Living with Snakes

The First Baseman

The First Baseman he had long dark hair that she pulled straight back and tied with a piece of bright, heavy yarn. It gave her face a forward-straining, eager look—something like a figurehead, very, very quiet. Just the same there was nothing wooden about her. Although her expression rarely changed—as far as I can remember, she never smiled—she was simply relaxed and alert. I assumed she was intelligent as well. I also assumed she was gentle, compassionate, and very loving. I was, of course, madly in love with her. And the first time I stood beside her I realized she was fully sixfoot -two in her baseball shoes. I'm an even six-foot myself—well, although it's not generally known,five-foot-elevenand fifteen-sixteenths inches. That sticks in my craw because I always wanted to be sixfoot , and I've been led to lie a lot about it. Every night after work I was out at the softball park, hoping her team would be playing. I got into the habit of hanging around the refreshment stand to buy her a beer after the games. Each night she looked mildly down at me and thanked me and drank her beer. The next night I would be back in the stands with the odd husband, a boyfriend or two, a scattering of babies. The center fielder on her team— great arm, strong and accurate—used to leave her baby on a bench there bundled up in one of those things Indian women use, a carrying board of some kind, and when she s The First Baseman 85 wasn't in the field or at bat she would whip out a breast and feed it. My first baseman was marvelous. She played as good a first base as I have ever seen, very close to the bat, more than halfway down the line, crouched, ready, arms hanging, weight just balanced. I really worried about her playing so far in. In cricket there are positions very close to the bat called silly mid-on and silly mid-off. Well, she played a silly first base, but she was very quick. Great hands. The greatest . I've seen men sit and catch flies with their hands. I even knew a man who could pick them out of the air between his thumb and forefinger. And there is the legendary samurai who could snap them up with chopsticks. I doubt if she had ever heard of chopsticks, but she was in that league. I came very late to women's softball, but I had watched a lot of baseball—I'm a frustrated first baseman myself. That is, I was slow to react and couldn't hit. Anything else? But I know what is good just the same, and she had it all. She could hit. She could run. When she stood up to an umpire, it was her jaw she stuck out, not her chest, although I had checked that statistic, too, of course. But when I watched her play I only thought exactly what I thought when I watched Joe DiMaggio: Christ, how beautiful. Perhaps all the time I had been wanting to be in love with a really great first baseman and didn't know it. Well, I bought her a beer—I swear it—just the same way I would have bought a beer for Joe DiMaggio if he had really been there and willing to accept a beer. I think I did anyway. It's hard to tell for sure. I did think it over. I thought it over long after I knew she went to the refreshment stand after every game. I asked myself: Look now, if this wasJoe DiMaggio would you buy him a beer if he was really here? Or is it that buying a beer is what you do for a woman? The next night I bought a beer for the winning pitcher in 86 Living with Snakes a game in the men's league. He was in the executive training program of the bank where I cash my checks and just about the only person in town I know. A couple of nights after that I bought one for the third baseman on the Indian team. He had done something I admired—envied actually. He was playing way in with a runner on third and fielded a...