers again rang metallically. "Great effort, Wayne," Pat called from
the coaching box.
"Wayne, you're a mess. We need to get that cleaned up," the umpire said. He called time and the old man jogged to the dugout.
The friction from contact with the bristly fibers of the henna carpet had shredded the
thin skin on the outside of his left leg from knee to mid-calf. The skin flapped in pieces and Eliquis-thinned blood ran into his sock as he jogged to the dugout.
Darlene grabbed the first-aid kit. "I got this!" She pulled on a pair
of rubber gloves and used a gauze pad to sop up some of the blood. He embraced the pressure. She tore open a packaged alcohol wipe. "This is gonna hurt. Sorry, honey." She rubbed the pad all over the wounded area. He embraced
the stinging. She extracted a four-by-six-inch bandage from a box in the kit, lubed it from a tube of Neosporin, pressed it on the wound, then wrapped it with adhesive spooled from a wide roll. "Okay, Wayne, go get 'em, baby!"
He returned
to second. The wounded area was a little stiff but would not interfere with his running.
Larry was up. Zee clapped his hands. The old man was alert. Larry did his job, hitting a grounder to the right side that handcuffed
Jim, his throw to second late because of his bobble. Bases loaded, and here came Darlene. The crowd hushed excitedly. She bent her knees, settled her weight into her compact, jutting butt, waggled her baby blue DeMarini Flipper.
RJ, knowing Darlene was an impulsive, first-ball swinger, threw the ball a foot short of the plate. Darlene lifted her right foot and started a swinging motion but checked it. RJ threw short again, Darlene refrained again. RJ shook his head.
His third pitch was a knuckler on the inside edge. Darlene was a little early, a little out in front, but had generated such bat speed that when she contacted the ball just above the sweet spot it flew down the right field line toward the corner.
The old man jogged in to score, Zee loped in to score, and Larry, the heaviest, paunchiest, slowest runner on the team now that Tommy was gone, chugged past second and started toward third. Darlene, arms firing, stride lengthening, taking two steps to
Larry's one, nipped the inside corner of the first base bag and closed on him, touching second when he was halfway to third, and continued to close, threatening to run right up his back, shouting "Go, Larry, Go! Score! Score!", and stopped at third
clapping her hands as Larry lunged for home plate a step ahead of Jim's relay throw, inertia carrying him into the backstop screen, which he grasped while he gasped.
The Classics and their fans were laughing and cheering. "All right! All
right," "That's living on the edge, Larry!" , "Way to push him, Darlene!"
After Larry made his way back to the dugout, past all of his teammates lined up for fist bumps and high fives, after the crowd had calmed down, Johnny skied to left, Darlene tagging
and scoring easily, and then Billy and Gordy grounded out.
14-12, top of the seventh. "Hold 'em, guys," Larry said. "Heart of their order coming up. Everything you've got now. Let's end it here."
The old man, preternaturally
alert, was back at second. Buddy led off with a triple that rolled between Johnny and Billy. Hot Shots fans cheered, Classics fans groaned. Chuck flew out to Vern in right, Buddy scoring. 14-13. Rabbit tripled to center, legs churning.
Only strong relay throws from Billy to Gordy to Pat kept him from scoring. Who was faster? Rabbit or Darlene? Perhaps they would race sometime.
Two outs away from winning, one run away from a tie score, Guy at the plate. "Here
we go, Larry, you got 'em," Darlene called. She was right. Guy hit a ground smash right back to Larry, who got his glove down to the ground just in time to snare it. He looked Rabbit back and threw to first.
Two down, Doc up.
The old man knew that Doc usually came to the right side. He moved back a step, just in case Doc blooped one over his head. The colors of the shirts and caps of the crowd were an abstract of beauty. The crowd's murmuring was musical.
He was at ease, he was poised. He rejoiced in being.
Larry tossed one short, which Doc disdained. Larry countered with a pitch high and deep, which Doc made the mistake of accepting. Reaching, flailing, unable to shift his weight or
snap his wrists, he contacted the bottom of the ball with the handle of the bat and parachuted it toward the old man. "All right," Gordy exulted. "All you, Wayne." But the old man had to wait, rooted, looking into the sky, disoriented, until
the ball passed through his retinal murk and entered readable space. It was deeper than he had guessed. Two seconds late, he pivoted and executed a wobbly turn-and-go, his balance deserting him, his glove and bare hand extended. He did not
know where the ball was. He felt, rather than saw, it hit the tip of his glove and carom off his right shoulder. He felt it rolling down his back toward the ground, and his glove and bare hand swung around behind him and formed a cradle into which
the ball settled. Astounded, he held the pose for a five-count to be sure of the catch as his teammates roared and raced to him, Rabbit standing fruitlessly at home plate and Doc at first shaking his head.
"Out!" the umpire called. "Ball
game!"
After the hugging and back-pounding and high-fiving, after the rejoicing and the expressions of incredulity ("I've never seen anything like it, Wayne! How did you think of that?"), after the exchange of handshakes with the Hot Shots and
the presentation of the championship trophy by Mary Bright, which Larry accepted in memory of Tommy, after they had all handed their phones to Bernice and Margie and Gloria and posed for team pictures, after Darlene had shouted "Pool party at the Dahl house
in Emerald Hills at five o'clock, ribs and pulled pork and a keg, bring your spouses and your swimming suits!", the old man lingered for a few minutes near the concession stand with Liz Ann.
"Coach, you were on fire today!"
"No, Liz Ann,
I was chillaxed today. I was open, I was receptive, I was ready to engage. I felt part of something larger than myself, immersed in a great web of being. I wasn't trying to have my way by wrenching or forcing. I was not an artist manipulating
my material, I simply employed it as it presented itself. I was not a warrior battling an enemy, I was simply responding to the vicissitudes of a game. I was not anxious. I was not concerned about myself or the perception that others might
have of me. I felt grateful, not entitled. I let the game come to me. Angst does not, as Sartre would have it, arise from the very nature of our consciousness. It arises from clinging to our consciousness, to our self.
Letting go of the self is angst's antidote. Letting go of the self frees us to fully experience ludic life."
"Wow, Coach, this is such an unexpected transformation! You know I love and respect you, but I have to ask: aren't you
mucking about for an undigested oat in a pile of horseshit? This language is so not you. Pronouns that disagree in number? Split infinitives? Paradoxes? Gaining control by not seeking to gain control? Given who you are,
it just seems so devious. What brought all this about?"
"Two things. First, our beery discussion at 190 Sunset. As I was going all sfumato, immersed in the day and the scene and our conversation and our friendship, I began
to sense the common sense in your remark about the paradoxical coexistence of fate and free will. As light can be both particle and wave, so life can be both determined and spontaneous. By opening our self"--
"There it is again!"
"--to
mindfulness we can lift the veil of maya and enter the infinitely relaxed realm of the infinite no-mind, the realm of the ludic, truly, neither in control nor out of control, simply attuned to affordances. And second, my own abysmal failure.
After months of working to rewire my brain, my game was falling apart."
"And you didn't think that age had anything to do with that? With the waning, if you will, of strength and speed and agility?"
"Indeed I will! Thank you.
But the problem was deeper than that. The problem was my disconnect---"
"Disconnect? Don't you mean disconnection? Or disconnecting? Who are you?"
"I am a person at ease, transcending the moment by being in the
moment. Before, my disconnect from the whole, my desperate efforts to master my fate, to captain my soul, to be invincible, prevented me from realizing, in the sense of making real, actualizing, my self. I was trying to impose my will upon
the game. It wasn't happening. I was making too many errors in the field, too many bad swings at the plate. The games began to fill me with fear. I did not want to hit, I did not want the ball hit to me. The more I tried to concentrate,
the more I choked. The more I played, the worse I got. I could not get in sync. I was early, I was late, I was pulling off the ball. If I stayed on the ball it was stiffly so, no wind, no snap, no follow-through. Dread tired,
I had about decided to just get the season over with and then quit the game. I had about decided not to go to St. George. And then you and I met for beer, and in the course of our discussion I began to get these vague glimmers."
"Something
came over you? You who does not believe that there is a something that can come over one?"
"Let's just say that an awareness occurred. Not a flash of insight, not satori, but a gradual dawning, a hazy autumnal
aurora, a pragmatic acceptance of the exquisite fictional truth of the union of atman with Brahman, there being nothing else for me."
"So now you believe in the soul? And an oversoul? And transcendence? And atonement?"
"I believe
in the soul as a construct of the brain that dies with the brain. I believe in the oversoul not as something supernal or ethereal but as a pulsing of infinitely intricately interrelated quanta that one can, through mindfulness, be not at one with
but attuned to, in transcendent harmony with. I no longer crave success nor fear failure. I look for and accept whatever is available to me. I still practice--but mindfully. As we talked about basketball that afternoon, I so admired
your courage, your heart, the way you and Brenda played with abandon and willed the Mavericks to come back and win that championship game, like Liberty leading the people, brandishing musket and flag, and as I so admire Darlene's refusal to yield as well--"
"She is special, isn't she? Talk about drinking life to the lees."
--"but I understood that my gray spirit quailed at pressure. I could not meet it head on. I had to sidle up, lean gently into it, recognize it for
what it was, a construct of interrelated quanta, a solvable puzzle if the mind was not burdened with hope and fear. And that's when I slowly began to rewire not my brain but my mind, began to re-teach myself all those old Hindu-Buddhist-Taoist fictional
truths. Ever since, I have been playing better, with patience and poise and self-forgiveness."
"Well, if today is any indication, not just better but great."
"Today was an aberration. I was absolutely in my bag and in the zone.
Even my clumsy play on that final pop fly exemplified a serendipitous finding of affordances. I misread the depth and trajectory, I stumbled when I pivoted, I had no idea where I was or where the ball was, but I put up my hands just in case, and the
ball found me, hit my glove and then my shoulder, I felt it rolling, and instinctively, going with the flow, swung my hands behind my back and accepted it. In the future there will no doubt be occasions of regression to the mean, but I am happy
to say that in the past few weeks the mean has been steadily rising."
"So what's next? St. George?"
"Yes, in early October. I'm going with a team of 80-year-olds drawn from Seattle and Bellevue. I'll keep working out and we'll
have some practices down in Federal Way."
Liz Ann hugged him. "Well, good luck, Coach. I'm still a little taken aback by your mucking about in horseshit--I think active will has more to do with success than passive acceptance--but I'm so
happy that you feel you've found an answer that works for you. Ride it as long as you can. Enjoy your celebration at the Dahl house today and text me from St. George. I'll be dying to know how you do."
[Hm-hmm.
Sylvia]
[I shiver again, Wayne, this time at your acceptance of the exquisite fictional truth that the more we are at ease, the more we are engaged. As Jack Foster spoke of the sculler at ease, operating at peak relaxed performance in the midst
of intense effort, so we can speak of you in your second coming as the batter at ease, all intunition (nice invention, that), your center holding midst the passion of your swing. Wish I'd been in town to see you play! Dave]
[Wayne, so pleased
to learn of your success. I, too, wish I could have seen the game. To think of all the games I watched you play in high school without really paying attention, just kind of caught up in the sociability of it all--which girls were sitting with whom,
who was wearing what. I kind of agree with Liz Ann, though. Who is this "serenity now" guy? Where's that angst-ridden existentialist I used to know? You're not going to start attending one of those evangelical mega-churches,
are you? Solveig]