voice is far off, like a vendor two sections away extolling beer.
“Open up your senses!” I shout. “I’ve come fifteen hundred miles to drag you to a baseball game. Stretch the skin back from your eyes! Take in everything ! Look at Yaz there in the on-deck circle. Look at the angle he holds his bat. There isn’t another player in the majors can duplicate that stance. Look at that left-field fence, half as high as the sky. The Green Monster. Think of the men who patrol that field, the shadow of that giant behind them, dwarfing them.” It is ironic, I think, that the place chosen for me to bring Salinger has no left-field bleachers, while in my own park I have only a left-field bleacher.
“This one idea has run like a colored thread through all my thoughts for all these months. ‘Ease his pain. Ease his pain.’ I have repeated it ten thousand times, in my dreams, in my fantasies, to my wife, to my daughter, to myself as I drove a tractor over my black fields. Well, I’m doing what I can. Look! Look at the yellow neon running up the foul poles. You won’t see that anywhere else in the majors. Watch the players, white against green like froth on waves of ocean. Look around at the fans, count their warts just as they count ours; look at them waddle and stuff their faces and cheer with their mouths full. We’re not just ordinary people, we’re a congregation. Baseball is a ceremony, a ritual, as surely as sacrificing a goat beneath a full moon is a ritual. The only difference is that most of us realize that it is a game. Good writing is a ritual, I’ve been told, so many words or so many pages a day. You must know that …”
The people around us have pretty well dismissed us as eccentrics of some kind, perhaps drunks. Except for an occasional “Shhhh,” they have turned their attention back to the game. Someone doubles, tries to stretch it. I don’t watch the play at third but keep my eyes on the pitcher as he scuttles over behind third base to back up the play.
“I’ve thought about you and baseball,” I go on. “I haven’t thought about much else for months. What does he have in common with a baseball player? I ask myself. He dispenses joy, I answer. He has fans—hundreds of thousands of them. Almost every North American boy has played baseball, so we know what has been accomplished, are able to appreciate it when we see someone like Freddy Patek or Rick Burleson scoot like a motorcycle after a grounder, capture it, and make the long impossible throw to first. I know I can’t duplicate their feats, and I applaud them for being able to do what they do. I’d like to meet them, shake their hands, tell them how I appreciate their ability. With you it is the same. You’ve captured the experience of growing up in America, the same way Freddy Patek corners a ground ball. The Catcher in the Rye is the definitive novel of a young man’s growing pains, of growing up in pain. Growing up is a ritual—more deadly than religion, more complicated than baseball, for there seem to be no rules. Everything is experienced for the first time. But baseball can soothe even those pains, for it is stable and permanent, steady as a grandfather dozing in a wicker chair on a verandah.
“Open up your senses, Jerry. Smell the life all around you, touch it, taste it, hear it. You may not get a chance for another twenty-five years.”
Salinger takes a bite of his hot dog, cups his hand to catch a fleck of green relish as it falls.
“Watch the game,” he says, a half-smile on his face.
And I think of where we are, banked around this little green acreage. The year might be 1900 or 1920 or 1979, for all the field itself has changed. Here the sense of urgency that governs most lives is pushed to one side like junk mail shoved to the back of a desk. We can take time out from the game almost as if we were participants, and run toward the umpire as a play ends, holding up our hands in the recognized signal for calling
“Open up your senses!” I shout. “I’ve come fifteen hundred miles to drag you to a baseball game. Stretch the skin back from your eyes! Take in everything ! Look at Yaz there in the on-deck circle. Look at the angle he holds his bat. There isn’t another player in the majors can duplicate that stance. Look at that left-field fence, half as high as the sky. The Green Monster. Think of the men who patrol that field, the shadow of that giant behind them, dwarfing them.” It is ironic, I think, that the place chosen for me to bring Salinger has no left-field bleachers, while in my own park I have only a left-field bleacher.
“This one idea has run like a colored thread through all my thoughts for all these months. ‘Ease his pain. Ease his pain.’ I have repeated it ten thousand times, in my dreams, in my fantasies, to my wife, to my daughter, to myself as I drove a tractor over my black fields. Well, I’m doing what I can. Look! Look at the yellow neon running up the foul poles. You won’t see that anywhere else in the majors. Watch the players, white against green like froth on waves of ocean. Look around at the fans, count their warts just as they count ours; look at them waddle and stuff their faces and cheer with their mouths full. We’re not just ordinary people, we’re a congregation. Baseball is a ceremony, a ritual, as surely as sacrificing a goat beneath a full moon is a ritual. The only difference is that most of us realize that it is a game. Good writing is a ritual, I’ve been told, so many words or so many pages a day. You must know that …”
The people around us have pretty well dismissed us as eccentrics of some kind, perhaps drunks. Except for an occasional “Shhhh,” they have turned their attention back to the game. Someone doubles, tries to stretch it. I don’t watch the play at third but keep my eyes on the pitcher as he scuttles over behind third base to back up the play.
“I’ve thought about you and baseball,” I go on. “I haven’t thought about much else for months. What does he have in common with a baseball player? I ask myself. He dispenses joy, I answer. He has fans—hundreds of thousands of them. Almost every North American boy has played baseball, so we know what has been accomplished, are able to appreciate it when we see someone like Freddy Patek or Rick Burleson scoot like a motorcycle after a grounder, capture it, and make the long impossible throw to first. I know I can’t duplicate their feats, and I applaud them for being able to do what they do. I’d like to meet them, shake their hands, tell them how I appreciate their ability. With you it is the same. You’ve captured the experience of growing up in America, the same way Freddy Patek corners a ground ball. The Catcher in the Rye is the definitive novel of a young man’s growing pains, of growing up in pain. Growing up is a ritual—more deadly than religion, more complicated than baseball, for there seem to be no rules. Everything is experienced for the first time. But baseball can soothe even those pains, for it is stable and permanent, steady as a grandfather dozing in a wicker chair on a verandah.
“Open up your senses, Jerry. Smell the life all around you, touch it, taste it, hear it. You may not get a chance for another twenty-five years.”
Salinger takes a bite of his hot dog, cups his hand to catch a fleck of green relish as it falls.
“Watch the game,” he says, a half-smile on his face.
And I think of where we are, banked around this little green acreage. The year might be 1900 or 1920 or 1979, for all the field itself has changed. Here the sense of urgency that governs most lives is pushed to one side like junk mail shoved to the back of a desk. We can take time out from the game almost as if we were participants, and run toward the umpire as a play ends, holding up our hands in the recognized signal for calling
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