When Intimacy Hurts (One Sixty-Two: Day 60)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day Sixty: Daryle Ward, Free Agent (via Newark Bears)

Katie has had it with minor-league baseball games.

Two years ago, while setting up our blanket in the lawn-seat section at a Somerset Patriots game, my wife took a foul ball to the hip. (See my earlier column on this at http://thepitchbaseballlife.blogspot.com/2008/07/bruises-we-carry.html.) A little later that year, Katie saw a middle-aged woman take a foul ball to the face, also at a Patriots game. There was some blood, and Katie started to consider this independent-league ballpark in Bridgewater, N.J., to be a health risk for herself and all the other fans around her.

Last year, we didn’t see anyone get hit by a ball in the two Patriots games we attended, and Katie’s comfort level improved to the point where she and I ran the bases when invited to do so after one game. But things changed again this past Saturday night at our first game of the year. Yes, it happened once again. Former major-league first baseman Daryle Ward stood at the plate for the opposing team, the Newark Bears. Ward, who hits left-handed, swung late on an outside pitch. He poked a foul ball off the end of his bat, and it shot off the wood about three to four feet off the ground. The ball flew to the right of the backstop netting protection, landing flush in the face of a young boy in the front row. The boy quickly doubled over in pain.

We were getting up to leave the park when this happened, but Katie wouldn’t step out of the stadium until she’d had the chance to walk past the first-aid area. Once there, she saw the boy, tears streaming down his face, as ice was applied to his left cheek. It was a bruise at best, a break at worst. The boy would be OK, and he had a souvenir ball for sure. But I don’t think he’ll be sitting in any front-row seats anytime soon.

So Katie has posed the suggestion that we no longer attend minor-league games. She’s fine with upper-deck seats at Yankee Stadium, but she’s had it with intimacy.

I’m sure Daryle Ward would take that trade as well, opting for the big stage instead of the bandboxes he plays in now. Ward is one of many former big-leaguers playing in the Atlantic League, an independent minor league based here in the Northeast. On the Newark team itself, the ex-major leaguers range from Ward and Carl Everett to Scott Spiezio and Edgardo Alfonzo to Armando Benitez and Willie Banks. These are men who are no longer desired by major-league teams, but who are just not ready to accept that as a reality. They’re not willing to give up playing baseball for a living. They’re still hoping that a summer of brilliant play will get them one last chance in The Show. Ward, who last played for the Chicago Cubs in 2008, had turned into a respectable pinch-hitter in the big leagues. But will anyone really come looking for him again? With each at-bat he takes with Newark, there is at least a hope that they will.

Until that happens, though, Ward’s world is the minor-league scene – the dizzy-bat races and the T-shirt tosses and the furry mascots. It’s a world of player autographs before the game, affordable tickets every night, postgame fireworks displays and, yes, even lawn seats.

There is the occasional misdirected foul ball, and it’s not fun when it hits and hurts. But Katie, we can bring your glove next time. You can wear it, and we’ll be ready – especially if Daryle Ward comes up again. But you don’t have to run away from the intimacy of a place like this. You’ll find, soon enough, that you don’t get this kind of feeling everywhere. It may not be The Show, but it’ll work just fine as community theater.

The Bruises We Carry

We had just arrived at the game when we heard the “Heads up!” cry. We were just unfolding our blanket on the lawn seats on the right-field side of Commerce Bank Ballpark, home of the Somerset (N.J.) Patriots. At the plate was a Bridgeport Bluefish outfielder named Ryan Bear, and with his big paws Bear had just fouled off a pitch that was soaring into foul ground – coincidentally, straight toward that lawn-seat area we had selected as our destination on this first night of summer. My wife, Amy, took a look up before I did. She realized immediately that Bear had sent a gift straight toward her. She covered her head, ducked down, and withstood the thud of Rawlings baseball striking lower back.

By this time, I had belatedly looked up from my blanket duty, and I saw a ball bounce off my wife’s back. With my right hand, I reached for her, concerned for her immediate well-being. With my left hand – well, to be honest, with my left hand I grabbed the ball.

She said she was fine. The circular bruise would be purple by the third inning. As for our two daughters, they got over the surprise of their mom being hit by a baseball quickly enough, as soon as I handed them their very own foul ball to play with on the grass. They rolled it back and forth, and even placed it up against Mom’s back to study the sphere’s impact.

Amy’s bruise remained purple for a good 10 days. She’s fine now, and looking forward to another trip to the ballpark. But she has a story now, and it’s one that she can hold onto for a lifetime. She can tell anyone she wants that in the heat of the moment, her husband couldn’t decide which was more important – her health or baseball. That is the bruise I carry with me, and it ain’t going away.