TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME
by Karen Dove Barr

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TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME     

Pleasantly plump, fifty-six year old grandmother, dressed in men¹s tennis shoes, barreling down on home plate in a pro-baseball stadium.  That was me, the first Saturday in May, 2003. Home plate at Grayson Stadium served as the finish line for the Sand Gnats 5-K Trot, a three point one mile road race, and I was one of the participants.     

More than thirty years had passed since I last entered Grayson Stadium. Years before I last watched a Savannah Braves game, (forerunners of the Savannah Cardinals and the Savannah Sand Gnats) my father dragged me regularly to an identical stadium in middle Georgia.  Buried memories of billboards advertising Camel cigarettes, Copper-Tone suntan oil, and Purina dog chow on the outfield fence, me dodging plugs of chewed tobacco, running up and down bleacher steps while my Dad cheered for the Macon Peaches, the cool damp of the cement tunnel under the seats, resurrected themselves intact, as I slipped through the tall chain link gate.     

What a difference thirty years made! Grayson Stadium ladies room was spotlessly clean. That seemed un-American. The Sand Gnats infield is thickly grassed with emerald zoysia instead of sparsely sprigged in crab-grass and weeds. Shiny blue paint covered the concrete walls of Grayson Stadium.  What happened to dull, flaky gray?     

Our race began at the head of a one way street leading to the fountain in Daffin Park. Instead of a fountain, only a mound of dirt adorned the center of the traffic circle. If I were a baseball fan, I¹d sacrifice a fountain for a clean ladies room anytime.  Heading back up another spoke of the wheel formerly housing the fountain, a fit mom pushing a baby stroller whizzed around me. Out of the park, down Bee Road, veering onto an asphalt path through a bottomland jungle, we followed the right of way of the Casey Canal Parkway. I waved to cars speeding by, pretending that I was going as fast as them.  Back up blistering hot Bee Road, into Daffin Park, around the stadium, and through the front gate. Groundskeepers marked our route with a fat trail of the same lime dust used to guide successful hitters around the bases.  Fortunately for me, the infield fly rule doesn¹t apply in road races, or I would never have known whether to stop or go.     

I hesitated at the edge of the infield, fearful of a body-check from the umpire if I actually set my New Balances where professional ball players tread.  My head spun with visions of fans, crowding the empty stadium, screaming for me to go! go! go! for home plate. Preparing to run the baseline and slide into home, I saw the race finishing chute angled across the thick infield grass.  Did I need permission to cross it?  The volunteers hovering over home plate nodded their okay. Finally my foot touched the spot where Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Mickey Mantle earned their livings in Savannah.      

The concession stands were closed. I remembered hot dogs with mustard and onions, tiny paper cups with crushed ice and a few sips of coke, beer for my Dad.  Saturday on the side of the field volunteers offered free orange slices, banana halves, and bottled water.  Hidden by a crowd of runners, open boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts quickly emptied. Krispy Kreme doughnut concessions for baseball stadiums across the country could be the answer to lagging ticket sales.        

For the awards ceremony, we runners were allowed to stand in the litter of empty gum wrappers covering the dirt floor of the home team dugout. Sand Gnats players chew bubble gum instead of tobacco. Imagining my turn at bat, the ninety mile-an-hour fastball of a professional pitcher aimed in my direction, the butterflies that fluttered in my stomach before starting the race returned with a vengeance.     

Gnic the Gnat took his place on the pitcher¹s mound next to the race officials.  With only sixty-seven finishers and first, second, and third place trophy baseballs for each five year age group, men and women, almost everybody was a winner. Grayson Stadium didn¹t have a TV sound track when I attended a game thirty years ago, so when my name was called, and a collective gasp, Ooooh! boomed with the roar of a full stadium, I wondered if I had lost part of my running outfit. Only when the next winner¹s name was called did I recognize the familiar sound track cheer from big league TV.     

Carrying my hermetically sealed, professional baseball back to the shade of a big live oak where I parked my car, I realized that the only sand gnat I had encountered all morning was Gnic. Maybe, just for old times sakes, I¹ll buy a ticket and take in a game.

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