Where It’s OK for Casey to Strike Out

Somewhere in this favored land, this very day, a game of baseball is being played, and the sun is shining bright. Somewhere kids are shouting. Somewhere hearts are light.

Before the day is through, grown men from coast to coast will have swung bats, hurled balls and dirtied themselves, for pay and for the amusement of large crowds. Most of these men are healthy. Many of them wealthy. None are ignored.

These players’ names are screamed, their signatures desired, their best efforts demanded. Their words are written or recorded for public reissue. Their every movement is examined, then often re-examined in tantalizing slow-motion. They are larger than life. They play baseball.

In far more remote settings, under far less conspicuous circumstances, children, too, play ballgames. It is a natural instinct for a lot of them--not uniquely American, but close. They play on dusty rural playgrounds or on inner-city asphalt. They play on impeccably manicured diamonds or on any convenient piece of flat land where they can plant four rocks for bases.

Often, as they play, they fantasize about the famous. At times they would give anything to possess the physical attributes and skills of baseball’s greatest players. To be able to run to first base like the wind. To be able to belt the ball a mile.

Yet, sometimes young people want no more than to have a nice day, to spend a pleasant time in the sun, playing ball, being with friends. They crave no attention. They usually get none. They are hardly rich and famous, after all, so there is no reason anyone should want to see them play.

There is a place, for example, called Camp Bloomfield, tucked into the canyons of Malibu, north of Zuma Beach, where kids play every day without anticipating attention or reward. They play so hard and so well, with such enthusiasm, that an inning or two is reminder enough that any sandlot in America, on a given day, might provide more excitement than a stadium occupied by thousands.

Like the other day, in a leafy glade of the summer camp, when some kids got together for an impromptu pickup game. Other campers were off trying archery, or swimming, or sitting around discussing the previous evening’s dance. No one was discussing renegotiation of a seven-figure contract. No one was spitting tobacco juice into a paper cup.

Counselors were helping some of the players with their swings, showing them how to keep a bat level. The ball was perched on a tee at home plate, although some of the batters asked to be pitched to.

Steve Rhodes wanted to make sure where the bases were, so one of the counselors escorted him around the diamond, arm in arm. “OK, I got it,” Steve said. But the first baseman agreed to clap her hands when he hit the ball, to remind him where she was, just in case.

Christina Thornton batted first, and needed a couple of swings to hit a good one off the tee. Finally she tapped one just in front of the plate. “Run, Christina! Run!” yelled the pitcher, and the catcher crooked Christina’s arm and ran at her side to first base.

Bill Santley came to bat and hit one sharply toward left field. Two infielders tried to knock it down. The first baseman clapped. The batter reached first base safely.

Another boy grounded the ball to the right side and ran to first base.

“Which one do I go to next?” he asked.

“Second. Second base,” a counselor called out.

“How will I know where it is?” the boy asked.

Steve Rhodes knocked one just inside the first-base bag. It rolled far into the outfield. Two of his teammates scored.

“OK, Vicki, hit a good one,” urged Julie Sommers, a counselor who goes to Ohlone Community College, in Northern California, from the pitching mound.

Vicki Alward stepped up to the tee, wearing bright blue sunglasses. Vicki, 16, is from Las Vegas. This is not her first Camp Bloomfield summer. She was one of the campers who had a bit part in the movie “Mask” when a portion of it was filmed there.

Vicki hit one through the infield and gave her team another run.

Steve Rhodes scored it, and got a pat on the back when he crossed home plate. “You got a two-run single,” an onlooker told him.

“What’s that?” Steve asked.

“You knocked in two runs with one hit,” he was told.

“I did?” he said.

The game went on. One time, there were two runners on third base, which even happens in the majors now and then. Another time, the shortstop was flattened by a runner going from second to third. Everybody laughed. The game went on.

Somebody kept score, but nobody paid much attention to it. A runner couldn’t find third base and was tagged out, but a counselor overruled the call and took the runner to the bag.

The game was called off after a couple of innings, and everybody went to lunch. The sun was shining. The kids were shouting. Their hearts were light.

Vicki Alward walked with a visitor awhile. “That was a good game,” she said. “I just wish I could play a little better.”

She played great. Everybody did. It was the best game a guy had been to in a long time. Were Camp Bloomfield a country meadow, or a city playground, or a colossal stadium, rather than a summer camp of the Foundation for the Junior Blind, the game could not have been any better. Baseball has never been any better.