For the love of the game

home of the brave...PLAY BALL!

When searching for a book to write about in this letter, I saw Steve Kluger’s “The Last Days of Summer” on my shelf and decided, yeah. That’s the one. Published in 1999, and first read not long after that, this epistolary novel takes place over the course of a couple of years leading up to and including the early days of World War II. Joey is a precocious 12-year-old who bombards his favorite baseball player, Charlie Banks, with some of the funniest “fan” mail you will ever read. This book is full of heart, and comedy, friendship, love and found family. Oh, and did I mention musical theater? Kluger will forever have my heart from this book as well as “My Most Excellent Year” in which he blends coming out, the love of baseball, and Julie Andrews!.

I re-read “Last Days” about a year ago and it sits in the bookshelf above my head. And as I prepare to go out and garden in one of the first sunny days here in the Hudson Highlands, it is not a stretch that baseball and this particular book come to mind.

“Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You remain forever young.”

― Roger Angell, The Summer Game

I first encountered professional baseball when a friend offered to take us, his company having season tickets in the loge box at Shea stadium (the former home for the Mets.) I balked and stalled thinking why would I waste a night of my life when I could be having fun? I finally gave in, and from the moment I crossed through the tomb-like hall and entered the stands, I was entranced. Natural grass so green it could put your eye out. That wide field ending in rising billboards and a fence clearly saying; “hit me! hit me!” And dotting the field like so many muscular flowers in blinding white were the players, the home team.

That first game was a pitcher’s battle, most of the balls were strikes or fouls and the rest, caught and tossed to the infield as if connected by strings, seamless and direct, long straight throw landing effortlessly in a glove. We arrived in daylight but ended in the dark, stadium lights blazing down on the field. Glorious!

I was fortunate enough to see Denis O’Hare perform a showstopping speech from Richard Greenberg’s lovely play “Take Me Out”. Here’s an excerpt:

Another thing I like is the home-run trot…

That graceful little canter when the ball has been crushed, and it’s missing, and the outcome’s not in doubt…

For all intents and purposes, the game, at that moment, is not being played.

If duration of game is an issue, the sensible thing would be to say, yes, that’s gone, add a point to the score, and send the next batter to the plate.

But that’s not what happens.

Instead, play is suspended for a celebration…

And I think what’s best about us is manifested in our desire to show respect for one another. For what we can be. And that’s what we do in our ceremonies, isn’t it? Honor ourselves as we pass through Time?

And it seems to me that to conduct this ceremony not before a game or after a game but in the very heart of a game is … quite …

well, does any other game do that?

Keith Hernandez

Tis the season and I’ve yet to see a single game. We live 30 minutes from a minor league club, the Renegades, farm team for the Yankees. I love going to the minors, the field and players so close! Tickets affordable, drive easy. In five years living in the Hudson Highlands, I haven’t made a single game. Maybe this is the year…

What do you think?

Please give Steve Kluger a read. You won’t regret it. (And if you see a production of “Take Me Out” by you, buy a ticket and enjoy it.)