A basic form of activity we lapsed into for want of anything else revolved around sports. If there were sufficient numbers, which was rare, we'd do up a sandlot game. If not, any two of the boys in the neighborhood would simply play catch.
As you might have guessed, the terrain around us supported not much in the way of diversion. It was unrelieved flatness, with no sea nor hills nearby. We played a lot of catch. You can learn something with any activity, maybe especially if they do not overly distract you. (I wonder how many great philosophers surfed.) Some count beads, others repeat mantras. We played catch.
Here I am up at Milton's, corner of Liberty and Denison. I move over across Denison for more room. First Milton would toss one and it'd hit my glove then I'd toss one to his . Uncomplicated, like us.
A vehicle turns onto Denison from two blocks west, off Agnew. (Something else that rarely distracts us in our town is traffic.) Here it comes on, heading east.
I stand there. I see Milton has seen the auto. So he stands pat as well.
Then something strange happens. On impulse, I break the pattern.
With the car approaching, very near now, I go into a forward kneel, throw my glove out forward, palm up.
The driver locks on his brakes just prior to intersecting with the phantom ball.
I quickly resume my former bored pose. With everyone still rattling around in the seats, the driver is not amused.
<span style="font-style:italic;">"Whatta you doin', boy, better git on outta here back where you belong, whassmatter you ...!"</span>
Forward a year or so. This time we have sufficient members for a game at Hatley Field. I'm playing third, and someone lines one to right with Lindy on first. Here he comes, rounding second, head down, digging.
Now I apply something I've read about. A famous play in a major game in the Big Leagues went just like the ploy I'll apply right now.
When Lindy does look up, wondering how far he can go on a single to right, he sees me. There is, of course, no third base coach, so all he knows of what is happening in right field is what is indicated by my body english.
I'm standing there, bored, disgustedly staring out into right field. That clown out there will allow a run, is my standing. Lindy gallops on.
The ball is five feet from my face and closing fast. At the last possible instant, I throw up my hands.
Lindy rounds third. Now he can look to see the confusion in right field. Only the action isn't in right field. It's near third base, bearing down on him.
My life has not passed in time, but in clips, a series of allegories, like a movie. I am playing catch, or baseball, or I am thinking of the earnest and sonorous reverend who ran off with the choir sister, or the politician holding forth for more punishment for the gay menace and then he is caught in a hotel room with a male hooker and a crack pipe, or - the realtor sitting beside the pool one year of a sumptuous estate of a friend of mine, who has inherited fabulously and is buying property as we might used books. "I thought she understood business," the realtor is muttering. "You profit more by investing less."
Leverage, he meant. The prospect of miming the act of buying. Sometimes, as Luke said, nothing is a real cool hand. It works better, you go further on less fuel - unless the one you're playing with glances into right field and sees there is really nothing out there.