Second Chances

It started with a whisper.

It seems all my ideas and dreams start this way, with a relentless gnawing at the gut, bouncing around like the weather in March and Spring Training pitcher ERAs. The whisper was perfectly and passionately ludicrous and tripled my pulse every single time I was quiet enough to listen to it. I couldn’t help but think of Field of Dreams along with the email I once received from W. P. Kinsella, the author of the book that inspired the movie, “It is the fiction writer’s job to create weird characters, but I wouldn’t want to know any of them in real life.”

I spent the calendar year of 2018 playing catch. Every day for an entire year. It was one of the best years of my life. I loved the adventure of meeting new people and hearing amazing stories alongside the simple joys and sounds and smells of connecting through not-so-fastballs and the snapping of leather. When the calendar turned to 2019, I appreciated the freedom from the self-imposed pressures of having to find a daily catch partner. But, I also greatly missed the activity itself. I successfully ignored the whisper in January and February only to have it return with a vengeance once Spring Training games started.

“Can you remember who you were before the world told you who you were supposed to be?” author Ian Morgan Cron once wrote. I read his words and was sent on a remembering journey of my earliest days in Columbia, Missouri and Grand Junction, Colorado and Springfield, Missouri.

I remember watching the 1980 World Series and pick-up baseball games anywhere and everywhere and collecting thousands upon thousands of baseball cards. Until I was sixteen, I remember saying I was going to be a professional baseball player when I grew up. At sixteen, I was a smallest-kid-onthe-team, score-keeping, foul-ball-chasing, bench-warming relief pitcher and middle infielder for the junior varsity.

And then I stopped playing.

I stopped playing mostly because my body didn’t grow on my timeline. I couldn’t run as fast or throw as hard as anyone else on the team. My stirrup socks reached the middle of my thigh and touched the bottom of my tucked in jersey. I didn’t know that chasing professional baseball dreams meant continuing to work hard while waiting on my body’s biology.

“For as long as I can remember, all I’ve wished for was one more chance to play ball—to step on the mound, toe the rubber, and pour my heart out; to flip Field of Dreams on its head and wink at the hitter just before I got him out.”¹

I first wrote those words years ago, words now published in my first novel, Dreamfield. A light-hearted story of baseball, faith, and time travel, Dreamfield was ultimately about second-chances. With my arm in great baseball shape, I decided to take a chance to see if those words might become reality. I decided to try and play organized baseball again.

On Sunday, August 4, 2019, the Grip ‘N’ Rip Baseball League (GRBL) would host tryouts at US Baseball Park in Ozark, Missouri. Tony Lewis is the commissioner and founder of the highly competitive, wood-bat league which started in 2015. He and I played catch on the concourse during the championship game of the GRBL in 2018. Tony played ball at Glendale High School in Springfield and continued collegiately at Missouri State University and Drury University. He then played for the Quebec Capitales of the CAN-AM Independent Baseball League.

“Softball just isn’t my thing. Baseball is my passion, and I wanted to provide an opportunity for those who still want to play ball, for those who really love the game,” Tony said. The six-team, white-pants league “strives to provide the ultimate baseball experience for players still young at heart.” Seven games in August and September were followed by playoffs with the winning team raising the Howard Bell Trophy, a trophy named after a beloved high school...