baseball

Pub Day: Steal Away Home

January 2, 2018 by Billy Coffey 2 Comments

Steal Away Home

The first gift I remember getting was a baseball bat,

one of those giant hollow ones made out of bright blue plastic from down at the Family Dollar. The kind of bat you can’t help but swing and hit something, anything. Dad bought it for me. A single plastic ball, bright white and roughly the size of a coconut, came taped to the handle like an afterthought. Summertime, that’s when it was. Hot sun and a warm breeze. Me with a Spiderman T-shirt and Dad wearing a pair of cut-off shorts, a wad of tobacco in his jaw. Sometime in the mid-70s. Had to have been, because I can still see Dad’s old truck parked in the driveway beside Mom’s yellow Camaro.

And I can see the two of us out on the sidewalk in front of the house, Dad’s hand on my shoulder as he points to a splotch of gray paint on the sidewalk. Him telling me to put my foot right there, hold that bat up behind my shoulder. Get ready. Watch the ball. That pitch coming in slow and easy—“I’m rainbowin’ it,” Dad says—and me shutting my eyes to swing.

I can see all of it, every detail even these many years later.

The memory stands as fresh and clear as the one of me sitting down to my computer just a few minutes ago. Isn’t that strange? We’ve all lived so many moments, each of them recorded on some bit of gray matter in some fold of our brains, yet we’ve forgotten much more of our lives than we can recall. I can’t tell you what I did last Thursday, but I can relive that moment of taking my first swings of a baseball bat forty years ago with such clarity that I may just as well be five years old again.

I’m not sure why some memories are like that, so precise when so many others are subject to fading. But I do have a theory. Those first meetings with people and things which will come to help define our lives are ones we never forget. Those memories shine no matter the distance between when we are and when they happened because we continually return to them, keeping them strong, keeping them shiny.

That’s baseball to me. Always has been.

And I get it if baseball isn’t your thing. Really, I do. The days of every person in the country huddling around the radios in their living rooms to hear a nightly game are gone. It’s all too slow for our fast-paced lives. So much standing around and spitting, so little action. Weird rules. Steroids.

Sure.

But for me baseball was always more. Not merely a game, but my first lessons in everything from poetry to physics, history to religion.

For instance:

The only specifications for a baseball field is the distance between the bases and from the pitcher’s mound to home plate. Meaning the size of a field is limited only to one’s imagination. Meaning, I guess, that a baseball field could technically stretch on into infinity.

And there is no clock to a baseball game, no threat of time expiring. It takes as long as it takes. There must be a winner and a loser. A game perfectly played would last for eternity.

But here’s my favorite: scientifically speaking, hitting a major league fastball is impossible. The time it takes for a 95 mph pitch to reach home plate is shorter than the time it takes for the human eye to register it, much less for the human eye to then coordinate the rest of the body to swing a rounded bat in the correct plane and degree to meet a rounded ball. Meaning that game you might believe is boring really isn’t at all, it is a succession of small miracles unfolding before your very eyes.

Infinity. Eternity. Miracles. Sounds like my kind of thing.

I played baseball all through high school and had designs on playing much longer before life got in the way. That’s a story for later, though. But I still love the game and will upon occasion still wake myself in the night from swinging a bat in my dreams. It seemed inevitable, then, that the day would come when I would write a baseball book. That day is today.

Steal Away Home is my ninth novel (NINE. No wonder I’m so tired) and is out today.

You can learn more about it here.

If you’re a baseball fan, rejoice. You’ll find plenty there to nourish your love of the game. But don’t despair if you don’t know a fielder’s choice from a fungo, because it isn’t about baseball at all deep down, it’s about the things we love and come to depend upon to give our lives meaning, and how all of those things will eventually lead us to ruin unless our love is placed first in the one person who will never let us down.

Go grab you a copy. I promise you’ll love it.

The boys of summer

May 14, 2015 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

In the late springs it was always school and chores after, and when the grass was cut and the garden weeded, there would be time for an inning or two. Then May would give to June. I cannot fully convey just how special that time of year was to me growing up—those few weeks when the air would first warm and then the mountains blossom, and that long string of big, black X’s on the calendar I’d begun in September finally ended. Summer vacation. That’s when the season would really start. That’s when the lot would open.

There were five of us neighborhood kids, and we’d always get together once school was out. There was me and Greg and Chuck and Noel and Jonathan. Sometimes there was a sixth named Duane, but it wasn’t often he was allowed to play. Duane’s daddy was a preacher—not the holy roller kind but something close—and his momma always frowned on us neighborhood kids running around, shooting each other with pretend guns and playing cops and robbers. It was always better when Duane got to play. He was the only one willing to be the cop. It all turned out for the best, though. Duane, he never had much of an arm anyway.

That’s how we measured ourselves back then—by our arms. Not how big they were or how strong, but how far and how fast we could throw a ball. Because let me tell you—back in our old neighborhood, baseball was king and the lot was our castle.

It wasn’t much, that piece of land Maybe half an acre wide and that much long, with a row of big pines marking the left foul line and Mr. Pannill’s house marking the right. The road was our fence.

Come the first day of summer, we were at the lot every morning at 9:00 sharp. We’d play until the sun got too hot. Sometimes Greg’s mom would feed us, and it’d be peanut butter and banana sandwiches in the shade of those pines. Other times, we’d bike it down to the 7-11 and poll what money we had for the biggest Slurpee we could afford. One time Noel said he couldn’t share a straw with all of us, there were too many germs. Don’t you know we let him have it for being such a wuss. Then it’d be back to the lot for more of the same until the sun went down and our mommas started hollering.

The thing about childhood is that you don’t know how special it is until it’s over. All those memories you make will stay in your pocket for the rest of your life, and you’ll take them out from time to time just to handle them and remember. But I think we all understood that back then. I know I did. Even that young and even in the midst of those moment, I knew how special they’d become one day. How long-lasting.

I grew up in that lot. We all played on the Little League teams in town, but whatever we did on the big field didn’t matter. Our reputations—good or bad—were made between the pines and Mr. Pannil’s backyard, and we all knew it. I hit my first home run there, clear to the other side of the road. Broke my first bone in the outfield. I learned about divorce from listening to Noel talk about his parents, and I learned about sex from listening to Jonathan talk about his.

Things like that, they stay with you. They get tucked into your pocket and are never lost.

I learned this at the lot, too—nothing is ever permanent in this world. Even the good things go away eventually. We spent almost nine good summers on that lot and I remember each and every one of them, and I remember how it all began to slowly disappear. Noel moved away. So did Duane, though we never really missed him. The rest of us . . . well, I guess we all just grew up. We got cars and got older. Too old for the lot.

I’ve lost track of most of them now. That happens often in life too, and I think it’s one of the saddest things. There’s now a house where our lot used to be. It’s a nice ranch with a big front porch and flowers planted all the way down the sidewalk, but to me it’ll always be an ugly thing. To me, it will always be the thing that covered over my castle. But I drove down there tonight and just sat. It’s getting on in May and June is right around the corner—just the sort of evening when we’d get together for a few innings. I sat there with the window down and the breeze rustling through those old pines, and I swear I could hear the laughter of five young boys trying to figure out what it meant to be alive. I swear I would hear the ping of the bat. I swear I could hear someone say the next game’s tomorrow.

Playing by the rules

April 13, 2015 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

scan0005[1] Once upon a time, I was a baseball player. And that’s putting it mildly.

It would be closer to the point to say I was a baseball fanatic. While most teenaged boys would have posters of scantily-clad women or music groups tacked to their bedroom walls, I had ballplayers. And while most would spend their free time perusing the latest issue of Rolling Stone, I would spend mine with Baseball Digest.

You get the idea.

Fortunately (and I can say that now–“fortunately”), God had other things in mind for my future. Baseball was my first true love, and our breakup was a tough one.

Five years ago:

Though the two of us have gone our separate ways, we still have opportunities now and then for a little flirtation. One of those opportunities came last week, care of my job.

College kids are cocky by design. They know much about the world and little about themselves, and the combination results in broad declarations and high claims. So when the girls fastpitch softball team challenged the faculty and staff to a game, the results were obvious. And not.

It began a few years ago with a simple conversation between one college softball player and one groundskeeper. I’m not sure who first said what. All I know is at some point one said something about being a much better ballplayer than the other, which was taken as an insult, which resulted in more insults, which resulted in the first ever softball game between the girls fast-pitch team and the staff.

The games are always interesting. There is an extraordinary amount of fanfare involved, all of which can be boiled down to one word—pride. That’s what fuels these games. It’s not just pros against Joes, it’s the experience of age versus the cockiness of youth. Both teams are out to prove something, whether it be that that a bunch of old men can still kick it up a notch when needed or that the gals can hit and throw and run just as good—better, even—than the guys.

So while there is plenty in the way of friendly trash talking, there is also an undeniable seriousness beneath. My team doesn’t want to be beaten by a bunch of girls. Their team doesn’t want to be beaten by a bunch of groundskeepers, a few office workers, and a mailman.

It was an informal affair at best—no uniforms, no signals, and no stolen bases. And no umpire. Balls and strikes were called by the catchers, one of whom our team borrowed from the other. Baserunners were called safe or out based on consensus.

What could go wrong?

As it turned out, not much. For a while.

Because despite the combination of weakened knees and livers and lungs, us old guys were holding our own. And the young gals were holding theirs, despite the fact they’d been up for days cramming for finals. We were locked in a 1-0 pitchers duel.

But then through a series of walks and hits, we rednecks managed to load the bases with two outs.

Things were suddenly serious, and very much so. The chatter and clapping began in our dugout, while in the field the ladies were pounding their gloves and getting restless. And nervous.

The count ran full, and I could see the sweat building on the pitcher’s face. The intensity was getting to her. It was a look I’d seen before. No way she’d throw a strike.

And she didn’t. The ball sailed about four inches outside.

I jogged to third as the carousel of baserunners moved up one base. The runner ahead of me stomped on home plate with authority. We had a tie game.

Yes! Wait. No.

Because then the pitcher decided her last pitch was a strike after all, which was immediately agreed upon by her teammates.

Team Redneck protested in a most vehement way, of course. But in the end, there wasn’t much we could do about it. We took the field and vowed revenge our next at bat. Which never came, because after they batted they decided the game was over.

I didn’t stick around for the cookout afterwards. I imagine it was a quiet meal.
Me, I didn’t care that much. It was a chance for me to play some ball. The score was irrelevant. And I guarantee you that thought was echoed by most of the people on my team who just enjoyed playing like kids again. It didn’t bother us that we lost. What bothered us was how we lost.

We played by the rules. They didn’t.

You could see this whole episode as something bad. Not me. In fact, I see much good in it.

It lets me know that regardless of how often we’re reminded of how bad both the world and the people in it are, we still expect folks to follow the rules. To play fair. Most do. A lot don’t, of course, and never will. But as long as there is someone somewhere willing to take offense when the rules are broken, I really think we’ll be okay.

All of this has gotten me thinking about the rules my Dad first taught me about baseball. The ones I’m teaching my son now:

Play hard.

Practice much.

Don’t be afraid to get dirty.

Have fun.

Cheer for your teammates.

Keep your head up.

Win well. Lose better.

Shake hands when you’re done.

I like those rules. They’re good for baseball.

Good for life, too.