I’ll never get used to an empty ballfield on a summer’s evening in the metro-east

It’s a summer evening and I’ll ride my bike past empty baseball and softball fields.

Where are youth baseball teams and players?

Where’s the concession stand?

Where’s the line of lawn chairs with parents and grandparents?

I’m hoping there are Little League games being played somewhere. But there are a lot of empty ballfields on summer evenings.

I hear the reasons. Fewer kids. More select teams and leagues. Kids focus on one sport and seasons overlap. Baseball is too slow and predictable, by today’s standards. Competition for time, attention.

I’ll drive by an empty ballfield and remember when there were not enough fields for all the local teams to practice and play games.

The kid wearing black, dress socks with his baseball uniform and P.F. Flyers tennis shoes played right field.

Usually, a husky kid was the catcher.

The team’s best player was the pitcher. He batted third and played shortstop when not pitching. He had big brothers and sisters.

Every team had a mix of good and average players. There were kids who were not skilled baseball players. Their parents made them play baseball. We understood.

Usually, the team with the best pitcher won the most games. But only if he had a catcher who could catch the ball. A strike was a strike only if the catcher caught it.

Every kid on the team played a few innings, every game, and every kid got a snack after the game.

No one argued with the umpire, who was usually a dad or big brother. The strike zone was as wide as your parent’s old Buick station wagon with wooden side panels.

Swing away.

Not up there to walk, batta, batta.

Kids on the bench had an important role – chase down foul balls in the parking lot and return them to the umpire.

That was youth baseball, as I remember it.

I played all my youth baseball at the old St. Philip’s Catholic Grade School in East St. Louis. Our school was large enough to have its own summer baseball leagues. Our school grounds were large enough for three baseball fields and several softball fields. It was our own Khoury League, for Catholic school kids.

Every team had at least one child from the school’s special education class, and he or she played every game, too.

It wasn’t a rule.

It was just right.

There was no draft, or selection process. Teams were formed based on where a family lived. That encouraged parents to carpool.

A neighborhood man named John Bowen, who had an intellectual disability, umpired the bases on Diamond 3 games. No one protested or asked for a replay. We worried when John wasn’t at a game.

Girls played in school softball leagues every evening, too. Same as boys baseball. Every girl played, every game.

We wore flannel uniforms that held the heat and itching well. The team sponsor’s name was printed on the front. Wurth’s Dairy. Veteran’s Bridge. Petroff Towing. Sam’s Barbecue. French Village Drive-in.

I love baseball today because I played little league baseball.

One summer evening, I stopped and got off my bike. It was just me, a backstop and an empty, wooden bench on a field. No bored kid in right field drawing with his finger in the dirt. No “batta, batta” in harmonious chatter. No dog running onto the field to stop play.

I get it. The world changes, for better and worse. We evolve. Or regress. I’ve learned to move on but with one eye always on the rearview mirror. I’ll never get used to empty ballfields on summer evenings.