The outfield stretches from the flat, dried brown grass of Fairview Park in Normal, Illinois, to the thick green behind the high school tennis courts in New Milford, Connecticut, to Furlong Field in Salem, Massachusetts, booby-trapped with gooseshit, hemmed in on three sides by an auto junkyard, a playground, and a street, but on its fourth sideβis that fair territory?
Its boundaries are inexact, and infiniteβa state of mind. Even Whitman, the supreme outfielder unshaven, musing, great range would be perplexed by grass so full of misjudgments. Ambiguous weeds make love to lost strands of grass in the shadow of an imaginary scoreboard. The brown patches where the outfielders usually stand weep like bullet holes. A hollow, anonymous voice slurs facts that pile in soggy heaps down the left-field line.
Where the grass turns to yellow stalks of prairie, an ant skitters into the husk of a baseball, empty leather hide that has birthed whatever was inside it.
There are no fathers and sons in the outfield. There is, somehow, not enough room. Beyond the foul lines, there have been sightings of gnarled gods with curious, knobby protrusions and unpronounceable namesβthe sentimental call them angels.
The low line drive skims the infield and bounds toward you, a little to your right. Nobody on, one out. You need simply to stop the ball. Plant one knee in the grass, the other bent, leg opening out. The glove touches the ground, your throwing hand beside it, fingers splayed.
