No American I subsequently met ever asked why I - wedded a mere four years and with a daughter of two - up-sticked from London and started work in Pittsburgh. It wasn’t an abrupt decision. The planning and its execution took a full year and I had to persuade the US Embassy I didn’t intend to overthrow the Johnson administration.
If anyone pondered they probably imagined we’d been gently starving to death under a socialist tyranny. Our neighbours were vague about “overseas”
In fact my reasons were complex and once we’d turned on the heating in 3214 Annapolis Avenue I quickly forgot them. Which is not to say I wasn’t happily reminded.
The guy I finally worked for – a physicist who fancied launching a magazine – played right-field with the Jugoslavs softball team. Just a name, I assure you. Although I’d bought a glove and fielded grounders with the local kids, I had no higher pretensions. On Tuesday evenings I watched the Jugoslavs play. After which, beer and a KFC tub at the Jugoslav club.
I’d become an obsessive about baseball. Softball is baseball watered down. What surprised me was the sporting competence of these guys, some “getting on a bit”. Confidently taking high hits in the outfield, humming the fat ball into the plate.
There’s a special “smack” when a hard-hit ball ends in a fielder’s glove. I can hear it now and I’m transported to that scruffy field, sitting on a bench, wondering whether Ken, my boss, is going to hit safely. Nothing evokes the nature of the USA more precisely; the competitiveness; the good-natured shouting; the prospect of beer. It wasn’t a prior reason for disrupting my London life but it became one. Retrospectively.
Bat and ball in Elysian Fields.
How interesting... you love baseball. Here I am a 2nd generation American and I have no interest in it at all. My brothers played Little League baseball, and the World Series was a big thing in our house when I was growing up. The whole fascination with sports seemed to pass me right by. I'm glad you found it so enjoyable.
ReplyDeleterobin andrea: Do you like ballet? Baseball offers many resonances. One of its great attractions is that the fielding is just as delightful to watch as the pitching and the batting. Graceful, magical and muscular. And oh, the cunning joy of a double play: providing your team is in the field.
ReplyDeleteRoderick-- I like music and dancing. I like hiking and planting flowers. I like watching the sky, looking for ephemeral beauty wherever I can find it. I like blogging for all the wonderful kind smart intriguing and good people I have virtually met.
Deleterobin andrea: Thoughts are the most ephemeral of all things. Imagination allows us a full range - from beautiful to downright evil. Best of all we are not dependent on things that exist or have existed. The subject matter may be abstract (eg, Cheerfulness at the supermarket checkout from a purchase yet to be made) or unlikely (eg, DT experiences a Damascene Moment and becomes a charity worker). What tends to get forgotten is humour (eg,We imagine we meet someone on the street walking towards us; a yard away with a collision imminent we feint to the right and so does the other walker; same thing to the left. The other walker, a gorgeous man/women, depending on our gender, says, "Why don't we join hands and tango?" We both laugh.)
DeleteThe world need not be taken for what it is. We may improve on it. And it's free.
I grew up on a dead-end street studded with Victorian structures all made into 'ups and downs' homes as we called them. There somewhere near 85 school age kids on our little block. Baseball, there was in the street and a contact sport, with so many playing. I'm loving your description and yes, the smack into a glove(if you were luck enough to have a glove) was a special memory. When we moved, games were much more civilized in a field with bases and actual teams, but not near as much fun, and it was softball, again not nearly as dangerous, car crunching, or safety dodging as hard-rocket baseball.
ReplyDeleteSandi: Baseball was one of several reasons why I wanted to live in the USA. I knew nothing of its rules and yet something appealed from the various short clips I'd seen on UK TV and in the movies. I bought my glove within a month or so of moving from the YMCA into an apartment (when my family joined me) and played with neighbourhood kids on a nearby football field. I should add they regarded me as something of a hero; the Beatles were still together and I was born in a county adjacent to the one they were born in.
DeleteThat year I saw the opening game of the Pittsburgh Pirates' season, freezing cold in the bleachers at the old Forbes Field stadium. Later I was to irritate many US residents (mainly women I fear) showing off my copious statistical knowledge of the sport. The women wanted me to talk about the British royal family about which I knew absolutely zilch.