RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,335
(hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet)
During the time we lived there,
Elmira had a minor league baseball
team, I used to forget for which team,
but now I know it was the Boston
Red Sox. It hardly mattered then
We'd go, on many enough long,
Summer, evenings, to watch a
game. It was maybe a buck to
get in, and perhaps a buck-fifty
for a hot dog and soda. All the
usual stuff: the crowd, small but
vibrant (maybe, on the very best
of nights, 300 people), a small
clutch of 'baseball types' - cigar
chomping guys acting as scouts,
keeping notes and statistics. The
players were all young and brash,
and did always seem to be enjoying
things. Once or twice, some manager
or coach who'd come through with
the other team was half way famed,
or noted anyway, from another era
when he too was a player, if not
a baseball star. The field was
simple, a metal fence, a little
section of seats and bleachers,
and some benches. Understated
baseball elegance that got the
job done.
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Baseball, in those days, was still
more or less central to American
life. It's not that any longer - the
TV and newspaper sports pages pay
less and less attention to baseball,
almost as a conspiracy to shut it
down. All the big attention now is
football - the American kind - or,
more annoyingly, for this country,
that nagging Euro-football called
soccer. To me, it's one of the more
flagrantly 6th-grade style of stupid-
sport that I've seen. Yet, as it goes,
more and more attention is given to
it - boisterous, nationalistic BS -
then to a full season of baseball;
which, again, the media has now
shriveled to nothing.
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Back then, as we entered the sphere
of old Elmira baseball, whatever the
level was, it was if we stepped back
into a 'baseball' time - something
old and distant, a part of America
that was no more. It didn't really
have its own voice - someone else
had to speak for it; like me! Brilliant
and green was the emerald grass.
Far-off yet inviting were the outfield
fence-corners, just awaiting the long
fly over the sky. The warm-up patches
were worn down and flattened, the
pitchers and catchers acing out their
own bull-pen areas adjacent to the
rudimentary dug-outs, wherein the
hopefuls sat : that new kid from Tulsa,
with the arms like a giant, the Hispanic
guy who slammed triples like he was
drinking water. The grizzled manager,
rumpled and sore; his coaches at each
of the outside bases. The noise, the
food-smells, and the crowd, each
person edging closer just to hear
that crack of the bat that meant
something new and exciting. And
that flag, the old red, white and
blue, flapping or not from some
far-off pole. None of the dimensions
were really large or deep, 305 feet,
maybe at the corners, and perhaps
380 at dead, deep, center.
-
In all of this, there was no 'time' and
no clocks. Baseball, of all sports,
lives its life in a timeless world. The
pitchers spit and fume and dither.
The batters step in or out of the batter's
box at will. Foul balls, one after the
next, exhaust the pitcher. The catcher
dawdles. Umpires fume. Not a clock,
nor a timekeeper, nor a buzzer, nor
a whistle, to be heard. These late days,
they've tried ruining baseball; by now
introducing timed pitches, so many
seconds between throws, only so
many time-outs, no dalliance, fewer
conferences and delays at the mound.
Decorum has changed, and now the
players get ejected for, what, spitting!
It's ruination time in old America;
and the wreckage gets thrown out
at the curb.
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I always sensed that whatever else
'Elmira' was doing, the city itself knew
it had a Summer weave of baseball
that threaded through its fabric; and
year after year it - and they - all
returned. The crummy team-busses,
the cheap hotel meals, the stories
and tales. Baseball guys, glooming
off the gloom, to one another, with
but the faint dreams of, maybe someday,
getting to 'the Bigs' - pro-ball, the
Big Leagues, where they could shine!
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The great waning of Elmira, the killer
frost of de-industrialization that hit so
much of old America, was only able
to be held off for so long. One of its
last-gasps were The Elmira Pioneers.
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