Home Lake
Dedicated to Bob Uecker, “Mr. Baseball,” who transformed the complexities of a game of failure into a Superior form of life.
Get
Up.
My
high school baseball coach once explained a very simple concept to my team: in
order to win the game, we only needed to cross home plate more than the players
in the other dugout. Home plate—the beginning and the end of each run scored. A
run that can propel a team to victory or consume them in the most agonizing defeat.
Memorable cases may cause home plate to be the end of a legendary career or the
start of a walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the ninth. It can be found
beneath bench clearing brawls or handshakes between rivals they make
documentaries about. In all its simplicity, home plate is where a game of complicated
failures all begins. Popouts, groundouts, strikeouts—each aggressive in
isolation. A failure for one, success for the other.
For
as long as I can remember, Lake Superior has been no friend to baseball. Nearly
every spring it’s piled mountains of snow over ball fields gasping for a few
breaths of change, only to be drowned by another avalanche of arctic that ends
up dumping on the diamond. I’ve felt the angrily frigid voices of spring winds
whaling off her, muffling the clangs of the American flag against the pole it
is hoisted. Lake Superior has a simple presence, grand in its admirable ability
to never give up, yet tender in its few moments of relief that are only as long
and unpredictable as a pitcher’s wind up. Yet somehow, when Superior offers a
brief juncture of “play ball!” the world can still throw a curve that yells
“time!”
Get
Outta Here.
During
my senior year at Chequamegon High School in Park Falls, the COVID-19 Pandemic
caused my team to only be able to drive by a field completely free of snow,
even sprouting some green grass into the viral air. A ballpark in northern
Wisconsin that was void of spring snow was an occurrence so rare I often
traveled to more southern portions of the state just to get a conference game
in.
That
spring, the field was so free—only to be just that. Free of chalk lines from
the batter’s box down to the foul poles, free of cleat marks in the clay and
grass-stained pants jogging back to the dugout after one-two-three innings,
free of sunflower seed hulls in the bleachers, free of a red-laced white ball
being thrown beneath blue skies, free of “God Bless America” and “Take Me Out
to the Ball Game.” The same ball game that takes me out to more superior things
in life and can uniquely translate to the many tribulations we all face.
Another
senior year I was fortunate enough to experience was yet again grounded out on the
bases. Instead, through the obscura, was a photographer who wanted nothing more
than to swing the bat one more time or field another failure of a ground ball. But
the pitcher who threw life at me, maybe the same one who dished out the COVID
Pandemic, had a different game plan.
About
a week before I was scheduled to leave with the Northland College Baseball team
for our annual spring break trip—this time to Florida—I broke my left hand. For
a right-handed batter like me, the left hand is critical. It’s like the trigger
of the upper body portion of your swing. Without its full unbroken capabilities,
a swing and a miss is almost imminent.
Instead
of playing between the foul lines that year, which was another merciful
Superior spring, I sat behind the perimeter of a fence and saw home plate from the
outside looking in.
Gone.
The
force it takes to hit a home run is a compelling one. Like our Home Lake, it’s
unlike anything else on Earth, really. The hands and the hips, legs and arms,
even the eyes and brain, all wound up and intertwined in an intricate Hail Mary
of neurology and physics. Forceful physics that can snap Sluggers into shards
that spray out of the batter’s box faster than a grunted fastball and incorrect
split-second decisions that can leave even the most talented hitter frozen in
the chill of a mistake.
Because
of a swing’s complexity, combined with the difficulties of connecting with a
moving target, its failure turning to success may be one of the most genuine
gestures in sports. It’s the perfect storm and the alignment of stars all in
one. The peanut galleries who claim baseball is as boring as the humdrum of a
work week maybe cannot see the superiority of a batter going up to home plate
and serving a homer that towers over the outfield wall. A crack of the bat and
deep fly ball to left followed by Mr. Baseball’s “Get up! Get up! Get outta
here! Gone!” may be one of the most authentic arrangements in the game. A
calling from one man, at one place, in a single moment of living.
The
wave of a baseball bat against gritty Superior squalls is a combination of
phenomena designed to call failure. But then again, no one’s ever said
baseball, or life, was easy. So, when we round third and head for home, whether
it’s in the bottom of extra innings or the top of the first, after broken bones
or unpredictable pandemics, we’ll know we are gone for Home Lake.
