Geddy Explains Baseball to Annie

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“This is America,” Geddy shouted above the roar.

“What is happening?” Annie shouted back.

The runner who had been on first base was already rounding second and on his way to third and would turn for home and score. The shortstop sprinted past second base into right center. He positioned himself in a direct line between third base and the right fielder retrieving the ball near the fence.

Annie nodded, but her face reflected her bemusement at Geddy’s detailed explanation in light of her own almost perfect ignorance of the game. As far as baseball was concerned, she was still lost in America.

Geddy recognized Annie’s bemused expression for what it conveyed, but he went on anyway.

When within seconds everything happened exactly as Geddy predicted, Annie shouted, “How did you know?”

“You asked me to show you America, Annie,” he replied. “If you want to understand America and Americans, you need to understand baseball.”

“This is the real game,” Geddy said to Annie. “True-blue grassroots baseball is what American and Canadian baseball fans love. And this is it. This is baseball, the real thing. These teenagers and old-timers are playing the game with the down-home spirit that brings people to the ballpark to cheer on the local heroes.”

“Annie, my friends and I paid forty cents to get into the left field bleachers. Then we snuck through the hole in the chain link fence separating the bleacher fans from the people in the more expensive seats on the other side.”

“A hole in the fence?”

“Then we moved along the uppermost row of seats at the top of the stadium. That way we were far above the other ushers. When we were above the seats behind the Maple Leafs’ dugout on the third base side or on a line with the visitors’ dugout on the first base side, we moved down closer to the field, taking it one section at a time, down through the grays, and then the greens and the blues, until we worked our way down to the reds. Those were the box seats right next to the field where you could smell the grass.

And he recalled the broad smile on the face of the Buffalo Bisons’ giant first baseman, Luke Easter, when he stuck out his hand to shake. “What position do you play, young man?” he asked. And Geddy answered, “I’m a catcher.”

Then Easter laughed and said, “Well, maybe someday you’ll be a first baseman like me.”