Take me out to the ball game
Last week, for my wife’s birthday, we went to an Orleans Firebirds baseball game. It was a beauteous evening, the skies clear, with a soft breeze from the southwest. We don’t go there often; in fact, the last time was for my birthday three years ago.
Take me out with the crowd
Orleans’s Eldredge Park dates to 1913, and is considered one of the best college baseball venues in the country. The atmosphere is congenial, with the crowd spread out on beach chairs on the tiered grassy hill above the Firebird dugout. Someone described it as a Norman Rockwell painting. Best of all, it’s free, one of the few such entertainments left on the Cape.
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack
What I like most about these games is that the setting seems timeless. Nothing changes much. A radar gun display has been added to the scoreboard, but the concession stand still serves typical baseball fare — hot dogs, burgers, sausage rolls, popcorn, ice cream. Parents and children play catch along the sidelines. “Batting now, and playing first base,” intones the announcer with old-time verve, “Tra-a-e Harmon!” The kids take the field during the 7th-inning stretch to sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”
Most remarkably, there is an active osprey nest on top of the left field light tower. It was there in 2018 and apparently has become a fixture, referred to by regulars as “our osprey.” We watched the chicks craning their necks over the edge of the nest and the graceful forms of the parent birds soaring back and forth over the field.
I don’t care if I never get back
The game itself — for me at least — was peripheral, even ambiguous (the teams wore virtually identical uniforms). A baseball game is a world unto itself, drawing us back into its long history and the history of the Republic. This game, of course, was made even sweeter by the fact that there was no Cape Cod Baseball League season last year, so this year’s games seemed to represent a promise of continuity, if not a return to “normalcy.”
There was one other change that I didn’t notice at first, though it was only a few feet from where we sat. Under a large oak, there was a life-size bronze statue of a young boy in a baseball uniform and cap, a look of sheer physical joy on his face, his gloved hand raised and just touching the ball that he may or may not catch.
I didn’t fully understand why at the time, but Gwen Marcus’s sculpture, dedicated in 2019, had a strong effect on me. The feeling of release I thought I had felt coming to this ballpark was actually one of reprieve, that is, a temporary respite from an impending nemesis.
Let me root, root, root for the home team
In May, there was the feeling that we had behaved responsibly regarding vaccinations, mask-wearing, and social distancing. When the pandemic restrictions were lifted in June, we were not just relieved but self-congratulatory. We had weathered the epidemic.
If they don’t win it’s a shame
All too soon, infections and hospitalizations began to soar again in some parts of the country, though not here. Then came July 4, and in its wake the Provincetown cluster. Barnstable County became one of three Massachusetts counties where infection and transmission rates were once again rated high.
For it’s one, two, three strikes, you’re out
We left the ballpark in the bottom of the 7th. Our team was still ahead, but the outcome, as we all knew, was still in doubt.
At the old ball game.
Robert Finch lives in Wellfleet. The Firebirds won that game over the Bourne Braves, 10-5.
