My oldest son called the office Thursday afternoon to announce that he had just finished his last paper.
He would turn it in the next morning and be finished with college.
“So what do you want, a medal?” I asked.
I’m kidding. I didn’t say that. I congratulated him and noted that he had more than a week to kill before graduation.
To me, that period of time has to be the best in any collegian’s life ó those limbo days when the classes, papers, exams and projects are over. Add to this freedom the warm spring days, the fact that you’re 21 or 22 and the knowledge that real life can wait until after graduation, and a college senior realizes that things probably won’t get better than this for a long time.
The situation was not lost on my son. I could hear the wheels turning over the telephone lines.
I was surprised, however, when he suggested that I think about traveling a couple of hours to see a Durham Bulls baseball game with him sometime in the coming week.
He didn’t know it, but I had been looking earlier at the schedules of minor league baseball teams closer to home only to discover that the Kannapolis Intimidators, Greensboro Grasshoppers and Winston-Salem Warthogs were on the road.
I felt guilty that it was May 1, and I had yet to attend a baseball game.
That night, I threw a collapsible chair into the back of my car and drove out to Salisbury Community Park where the Rowan Little League plays its games.
I knew that colleagues at work had children who were playing a 7:30 p.m. contest, so I plopped my lawn chair next to grandparents of one of the players and settled in for an “A” League game between the Optimists and the VFW.
It was exactly what I needed.As a youngster, I never played under the lights or on many fields that had an electronic scoreboard. We played until dark on weekdays and on Saturday mornings.
We used wooden bats, too.
Otherwise, the Little League experience is pretty much the same.
Coaches yell to their players to “Make him throw you a strike,” or “Look for your pitch.”
Little League umpires still have a liberal strike zone, thank goodness.
The teams continue the tradition of lining up along the baselines after the game and meet around home plate to shake hands. Well, it’s more like a bump or slap now.
Parents haven’t changed, and families gather in groups at the bleachers, behind the backstop or beyond the outfield fence on a hill. There’s never a bad seat in Little League.
The players ó in my game, 11 and 12 years old ó still mimic the mannerisms of major leaguers they’ve seen on television. Some players are better than others, but in Little League, you can usually count on significant improvements from game to game, even inning to inning.
I enjoyed a well-pitched, well-defended game that went back and forth before ending in a 4-3 victory for the VFW.
Sitting there behind the backstop, I had a weird sensation that my late father was with me, looking with my eyes and measuring the umpire’s strike zone, assessing my progress and smiling to himself when I imitated a favorite player.
Life should be full of moments, he was telling me, when it seems things won’t get better than this for a long time.