Guest blogger: Sparky
Last week's perfectly mild weather suited my unemployment just fine. Having just received a $9.50 gasoline coupon for being a loyal customer at Vons (I will now be the last one in the neighborhood to ransack the place during the upcoming food riots) I texted my buddy, Mark Ramano, to see if he wanted to whack the old baseball around up at Scholl Canyon. He's a part-time Poly-Sci teacher, and a full-time musician so he usually has holes in his schedule. He is also a full-time baseball fanatic. He wrote back, "It's on."
Last year the City of Glendale tore out all three ballparks at Scholl, and the future of ever playing there was bleak indeed. We suffered through sub-standard conditions at Glorieta Park awaiting the results. Ten months later the fields were re-opened. Wow. Grass infields for the Little league and Pony fields. It looked amazing. Unfortunately, the infield dirt was mixed wrong and turned into a beach volleyball pit. Any hard hit grounder just made you want to curl up and hide. The infield grass was so high it grabbed at the balls like a sheet of Velcro. And although the lumps had been removed from the outfield, the grass was soon demolished by the soccer playing heathen who insist on fouling the baseball fields with their unspeakably tedious and pointless kicking of the ball. We were depressed.
But they shut it down for another six weeks and readjusted. When we returned the infield was a perfectly manicured hardball surface. The groundskeeper who we've come to know, told us from the perch of his digitally adjustable mower that, "The infield is at 3/4 of an inch now, but this summer I'm going to bring down to 5/8. That oughta speed things up." He also mows the new outfield in matching diagonal stripes. Man alive, is that dude ever into his work. He can hit, too. The 290' outfield is no challenge for him. When he bats I play on the other side of the fence just to have a chance.
And so last Friday, I used my Von's gas card and headed out to play ball. The last four times we've rendezvoused at Scholl, the infield raking and mowing was just being finished. We were guessing that if you had a private service manicuring your own field every time you wanted to take some grounders and BP, it would cost $1200-$1500 per session. For us, our tax dollars are finally working for something we like... In the late winter sunshine of So Cal, Scholl is now so heavenly looking that I tip toe in my cleats across the infield so as not to violate the surface. But then the groundskeeper just yells at us to "Go ahead. Knock yourselves out. This is what they pay me for." Nice work if you can get it, eh?
And so the bat did crack, the ball did hop and skip truly through the finely raked dirt; and more than a few flew deep into the right field corner where their spinning white spheres came dropping out of the late afternoon sky with a three quarter moon hanging in the balance.
PS: We're always looking for more players. It's hard ball, wood bats. Come on down and play ball already!
My mind is full of memories of Scholl Canyon ballfields and a uncountable number of good times playing baseball either with Mark (playing the best two person hardball game we could invent (Over the Line) or playing with the Cuban Expats (Kill Fidel!) I remember moaning the all dirt infield and how it would be so great to have a grass infield and even a pitchers mound. I remember the joy of actually being able to hit a ball over the fence with a wooden bat. I remember my friend Bruce spraining his ankle playing catch before we even started playing so he had to sit all morning long because i didn't want to leave before the game finished. I remember throwing a ball at some Cuban guys head during batting practice because he overstayed his welcome and how i learned that puta was not a nice name. I remember Met's Bob who was never seen anywhere without his Met's hat and generally his full Met's uniform (and the lump on his arm that never healed after his dad took a cast iron skillet to it, he learned his lesson). I remember when the golf course blew up because of the accumulation of methane gas from the landfill and the dumptruck load of disposable lighters that helped fuel the flames. I remember that nothing smells better than the combination of grass, dirt, sweat, and leather. I've envious Sparky because I haven't been to Scholl since 1992.
ReplyDeleteMJW: Wish you were here.
ReplyDeletePlayed today. First day of spring. Made a catch at the fence in right
field at the top of my pathetic ladder. The ball was moving so fast
that it almost took my arm out of its socket, but I held on to it. And
I showed it up for the whole world to see. That's right, I caught that
fucker before gravity could complete its nasty work once again. Yahoo!
yrs, MN