No Crying in Baseball

What do Marilyn Monroe and Nicole Kidman have in common? Here’s a hint. “A kiss on the hand may be quite continental, but diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” Marilyn’s performance of these lyrics in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is iconic, while Nicole’s rendition in Moulin Rouge is as scintillating as the jewels she sings about. Yet there’s another kind of diamond calling to me these days: the baseball diamond

Two images from the past come to mind. The first originated in a weekly jaunt our family took to watch my dad play in a church softball league. We’d hop into the station wagon and head to one of the baseball diamonds scattered across Tonawanda and North Tonawanda, and while I don’t remember any championship rings, they sure did have a lot of fun.

My second diamond memory is a bit nightmarish. I worked as a playground and wading pool attendant for the recreation department, and one summer afternoon I got drafted when the scheduled umpire didn’t show up for a baseball game. I knew quite a bit about the game from my years watching my dad play, but calling balls and strikes on the field was a horrendous experience for a fifteen year old, especially when I lost count of how many pitches there had been. Never again!

Baseball has been called America’s Favorite Pastime, and fortunately my fledgling umpire experience didn’t ruin my appetite for the game. Since moving to northeast Ohio in 1990, I’ve faithfully followed the Cleveland Indians, from the days of Mike “Grover” Hargrove in the old Municipal Stadium to today’s team with Tito at the helm. The Tribe has had its ups and downs, but there’s nothing like hearing the words, “Play Ball,” on the corner of Carnegie and Ontario.

I also appreciate the recreational aspect of the game, running the gamut from a Wiffle Ball challenge in the back yard to a fast-pitch tourney at Brookside Park. I’ve been excited about the ASA Men’s 50-and-Over Fast-Pitch National Tournament here in Ashland this weekend, as well as the twenty-fifth annual Moose Softball Tournament. The diamonds of Ashland will be sparkling for sure.

As part of the baseball-flavored weekend, Ashland Main Street brought Madonna, Tom Hanks, and Geena Davis to the big, big screen last night for a Downtown Walk-in Movie. They starred in A League of Their Own, the story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), a real-life operation in existence from 1943 to 1954. It’s a fun movie, with memorable scenes and characters, and quite a few life lessons as well.

The most repeated line from the movie comes from manager Jimmy Dugan. After getting blasted by Jimmy for a mistake on the field, Evelyn begins to cry. Jimmy asks her: “Are you crying? There's no crying! There's no crying in baseball!”

In another scene, Dottie decides she’s going to quit the team to be with her husband who had returned from the war, so tries to leave quietly. Dugan, himself a washed-up former player, tells her: “Sneaking out like this, quitting, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Baseball is what gets inside you. It's what lights you up, you can't deny that.” Dottie answers: “It just got too hard.” Dugan responds wisely: “It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard . . . is what makes it great.”

What is it about baseball that makes it great, and that keeps us coming back for more? In A Field of Dreams, James Earl Jones (Terrence Mann) said it best: “They'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come, Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.”

This weekend, baseball is marking the time for our community. Pass the peanuts and Crackerjack, please, ‘cause there’s a diamond in my future. Batter up!