Out of Sync

It’s college-football bowl time, so naturally my thoughts turn to baseball, with visions of Albie Pearson and Charlie Smith against a backdrop of arches that run from left field to right into eternity.

My one regret with raising Clare is that she was born too late to see a White Sox game at Comiskey Park, the Baseball Palace of the World as Sox owner Charles Comiskey made sure it would be known as.  The field—the deepest ballpark green I’ve ever seen—was never far from the seats, and how could it be, given that there was but one upper deck, posts carrying it where cantilevers dare never go?  And circling the environs a wall of brick, except where it gave way to those arches that allowed the park to breathe, as it were.

The best I could offer my daughter was the second-ever Cubs-Sox game in 1997, won by the right side at home, of course.  But the five-year old couldn’t experience what the nine-year old did on June 15, 1962.  My father had loge seats, upper deck between home and third, a few rows from the railing.  I mostly sat slack-jawed, having never seen a green so green or arches so grand or light towers so tall.  Did I mention Albie Pearson or Charley Smith?

Pearson, all 5’5” inches of him, batted leadoff for the Angels that pleasant evening (which my mother made sure to provide me a jacket for, just in case, because we would be so “close to the lake”); that notion I had of women being able to play major-league baseball probably dates to seeing the diminutive Pearson.  As for Smith, he hit a homerun for the Sox in the second inning.  How fitting that a journeyman should provide the power; talk about prophetic.  And let’s not forget the bottom of the ninth, when Floyd Robinson tripled in two runs for the 7-6 win.  I have Robinson’s baseball card on my office wall.

Memories need context, for context is an anchor.  Sever action from the place it occurred, and what are you left with?  One anonymous stadium after another, “guaranteed” to mean little if anything.  Damn’ Red Sox, damn’ Cubs.