Build It, They Will Come

I was mindlessly staring out the front window this afternoon, not at anything particular, just stretching my legs and debating if camped out front of the TV was the best use of a Sunday afternoon. But standing there, my eyes fell on the weeded-over vacant lot across the road. The cold December rain had left the field looking damp and forlorn, but instantly my mind wandered back to another time, another over-grown field- the long-neglected patch of land that stood between my home and the Johnson's house on the street where I grew up, which a bunch of ambitious kids turned into our own neighborhood baseball diamond.

Growing up, very few summer evenings went by without a baseball game breaking out at some point. But we didn't play with a baseball and Louisville Sluggers remained in closets. We played ‘street-ball’, with a plastic bat and tennis ball, and hit towards an "outfield" of houses across the street. Though the spirit of our game was the same, logistically we had to make some concessions to our urban setting that likely weren’t in Abner Doubleday’s first set of rules. The tennis ball was a conscientious compromise- nobody wanted to break any “outfield” windows.  The plastic bat was more of a pragmatic compromise- plastic over wood kept the grown-ups off our backs.

 

Now for the diamond. Home plate was deep in our driveway and near the front rose garden. First base was the half-way point on the narrow retaining wall separating the Rowena's yard from ours. Second base, a chalk lined box at the tip of the sidewalk before it emptied into the street. And third base was a scraggly tree down near the vacant lot. If looking down from overhead, the layout probably looked more like a sloppy oblong blob configuration than a diamond, but for our purposes it worked.  Across the street, the Tait and Vogel rooftops were still in play, but clearing them completely was a home run. And quite a shot, too. A fly ball sailing over the adjoining fences hiding both backyards was also a home run. Then there was The Steelman's ocean of ivy next door to the Tait's place. To avoid arguments, any ball landing in that mess was a permanently agreed-upon ground rule double.

 

But asphalt-coated Bloom Way ran right smack though the middle of the “field”. Though it served as a logical dividing line between the “infield” and “outfield”, the street was an omnipresent nuisance because all that darn traffic had the right of way. It was such a drag having to stop the game for moving cars or dodging parked ones. And taking a header was no walk in the park either. So one summer night after a game featuring another round of bruised elbows and scraped knees, someone- or maybe everyone tending to an open sore- suggested we might consider commandeering the unused real estate next door and convert into a new asphalt-free ball field.

In addition to lessening the demand on Bactine and Band-aids, a field of soft Earth seemed to offer other multiple built-in advantages, too. Windows and parked cars would no longer be at risk and we wouldn't be losing any more tennis balls in the Steelman's deep and disgusting ivy patch. Plus with a simple dirt infield, and an outfield enclosed by three fences-- ours, the Johnson’s and the house facing the next street over—the new set-up offered simpler ground rules and less archaic home run/foul ball demarcations.


This lot, however, had sat untouched and unkempt for years. And by the time our group had this collectively brilliant idea to turn it into something usable, the spread was completely covered in tall weeds, tons of star thistle, matted and uneven grasses, old trash and a scattering of discarded boxes, alive with God only knows how many bugs and spiders and, no doubt, the odd snake or two as well. Nevertheless, we fearlessly tackled the job.

Using lawn mowers, shovels, rakes and any other garden implement we could scrounge up, everybody pitched in-- from the littlest kids to the oldest, boys and girls. The only grown-up help came from Mr. Haglund and only because nobody was old enough yet to drive. He made a couple of dump runs for us. Otherwise we did everything ourselves even though it was the kind of work, under any other circumstance, most of us would run miles to avoid. But not this time. We went at it with enthusiasm and energy because of the common goal: to un-rough our diamond in the rough.

 

The weather was hot, though not as bad as it could’ve been, and working in shifts of 2 or 3 hours at a time, we got the job finished in just four days. And it was beautiful! The once grown-over lot had been manicured down to a bare flat quarter acre of smooth unblemished dirt. After a brief pause to admire the work, we marked out foul lines, put down home-made bases and found a small rectangular wood scrap to use as the pitcher’s rubber. It was a real baseball diamond.

 

However, upon its completion we found the freshly scraped-down lot to be a touch too small if we batted from inside it. The left field fence was only about twenty feet from home plate. Right field about the same. If everyone other hit was a home run, we’d all have to wait while somebody hiked the fence to go find the ball, and 90-88 games really weren’t all that fun once the novelty wore off. Still it wasn’t an easy compromise to make- who doesn’t like hitting home runs?- and after re-drawing the baselines and backing everything away from the fences, home plate and the batter’s box ended up half way across Bloom Way. We were back in the street again. But it made the field play ‘more fair’. So, we’d hit from the road..

And with all the ground rules now settled on, it was time to play ball. We chose up sides and first pitch in our new ball yard was just past 7:00 on what had turned out to be an unusually muggy late August evening. Instead of normally arid Sacramento, it felt like a sticky summer night somewhere in Texas. But the game was going great. There were hardly any car delays and the field was playing just as we envisioned. Glenn's brother, Allen, hit the first home run over our official center field fence- a true home run- and through the first 4 innings the score was tied at something like 7 to 7.

 

As the game went on though, the sky began growing darker and darker. And not because the sun was getting low; it was getting darker because a bank of huge black clouds had begun building beyond the outfield. Maybe we really were in Texas. Pretty soon the encroaching mass was almost overhead and as the fifth inning played on, the roiling sky and increasing wind had become impossible to ignore. Caps were blowing off people's heads and attention between pitches was frequently drawn upwards to the threatening heavens.

The score was now 10-7 and my team was up to bat in the top of the 6^th inning when we saw the first flash of lightning followed by the first boom of thunder. Nobody wanted to stop playing though, especially me. I was on deck. Anyway, as long as it wasn’t raining playing ball in a thunderstorm sounded fun. So we played on. For about another minute. Just as I stepped up to hit there was another flash of lightning, this one closer and accompanied by an enormous blast of thunder. Then the skies just opened up.

 

It rained like in Noah’s day, the cloudburst forcing both teams to scramble off the field and head for cover. The nearest shelter from the storm was underneath the eaves of our garage, where we all huddled together, hoping the downpour would quickly pass. But a half hour later, though the intensity had slackened, the rain continued to fall. And, now past sundown, it was too dark to play even if conditions were dry. So the game was called.

 

A tarp would’ve been nice too- just like the major league fields had. But we hadn’t thought that far ahead and as we watched from underneath the garage overhang, there was nothing we could do as the squall turned our once dry hard-pan into a full-on muddy quagmire. It rained for nearly two hours, but even if had stopped after ten minutes we wouldn’t have been able to resume play that night. The field was a mud bowl. So it was a rain out. The first one. It fact, it was the first and only rain-out in the only game played on our new ball field, because we never got to play there again.

 

As God is my witness, the very next morning a backhoe and tractor showed up and began turning over, plowing under and grading over our ball diamond. After breakfast, I met up with Glenn Vogel and for awhile we just sat and watched from his front yard in stunned disbelief. The other Vogel boys and Nancy and Paul Haglund came out too. Eventually, tired of trying to guess what was going on, when the heavy equipment guys took a break, Glenn walked over and asked what gives? And the answer he came back with just about broke my heart. The land had been sold and the equipment was doing sight prep for a new house slated to be built.

We were in shock and nobody wanted to believe it; all that work. All that trouble and all we got for it was five plus innings before bad weather and the boogie men from the housing industry showed up and took our field away. To say it sucked would be a gross understatement. It wasn’t fair, either. It hardly ever rains in Sacramento in the summer and that stupid lot stood empty for almost 10 years before a bunch of dumb, but industrious kids got together and pu it to good use, transforming it from long-standing neighborhood eye-sore. Shouldn't squatter’s rights prevail? Shouldn't someone have at least paid us for our trouble? Like the city? The county? The land-owner? Our parents?

Apparently not. And apparently the bulldozing guys weren't lying about the pending new structure, either. A few days after the back hoe and tractor left, the lumber was delivered. And a couple months after that a new house was standing, its front door right about where second base had been. Then a few weeks after that, a new family moved in. They were the Savery’s and they were very nice, and very pleasant. And to this day, I never liked them. None of us did