Boys of Summer

Written by

Chris Newbound

Photography by

Stephen G. Donaldson

A Night at the Old Ballpark

In an age when all the great old stadiums—Boston’s Fenway Park being one of the few exceptions—are being torn down right and left, and the price of a ticket is not, as the credit card companies would like you to believe, “priceless,” but rather far too expensive, it’s nice to know that there are still a few old ballparks left that offer up a good old game of country hardball for less than the price of a movie.

Having personally been to see professional baseball games all over the country (I am the Forrest Gump of baseball fans, having seen Sandy Koufax pitch against Willie Mays at Chavez Ravine’s Dodger Stadium; Ken Griffey, Jr. make a catch I’ll never forget in Seattle’s old Kingdome; and Bill Buckner boot that ground ball at Shea Stadium), the single most memorable time I ever had at a baseball game was when I took my daughter Hailey to her first major league game at Fenway.

The Sox were playing the Orioles, and our very expensive Stub Hub seats were not good ones. We were way out in right field, further back and up from the right field foul pole. Looking straight ahead, we could only see right fielder Trot Nixon. We had to crane our necks leftward to see other parts of the field, and it was next to impossible to crane them far enough to properly pick up the ball as it crossed home plate. (Did I mention that my daughter, a die-hard Sox fan, had been looking forward to this night for weeks?)

Pedro Martinez was pitching, which was good, but the last-place Orioles chased him out of the game as early as the fourth or fifth inning. It was a rout. Not even the thirty or so dollars I spent on concessions could improve my daughter’s sagging mood. “When are we going to get our foul ball?” she asked by about the third inning, making it clear that she was getting a little impatient.

“A foul ball?” I said. “What do you mean?”

“You don’t know what a foul ball is?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I know what a foul ball is. I just don’t know what, ‘When are we going to get our foul ball?’ means.”

She looked at me, clearly exasperated. She spoke slowly this time, as if I was the young child here.

“When. Is. A. Foul. Ball. Going. To. Come. Into. The. Stands. So. We. Can. You. Know. Catch. It.”

I laughed, which from my daughter’s somewhat confused and soon-to-be-crushed expression, I quickly realized, I probably shouldn’t have. Or at least not have laughed so hard, so suddenly, so … scoffingly.

I tried to recover, saying something to the effect that in all the games I’d been to in all my life, not only had I never caught a foul ball, I’d never even come close to catching a foul ball. I reminded her that there were about thirty thousand other people here, and there’d be maybe ten or fifteen foul balls hit into the stands during the entire night. Did she have any idea what the odds were of one of us being one of those ten or fifteen people to catch a foul ball? Not to mention that, unfortunately, sitting where we were, the chances of us catching a foul ball were even more remote given that we weren’t, in fact, sitting in foul territory.

Hailey grew silent. Meanwhile, nothing much was happening on the ball field other than the Orioles scoring some more runs. The rout continued, and the Sox faithful, who almost never leave a game early, started to leave early. I, too, wanted to head out, no longer feeling so faithful. The Orioles were working on a double-digit lead, and we still had a three-plus-hour ride home in front of us; it was already getting close to ten o’clock; and those hot dogs I’d failed to digest earlier still weren’t sitting so well. But my daughter, despite her obvious gloom, wasn’t going for it. “We still need to catch our foul ball,” she reminded me. “If we leave now, we can’t catch our foul ball.”

“Didn’t you hear me before?” I said, starting to lose patience. “We’re not going to catch a foul ball. I’m sorry. But we’re just not.”

She glared at me. Clearly, at that moment, I was not even close to the Dad she wished she had. Why then, her glare seemed to say, had I driven her all this way, to sit in seats that were so far away you couldn’t see home plate, to watch the Red Sox lose, if we were NOT even going catch a foul ball.

It was a damn good question. And when it became clear I had no response to it, she just shook her head, as if it only figured.

Desperate to improve the mood, I suggested we maybe try and move a little closer, since almost everyone else except us and a few others who presumably had no lives to speak of had the good sense to have left already. Sure enough, we were able to move down closer to the field somewhere between first base and the right field foul pole, about ten rows in. Here, I thought to myself, is the way to watch a ballgame. This, I realized, spreading out in the row we now had to ourselves, is more like it. Too bad there were only six more outs to go.

Kevin Youkilis, then just a prospect who bounced up and down between the minor league team in Pawtucket and the Red Sox, was up, facing some mop-up guy for the Orioles. Sure enough, he’s late on a pitch, and this sort of looping pop fly starts heading down the first base line, slicing foul. All ten of the people who are still left in our section take off for the ball, rushing to the front row, hoping to catch their foul ball. The best I can manage is to stumble to my feet, the better to view the mad scramble that will no doubt ensue. The ball hits the dirt track that runs next to the fence and somehow bounces up and over everyone else’s outstretched hands and … Right. Into. Mine.

While I go sort of, well, nuts—screaming out to everyone and no one, I CAUGHT A FOUL BALL. I CAUGHT A FOUL BALL. HAILEY. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW INCREDIBLE THIS IS? Hailey is pretty darn calm about the whole thing. Pleased, yes, when I hand her the ball for keeps (still propped up on her bookshelf to this day), but pretty much unsurprised.

The point of this longwinded and no doubt overly sentimental tale is that for many—and even for most, I’d venture to say—going to a ballgame in summer is not so much about the players or even the teams. One of the beauties of our national pastime is that there is nothing urgent about it. It hardly matters who wins or loses a regular season game, given the long season and chances to make it up in the standings later on (not to mention that there’s always next year). Going to a baseball game is really about the experience: the fresh cut grass, the bright lights, the warm night, the smell of hotdogs and peanuts, the crack of the bat, and, yes, the opportunity to spend three hours in the undistracted company of someone you care about; the chance to catch a foul ball and be marginally heroic in the process.

For the past one hundred and sixteen years our own Wahconah Park in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, has been our diamond in the rough, offering up all of this year after year to generations of baseball fans. And so it was on a warm summer Saturday night in August of last year when the Pittsfield Dukes took on their regional rivals, the North Adams Steeplecats, in the first game of a three-game playoff series, that we sent our photographer Stephen Donaldson to capture it in pictures. Yes, the Dukes ended up prevailing, 4-3, and yes, last year’s Dukes aren’t even around anymore, having been replaced by this year’s American Defenders, but regardless of what team is stepping out between the lines (there have been many over the years) or the final score, it’s still a timeless field of dreams—as each minor league player imagines making it to the “bigs” someday.

Until then, they’ll play here in historic Wahconah Park in front of the Pittsfield faithful, an act one can catch live every summer at the old ballpark. And don’t worry about me. If a ball gets hit into the stands, I’ll get out of your way. It’s all yours. I’ve got my foul ball. My one and only.
[AUGUST 2009]

THE GOODS

Wahconah Park

105 Wahconah St.

Pittsfield, Mass.

Tickets: $5-$25

Pittsfield American Defenders

2 South St./Route 7

Pittsfield, Mass.

413.997.2273

www.pittsfieldamericandefenders.com

North Adams Steeplecats

Joe Wolfe Field