Where Baseballs Go to Die
I have never been to Ward Field, in Terre Haute, Indiana. Where the Indiana State baseball team plays. But tonight, thanks to the wonders of Hulu TV and its panoply of sports programs, showing Division I and likely other baseball in all venues and climes, I can watch it from my family room. They make available teams and colleges that you have never heard, and likely never will, my gentle reader. I could look among them... Campbell, Mercer, Kennesaw State. Corpus Christ (Texas A & M), Lindenwood, Houston Christian. There are more... Hulu gets them all!
I wanted to see the Hoosiers, who have been a bit underwhelming till now, against the Missouri Valley leading State Sycamores. ISU started up 5-0 but now trail in the 5th inning by seven, 5-12.
Go Hoosiers.
But this is about the outfield, what lies in the fence beyond it, and what lies beneath.
A cemetery. A grave yard. The many home runs hit so far tonight have been landing there in left field, and some other bombs have headed to the bullpen in right and the staff parking or something over that way.
A field of graves and tombs in Terre Haute.
I saw some people in the stands, mostly behind home plate, and I thought that I might know some of them or at least know their relatives or friends. I grew up an hour from Terre Haute, which means "high ground". Vigo County, I guess.
I knew my church people there. Back in the 1980s as a youth, and bit more in the late 1990s. The Roses, the Drummonds, the Kirchners, and later Brother... Luis? Magallanes, yes. No, Geno. A sweet man. Very cool, who had made his to Indiana from Mexico via Saint Louis. The family that married into the Aguila clan, out in California, too.
Who is buried there? Did I ever know any of them?
Possibly. Or their relatives, maybe.
It was light there, on the edges of the Eastern Time Zone, the sun still up, as it got dark hear closer to the Atlantic. Closer to the night, and perhaps the sliver of a crescent moon, and the death that those hues may symbolize.
Light is alive, dark is the eternal rest. Dark, cool, deceased. Light, warm, and alive.
Now IU is beating its state rival, not bad a program for being a smaller school, 13 to 5 now after triple.
Take me home, IU. Take me back to the banks of the Wabash, far away. Hogey.
14-4 after a double.
The bats are hopping.
The dead lay a few yards away. Withering and moldy, dust and barely any bones left.
Maybe I knew them, as Hamlet had known Yoric.
And, finally, where will I be buried?
Should I be jettisoned to the moon.
Too expensive.
Make it tenable and nice.
Death awaits, but there are innings left to be played in this sweet opera, the long drama of the vanities and the mercies.
Good night, my Indiana. Schwarber plays on the other channel, in Philly, where a temple was seen from afar where the dead receive their ordinances of life and eternity.
Amen.
