Summer Breeze

Armed with a master’s degree in sports’ administration, my daughter is trying to take the job world by storm.  She checks websites daily—when exactly did the want ads disappear?—and sends out her résumé into the ether world, waiting, waiting for a response.  In the meantime, we go hitting.  If only those bird-dog scouts of legend hung out around Stella’s in the beautiful suburb of Lyons.  They’d see something then.

We visited Stella’s yesterday afternoon.  My daughter is a knight reincarnated.  The armor goes on to protect the head and gloves to do the same for her hands.  (You should’ve seen the blister at the base of one of her thumbs.)  Then, instead of a lance or sword, she picks up her bat, steps into the cage and does battle against a machine that cares not at all how bad it makes anyone look.  I am the page, handing out tokens and advice if the brave knight wants to hear it.

Stella’s is built like a big semicircle, with a cone roof supported by two metal posts that rise forty or more feet off the floor; hitting one of those posts is like ringing a bell, and it is one of the sweetest sounds I have ever heard.  The outer wall is a series of garage doors, pulled shut in winter and now open to let in the summer breeze.  With the sun and the breeze and the balls ringing off those posts, this is how June is supposed to be.  I imagine heaven has an endless supply of tokens.  It better.