Susan M. Schultz
Rules of the Game
--for Sangha, on his 14th birthday, 7/10/13
1.
The walk home. A bases-loaded walk results in a run. (How can this be?) Our 12-month boy, in diapers and a one piece, enters a Phnom Penh hotel room, begins to walk. His turns veer, from end of bed to bedside table, from bedside table to end of other bed. Walks to the window, says “ba” (we find out this means “father”), looks at the traffic, the Wat beside us, the men on motorbikes below. He falls, he hits his head, he wobbles upright again. The walk home is your dad's favorite play, as it requires patience, a good eye, and a quick trot from third base to the plate. He calls them points, but we know better.
2.
Calling time. What do we call time, except what lets us go and then causes us to be caught? Jim Edmonds runs away from the fly ball, toward the centerfield wall. He dives. The ball finds his webbing. A glove's webbing is like a snuggly, the one we carried you in, the better to “attach.” On our hotel television you watched music videos and Aussie Rules football. At the elevator you pushed and pushed the buttons. Dad called you “the button pushing cowboy.” When we arrived home, someone had sent you a Cardinals cap in a box. There was no return address.
3.
In-field fly rule. If the infielder fails to catch a pop-up with men on base, the batter is still out. A fielder's omission can't result in double play. The umpire calls out that the rule's in effect, as a pop fly hovers above the field. There was a 19-minute delay against the Braves while fans threw debris on the field. In Hiroshima, during the 7th inning stretch, fans blew cigarette smoke into balloons and let them go. Men came by with brooms to clear the field. We can never drop a year the way we drop a ball or balloon; they rise and rise again, immune to gravity. You are 14, or three grand slams and a two-run homer. 14 runs wins the game, almost every time.
4.
A BALK is an illegal act by the pitcher with a runner or runners on base, entitling all runners to advance. It rhymes with walk, and looks pretty much the same. Most balks occur when the pitcher tries to pick off a runner by seeming to throw home; if he's not a good actor, he loses the runner he intended to trap. If the ball doesn't go home, as Thomas Wolfe says we can't again, the runner jogs to the next base. He is safe on that base, but he is probably not at home there. You said the video was of “your” dog and cat, though it was of grandma's and grandpa's. Their home is also yours, though you do not live there. Most runners never get home, and some get caught stealing.
5.
There are coaches at first and third, a manager in the dug-out. You are still a player surrounded by men barking orders. These are your teen-age years, your adolescence. They prepare you to be the barker, the one who orders others to stop or to start, to stay still or to attempt a steal, to take a base or to attempt to score. When a player stops at first or third, the coach gently places his hands on the player's shoulders, offers him quiet advice. The player is meant to run away, but only to the next base, or home.
6.
A batter will be called out if he bats out of turn. Buster Posey's RBI was called back because he'd batted in the wrong place in the Giants' order. He batted again, but his out was not called back. In teeball you stood beside third base carving a trench in the dirt with your foot. A ball was hit toward you. It stopped just shy of your foot. You kept digging. One time you saw a deer in a meadow of tall grass across a river. What you see well is not always what you move toward.
7.
Wild pitch. When the pitcher is wild and the catcher can't handle the ball, runners often advance a base, or even score. When Randy Johnson pitched to Jon Kruk, Kruk ducked, then switched to the right side. In Kathmandu, the morning after we picked up Radhika from the orphanage, she began to lob toys at you—Lamby and a big cloth flower on a stem—but her pitches were never wild. She hit you every time.
8.
Interference. If the catcher's mitt gets in the way of the bat, or if the batter gets in the way of the catcher's throw, it's interference. Players stand close, but not too close, to one another. Brandon Phillips tapped Yadier Molina on the shin guards. At least one career ended that day, up against the backstop. Interference is a mother's temptation. She leads with her words, tries never to tap your shins with her bat.
9.
The batter's box. In an early photo, you peer out from the carved door of a refrigerator box, the one your dad made into a room for you to hide in. You know how batters always try to blur the chalk lines of the box so that there's more room to stand in. The first Christmas your dad and I spent together, we gave each other baseball gifts. We each bought a brush for the other, the better to clean off our plates. He wanted to turn the living room into a stadium by painting stands and spectators on the wall and putting down a layer of astro turf to replace the aging carpet. We walked before he could.
10.
A hit batsman. Often a wild pitch hits a batter, who runs to first, nursing jaw, wrist, elbow, blade. Sometimes, pitchers throw deliberately at the batter and get thrown out of the game. It isn't always clear what's deliberate, though Cole Hamels confessed to beaning Bryce Harper. (You always say “beam.”) “Welcome to the big leagues,” he said to Harper. Instead of “interference,” this is called “interpretation,” but there's not always an umpire to blame. You may think my interpretation is interference; you're 14, after all. Who can say what I intended? I'm 54.
11.
A triple play! A Marlins hitter bunted the ball. Molina picked it up, tagged the batter, threw to Freese, who threw on to first. A triple play? Only if the same guy was out twice. Sometimes, if two runners have been set in motion, a sharp line drive results in three outs. Takes luck, though. When we first adopted you, the woman who cut my hair said you were lucky because of your ears. Or did they mean you'd be rich? Dad said you had physicist ears. Something about your ears. We went to hear the Dalai Lama speak the day you hit a home run.
12.
A live ball is one that's in play (out of play, it's dead). In baseball the ball takes on the characteristics of a being, possessing a mind of its own, skittering into the right field corner, or slamming into the opponent's dug-out. No ball stays alive forever, nor do we, but while we do, our flight is as beautiful as one of Adam Wainwright's curve balls. Two days after Darryl Kile died in Chicago, his friend Matt Morris pitched. Morris kept throwing Kile's best pitch, a 12-6 curve. Over and again they left his hand, breaking hard towards home.
13.
The wind-up position. The pitcher is not a clock, though he measures time with his leg, his arm, his hard pivot ahead. Bob Gibson, Luis Tiant, Hideo Nomo, Tim Lincecum. A lot has to do not with how you wind up, but where. We are at once the pitcher and the ball, the wind-up and the destination. We leave the hand and sail toward another mitt, are called ball or called strike. We travel back from the catcher to the pitcher, signifying nothing save that the game goes on.
14.
Trip to the mound. The manager can make only so many trips to the mound; if he lingers too long (reliever starting to warm up in the pen), the umpire trudges 60 feet to break the meeting up. There's so much coming and going, so many departures and returns. When we took you to your home village it was as if we entered the myth of the prodigal son. But there was a day after that when we left your first home, brought you back. (It was like a double-header folded into one.) As I write this, you're installed in the boy cave, and your dad is typing on an old typewriter. There's a ding and then a carriage return. Back and forth, forth and back. A student asked “what's a ribbon?” and we had to say it made the words appear. They're like the Streamliner 353P 3-wheel line chalker. Words are fair, but margins are inevitably foul.
**********
15.
Extra innings. You were downstairs slamming doors; you were outside hitting baseballs. There were two outs and two strikes, and then again. And then the ball floated out toward center, suspended in the no-time of the 11th inning, completing its arc with a plunk on the green grass past the center field wall. Our friend Andy, who was there, danced with every stranger nearby. There's a trajectory when time gets so nearly called, not for meetings or for show, but for the beauty of that ball as it cuts through the stadium's expectant and adopting air. “We will see you tomorrow night!”
__________
Susan M. Schultz is author of several books of poetry and poetic prose, most recently (in reverse order), "She's Welcome to Her Disease": Dementia Blog, vol. 2 (2013), Memory Cards: 2010-2011 Series (2011), and Dementia Blog (2008), all from Singing Horse Press. She also wrote a book of criticism, A Poetics of Impasse in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry, published by the University of Alabama Press in 2005. She is publisher and editor of Tinfish Press out of her home in Kāne`ohe, Hawai`i, and blogs at tinfisheditor.blogspot.com. She is a lifelong fan of the St. Louis Cardinals, as is her now 14 year old son.
Susan writes of her work: I've now written two long pieces for my children's birthdays based on the rules of their favorite sports. My daughter is a wonderful soccer player, so hers emerged out of the rules of soccer and memories of her adoption from Nepal. The poem included here uses baseball rules and events to bring up memories of our adoption of our son, Sangha, from Cambodia in 2000. One of the linchpins of the sequence is the 2011 World Series, which the Cardinals won in seven games over the Texas Rangers. Game Six was (arguably) the best game in Series history. I do so argue.
Rules of the Game
--for Sangha, on his 14th birthday, 7/10/13
1.
The walk home. A bases-loaded walk results in a run. (How can this be?) Our 12-month boy, in diapers and a one piece, enters a Phnom Penh hotel room, begins to walk. His turns veer, from end of bed to bedside table, from bedside table to end of other bed. Walks to the window, says “ba” (we find out this means “father”), looks at the traffic, the Wat beside us, the men on motorbikes below. He falls, he hits his head, he wobbles upright again. The walk home is your dad's favorite play, as it requires patience, a good eye, and a quick trot from third base to the plate. He calls them points, but we know better.
2.
Calling time. What do we call time, except what lets us go and then causes us to be caught? Jim Edmonds runs away from the fly ball, toward the centerfield wall. He dives. The ball finds his webbing. A glove's webbing is like a snuggly, the one we carried you in, the better to “attach.” On our hotel television you watched music videos and Aussie Rules football. At the elevator you pushed and pushed the buttons. Dad called you “the button pushing cowboy.” When we arrived home, someone had sent you a Cardinals cap in a box. There was no return address.
3.
In-field fly rule. If the infielder fails to catch a pop-up with men on base, the batter is still out. A fielder's omission can't result in double play. The umpire calls out that the rule's in effect, as a pop fly hovers above the field. There was a 19-minute delay against the Braves while fans threw debris on the field. In Hiroshima, during the 7th inning stretch, fans blew cigarette smoke into balloons and let them go. Men came by with brooms to clear the field. We can never drop a year the way we drop a ball or balloon; they rise and rise again, immune to gravity. You are 14, or three grand slams and a two-run homer. 14 runs wins the game, almost every time.
4.
A BALK is an illegal act by the pitcher with a runner or runners on base, entitling all runners to advance. It rhymes with walk, and looks pretty much the same. Most balks occur when the pitcher tries to pick off a runner by seeming to throw home; if he's not a good actor, he loses the runner he intended to trap. If the ball doesn't go home, as Thomas Wolfe says we can't again, the runner jogs to the next base. He is safe on that base, but he is probably not at home there. You said the video was of “your” dog and cat, though it was of grandma's and grandpa's. Their home is also yours, though you do not live there. Most runners never get home, and some get caught stealing.
5.
There are coaches at first and third, a manager in the dug-out. You are still a player surrounded by men barking orders. These are your teen-age years, your adolescence. They prepare you to be the barker, the one who orders others to stop or to start, to stay still or to attempt a steal, to take a base or to attempt to score. When a player stops at first or third, the coach gently places his hands on the player's shoulders, offers him quiet advice. The player is meant to run away, but only to the next base, or home.
6.
A batter will be called out if he bats out of turn. Buster Posey's RBI was called back because he'd batted in the wrong place in the Giants' order. He batted again, but his out was not called back. In teeball you stood beside third base carving a trench in the dirt with your foot. A ball was hit toward you. It stopped just shy of your foot. You kept digging. One time you saw a deer in a meadow of tall grass across a river. What you see well is not always what you move toward.
7.
Wild pitch. When the pitcher is wild and the catcher can't handle the ball, runners often advance a base, or even score. When Randy Johnson pitched to Jon Kruk, Kruk ducked, then switched to the right side. In Kathmandu, the morning after we picked up Radhika from the orphanage, she began to lob toys at you—Lamby and a big cloth flower on a stem—but her pitches were never wild. She hit you every time.
8.
Interference. If the catcher's mitt gets in the way of the bat, or if the batter gets in the way of the catcher's throw, it's interference. Players stand close, but not too close, to one another. Brandon Phillips tapped Yadier Molina on the shin guards. At least one career ended that day, up against the backstop. Interference is a mother's temptation. She leads with her words, tries never to tap your shins with her bat.
9.
The batter's box. In an early photo, you peer out from the carved door of a refrigerator box, the one your dad made into a room for you to hide in. You know how batters always try to blur the chalk lines of the box so that there's more room to stand in. The first Christmas your dad and I spent together, we gave each other baseball gifts. We each bought a brush for the other, the better to clean off our plates. He wanted to turn the living room into a stadium by painting stands and spectators on the wall and putting down a layer of astro turf to replace the aging carpet. We walked before he could.
10.
A hit batsman. Often a wild pitch hits a batter, who runs to first, nursing jaw, wrist, elbow, blade. Sometimes, pitchers throw deliberately at the batter and get thrown out of the game. It isn't always clear what's deliberate, though Cole Hamels confessed to beaning Bryce Harper. (You always say “beam.”) “Welcome to the big leagues,” he said to Harper. Instead of “interference,” this is called “interpretation,” but there's not always an umpire to blame. You may think my interpretation is interference; you're 14, after all. Who can say what I intended? I'm 54.
11.
A triple play! A Marlins hitter bunted the ball. Molina picked it up, tagged the batter, threw to Freese, who threw on to first. A triple play? Only if the same guy was out twice. Sometimes, if two runners have been set in motion, a sharp line drive results in three outs. Takes luck, though. When we first adopted you, the woman who cut my hair said you were lucky because of your ears. Or did they mean you'd be rich? Dad said you had physicist ears. Something about your ears. We went to hear the Dalai Lama speak the day you hit a home run.
12.
A live ball is one that's in play (out of play, it's dead). In baseball the ball takes on the characteristics of a being, possessing a mind of its own, skittering into the right field corner, or slamming into the opponent's dug-out. No ball stays alive forever, nor do we, but while we do, our flight is as beautiful as one of Adam Wainwright's curve balls. Two days after Darryl Kile died in Chicago, his friend Matt Morris pitched. Morris kept throwing Kile's best pitch, a 12-6 curve. Over and again they left his hand, breaking hard towards home.
13.
The wind-up position. The pitcher is not a clock, though he measures time with his leg, his arm, his hard pivot ahead. Bob Gibson, Luis Tiant, Hideo Nomo, Tim Lincecum. A lot has to do not with how you wind up, but where. We are at once the pitcher and the ball, the wind-up and the destination. We leave the hand and sail toward another mitt, are called ball or called strike. We travel back from the catcher to the pitcher, signifying nothing save that the game goes on.
14.
Trip to the mound. The manager can make only so many trips to the mound; if he lingers too long (reliever starting to warm up in the pen), the umpire trudges 60 feet to break the meeting up. There's so much coming and going, so many departures and returns. When we took you to your home village it was as if we entered the myth of the prodigal son. But there was a day after that when we left your first home, brought you back. (It was like a double-header folded into one.) As I write this, you're installed in the boy cave, and your dad is typing on an old typewriter. There's a ding and then a carriage return. Back and forth, forth and back. A student asked “what's a ribbon?” and we had to say it made the words appear. They're like the Streamliner 353P 3-wheel line chalker. Words are fair, but margins are inevitably foul.
**********
15.
Extra innings. You were downstairs slamming doors; you were outside hitting baseballs. There were two outs and two strikes, and then again. And then the ball floated out toward center, suspended in the no-time of the 11th inning, completing its arc with a plunk on the green grass past the center field wall. Our friend Andy, who was there, danced with every stranger nearby. There's a trajectory when time gets so nearly called, not for meetings or for show, but for the beauty of that ball as it cuts through the stadium's expectant and adopting air. “We will see you tomorrow night!”
__________
Susan M. Schultz is author of several books of poetry and poetic prose, most recently (in reverse order), "She's Welcome to Her Disease": Dementia Blog, vol. 2 (2013), Memory Cards: 2010-2011 Series (2011), and Dementia Blog (2008), all from Singing Horse Press. She also wrote a book of criticism, A Poetics of Impasse in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry, published by the University of Alabama Press in 2005. She is publisher and editor of Tinfish Press out of her home in Kāne`ohe, Hawai`i, and blogs at tinfisheditor.blogspot.com. She is a lifelong fan of the St. Louis Cardinals, as is her now 14 year old son.
Susan writes of her work: I've now written two long pieces for my children's birthdays based on the rules of their favorite sports. My daughter is a wonderful soccer player, so hers emerged out of the rules of soccer and memories of her adoption from Nepal. The poem included here uses baseball rules and events to bring up memories of our adoption of our son, Sangha, from Cambodia in 2000. One of the linchpins of the sequence is the 2011 World Series, which the Cardinals won in seven games over the Texas Rangers. Game Six was (arguably) the best game in Series history. I do so argue.