The Way of Baseball by Shawn Green

Author:Shawn Green [Green, Shawn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781439191194
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2011-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

PRESENCE

The 2000 season was over, but I wasn’t in for any long hiatus from baseball after that final, disappointing game against the Padres. I’d accepted an invitation in the middle of the year to participate in a United States versus Japan All-Star series to be played in November in the land of the rising sun. I looked forward to getting away from Los Angeles with Lindsay, hoping to solidify what had become an on-again, off-again relationship the previous summer. Also, I looked forward to experiencing the Japanese style of professional baseball and their devoted fans, who’d followed American baseball for years, and whose interest in our game became almost obsessive after Hideo Nomo led a contingent of MLB All-Star caliber Japanese players to the United States in the nineties. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t worry about being on top of my game for a mere exhibition series, but I couldn’t help feeling that I had something to prove (the little man kept whispering to me that I’d never have been chosen for the USA squad back in May if they’d known how disappointing the last months of my 2000 season would be).

So, in mid-October, to prepare for the series, I threw my bat, batting gloves, tee, and a bag of balls into the trunk of my car and headed to the local batting cages, which were owned by my parents, Ira and Judy (together, they ran the hitting school, with my outgoing mother working the front desk and my father giving lessons to kids). I had keys to the place and liked to sneak in before opening hours, hoping the quiet would help me to rediscover the meditative aspects of my practice. Even with the pressure of performance behind me, I still couldn’t get it right. My swing still felt long and cumbersome rather than effortlessly powerful. The meditative, no-mind qualities of the work I’d savored as a Blue Jay remained out of my reach. Even at the tee, with the ball sitting idly, I couldn’t get rid of my jumpy, overanxious stride, the troublesome emblem of the previous summer.

Then one day I got to the cages a little later than planned and the place had already opened.

I was going through the motions of my tee work: Place the ball on the tee, take a breath, swing, take another breath, place another ball on the tee, swing again, and so on. I couldn’t find what I was looking for. My mind spun with ideas on how to make everything right. (The irony being that it was my mind’s obsessive searching for pathways to stillness and presence that kept me from finding any stillness and presence!) After yet another disappointing swing, I stopped in disgust and looked around, hoping to break the negative cycle. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a little boy hitting off one of the token-fed pitching machines. No more than eight years old, he had a fluid swing; He stroked pitch after pitch. On his face was the most peaceful look, the expression of being utterly awake to the present moment.

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