| Remembering Gastineau Field |
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| Written by Administrator |
| Wednesday, 22 July 2009 13:47 |
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By Peter Wallace For The News Along State Route 571 in New Carlisle, Ohio, sits a monument to timelessness. Gastineau Field is its name. Presently, and for the past seven years that I have known this place, it has been the home of my second childhood. Gastineau Field is a typical, small-town baseball field, but to many older ballplayers, this player included, it is a treasure. On a typical summer day, Gastineau Field almost glows with the green of the grass that covers its playing surface. A harsher brown, the infield dirt, outlines the infield, pitcher’s mound, and home plate area. The grittiness of the infield dirt almost demands that the majority of the action takes place there, for it is in this area that games are won or lost. The infield is the place where many of the players have acquired bruises and scrapes, all worn with honor, perhaps from a dive for a fleeting line drive hit, to a headlong slide into second by the base runner trying to get that extra base. On this infield dirt, hearts soar and dreams are shattered. But it is the grass around Gastineau Field that softens the harshness of the dirt areas and makes this place such a jog to our memories of younger days. After all, didn’t most men of my age spend many a summer day playing baseball at a neighbor’s yard, or at the local school field, running across the outfield grass in pursuit of a fly ball? Maybe the infield was all dirt or all grass, but that grass is the main part of the memory. After games, now and then, we sit on the grass and talk about the game. Sitting on the grass at Gastineau takes me back to those childhood days. The grass is soft and forgiving, unlike the dirt of the infield, and welcomes your tired body with coolness no beverage can replicate. The outfield fence at Gastineau is patterned much like any outfield fence at any other ballpark. There are numbers to tell you how far it is from home plate to either, left, center, or right field. But the numbers are only a part of the charm of Gastineau. Multiple signs adorn the outfield wall, advertising bat manufacturers, local insurance salesmen, and the league we play for, The Roy Hobbs League. I often look out at these signs before a game, and try to picture for what or whom they might have advertised for fifty years ago; maybe the local Studebaker dealership, or a grocery store, long since closed and forgotten. Beyond the outfield fence, old Elm, Maple, and Oak trees silently watch the evening’s game. If you listen closely, you can almost hear them comparing the great catch of a hard hit fly ball, just made in the left-center field gap, with a great catch made forty years ago in about the same place. Maybe it was just the wind that kicked up right then, but I thought I heard the Elm tree saying, “Are you kiddin’? That catch in ’69 was better ‘cause it saved the game for us!” Trees can be biased too. Like any small-town baseball field, Gastineau Field is a special place. Whether it’s the brown infield dirt, the close-cropped grass that surrounds the dirt, or the outfield wall, it’s not difficult to imagine players on that field. Like the game played on that field, the dimensions never change, the grass is always green, and on many a summer evening you can find boys or men, in tribute to their boyhood, playing a timeless game, in a timeless setting. Comments (0) |
| Last Updated on Friday, 18 September 2009 16:54 |
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