The Majors
Cody Hartley
Dad would watch the papers starting all the way in January for the announcement of the day which every year kept him watching until March. Little League tryouts were always in March, always on a Saturday, and always at the elementary school two blocks up the hill from our house. February plodded by as it always did, and the day would arrive, never failing to bring with it a dust of rain just downpour enough to slick the streets. In the damp, grey light of morning, station wagons and pick-ups navigated their way through town and pulled into the school parking lot. Fathers and sons quietly emerged and congregated in the schoolyard around a ten-gallon white plastic bucket full of old baseballs, blowing on their hands and stamping their feet against the cold, waiting in the morning quiet for someone to give the word. We would all stand watching each other silently from underneath the bill of our ballcaps, hands in pockets and gloves tucked up underneath one arm, waiting. Then almost without a word, as if by instinct, all the fathers drew back and the entire company of ballplayers paired and separated, like cells dividing. Two lines stretched perfectly parallel across the elementary school playground, a legion of boys in grey sweats and ballcaps indistinguishable from one another, split at a distance of twenty paces. We would begin to throw—warm-up tosses at first—and across that distance, the balls fell from the air like salvos, only to be returned again with the pop and thwack of leather snapping shut. The coaches from all the teams would pace behind, silently watching us throw, wondering which of us to draft. Each one of them secretly hoped to spot something special in one of us that the other coaches didn't see, and somehow gather in a glance all the intangible possibilities of an entire spring baseball season based on a Saturday morning workout in March. Every so often a coach would approach the line of boys and tap one on the shoulder, pulling him back for a few throws in a private tryout. Only the ones who got pulled back could get drafted. Only they would get a phone call that night with news of a team assignment and the location of the first team practice the next afternoon. The rest would try out for the lower divisions, the minors and the juniors, the following week. They would have to wait until next year for their shot at the majors, spending this season playing the beloved game with eight-year-olds who were just learning. I remember the anxiousness, throwing harder when the coaches would pass behind. And I can remember standing there on the wet blacktop, waiting without a word, playing an interminable game of catch, willing them to look, to notice, hoping one of them would walk over, and pick me.
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