TheBanyanTree: A night at the ball park

[Monique Colver]

We cheer at everything and nothing. We cheer for computerized hydroplanes,
either green or yellow or red, not that it matters who wins, there's no
prize, but there are bragging rights. There's being able to say, "I picked
red, and red won!" For such an amorphous prize, we get all excited, we yell
and scream as we watch the boats race on the screen, and when our hydroplane
loses, we make sounds of frustration and annoyance. We have lost, dammit!
And we're not happy! We've lost nothing, but it doesn't matter. 
	We play the hat trick, four baseball hats with one of them hiding a
ball, and we watch them move on the big screen, and we try to keep track of
which one has the ball, and when it's finished we yell for our guess to be
the right one, and then it's revealed that it's number 4, and maybe it's
ours and maybe it's not, but if it's not, we're annoyed because we wanted to
be right.
	It doesn't matter what we're cheering for, as long as we have
something to cheer for. 
	Occasionally a wave will sweep the stadium, and as the wave comes
many people will stand up and join in, for no other reason than that
everyone else is doing it, and it makes us a part of the whole. We all want
to be a part of the whole. 
	The other team strikes out, and we all cheer and clap. We're happy
for their loss because it means we win. It's nothing personal, you
understand, we just like to be on top. For some of us, it may be our only
chance to be on the winning team this week. Everyone wants to be on the
winning team, which is why park attendance drops off when the team is on a
losing streak. Nobody wants to be on the side of the losers, we don't want
to watch the players drift off the field as everyone files silently out of
the stadium. We want to be on the side that wins.
	People hold up signs, hoping the cameras will see them and feature
them on the big screen, and when they see themselves on the big screen they
stand up and wave and cheer for themselves, for their sudden fame,
unaccompanied by fortune or posterity, but it doesn't matter, we're on the
BIG SCREEN, and everyone can see us, even if it's just for a second.
	We all want to be seen, and for some of us, this is the only time
we'll be on the big screen. It may not happen again. It may, or it may not,
and if it does, it may be as fleeting as this time, so it's best to enjoy it
while you can. Let no opportunity to be seen pass unremarked, for how else
will people know we're here?
	A group of adolescent boys take off their shirts and wave them in
the air, they dance for the camera, their shirts waving, and it doesn't
matter that tomorrow no one will know who they are, for today they are on
the big screen.
	A fan who has had perhaps a bit too much to drink dances feverishly,
and the camera focuses on him for just a second, just long enough for us to
see that he's lost his inhibitions. We're not sure this is a good thing.
	Foul balls sail into the stands with surprising regularity. Everyone
grasps for the balls heading their way, everyone wants one, baseballs being
a rare and treasured commodity, and everyone wants to go home with one.
Alas, despite the regularity with which the stands consume fouls, very few,
relatively speaking, will go home with balls they have caught. 
	A player is frustrated at his failure to get a hit, and as he leaves
the field he breaks his bat over his knee. He isn't seen again that night.
It's as if the earth has swallowed him whole after that. 
	Another player shows up late in the game, when the bases are loaded
and the score is tied, and I wonder where he's been. He's always playing
every other time I've been there, but perhaps it was someone else's turn
tonight. He comes in at the end though, as if he was being saved for a last
minute rally.
	The closer is brought out at the end, once we've managed to break
the tie by one point, and all he has to do is close. When his appearance is
announced the scoreboards all light up with his initials, "J J" and the
crowd roars, if not quite like a lion, at least with as much intensity. He
has no other job than to close, so we can all go home. The only thing that
matters, at this point, is to keep them, the enemy, from scoring any more
points, and this he succeeds at. It's why he's the closer.
	We stand at the 7th inning stretch, just like we're told, and we
sing "Take me out to the ball game," and we eat too much, and some of us
drink too much. You can tell who these are because they're the loud ones,
the ones who think that if they yell instructions to the pitcher ("Strike
him out, that's all you have to do," as if the pitcher is just waiting for
instructions from the stands) he'll not only listen, but then do as he's
told because, after all, it's not as if he's ever done this before. We know
the pitcher knows his job, but how can we be a part of the whole if we're
not yelling out instructions for him to follow? Perhaps later, when we're at
home, we can say to ourselves, "We won the game because the pitcher listened
to me," even though there's no way the pitcher could have heard anything at
all over all the other noise. 
	We're so good at telling other people what to do. We're all experts
on the subject of baseball, and we're better at deciding who's safe and
who's out than the umpires are, and if they disagree with us we let them
know that we don't agree, and that they must be of inferior intelligence if
they think they know better than we do.
	The roof is on the stadium when we arrive, and half an hour before
game time there's an announcement. It has been determined that rain will not
fall any more today, and the roof will be opened. It takes 20 minutes for
the roof to roll all the way back, and the day is perfectly pleasant, with a
few clouds in the sky. At 7:05, the official start time, the rain begins
again, a soft yet dense persistent mist, and after ten minutes or so,
without fanfare or preamble, the roof begins its trip back, in order to
cover us and keep the field dry, but mostly to keep the field dry. We are
only observers, and it is the sacred field that is the most important.
	We all leave as winners, for tonight, for right now. Tomorrow's
another day, but for tonight, we have won.