Today was my first foray into team athletics for about 15 years. I had already bought a new mitt and broke it in, having failed in finding my high-school baseball mitt from my parents house. I went out at lunch today and bought some cleats from Paragon in Union Square, on the warning that I’d injure myself without them, and was all set and wearing my AOL Softball jersey (number 00) and joined the motley bunch of colleagues who were ready to head to Central Park to play against the current opponent, “Highbridge”. As we gathered in the office lobby and desparately tried to determine if we would have enough players, and enough mitts, we discovered one of the players wasn’t coming because she was covering the story of Michael Jackson’s heart attack. It seemed unbelievable. Late, we rushed off to the subway.
When we were walking up to the field, a catcher on another game stood up and yelled loud “Michael Jackson has left the building!” A buzz went around, people saying that Michael had died. Again it seemed unbelievable, and random jokes went around that it was a hoax to relieve the troubled star from his upcoming European tour. By the time we were settled in at the bench, the sad truth was confirmed… indeed Michael had passed away. The game was about to start. We warmed up for five minutes, and the umpire called game on. We grouped up to cheer and chose to cheer for Michael.
I had already discovered that I was doing a really cold start for anything athletic, having not worked out in the area of sprinting, or throwing, or any sort of quick-twitch action, in…. well a really long time. The warmup had already got my hamstrings ready to seize. Our coach Jake smartly moved me from right field to first base, where I was much more comfortable not having to run so much, but ready to catch and throw. The game began and we started off smart, one of our guys Tony stealing home in the first inning and holding back the opponents with a zero. Things changed quickly after that. The other team, clearly, were not as motley and either had great experience or had actually practiced a bit. I found that I enjoyed myself a lot, even while we worked our way to a spectacular loss of 15 to 1. While doing my best to focus, be ready for the quick catch, and doing all I could to coax my 36 year old office-bod into base-running sprints, I marvelled at playing a game in Central Park for the first time, in a verdure of green with actual spectators watching, surrounded by tall buildings beyond the trees, and rediscovering the baseball I had last played in high school 20 years ago.
After the game we checked our devices and got caught up on the story. Everything was confirmed, indeed Michael had passed, creating a double tragedy to a day starting off with the passing of Farrah Fawcett who had bravely battled cancer for so long. Apparently while we played the game, a lot of controversy had ensued between the people who had openly voiced opinions about hoax-theory as we had jokingly done on our way to the field, and the people who indignantly replied with later, better information about the sad truth.
I joined the team for a couple celebratory — even though we lost abysmally — beers, which we raised to the departed, then I headed home to my suburban life and family, including doing baby-duty til now. All in all, I have to say that the diversion from the ordinary in the way of softball was really wonderful, and made a bit surreal by the surrounding tension of a world responding to several losses of significant magnitude, certainly worse than losing 15 to 1.