Heather Lende
Lessons from baseball
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Someone taped up signs urging everyone who didn't like the "Eco-Nazis" to attend all the meetings and fight for their rights. There was lots of talk of America, freedom, God and patriotism. I didn't go to any of the hearings. Neither did my husband. One of our friends did, and called the next day, in tears. Not because of strong feelings about how state land should be managed, but in frustration and disbelief at the way we were treating each other and the out-of-town state planners.
My resting heart rate leaps from 60 beats a minute to 110 just walking into a crowded hall with a microphone at one end. If I stay long enough to hear an old logger friend and an old environmentalist friend say hateful things to each other I can feel my stomach flip-flopping. Time hasn't built up my immunity to such feelings; rather I've gotten less resistant.
I simply cannot understand why everyone in Haines doesn't wake up in the morning, look out at the mountains and sea and shout "Thank you, God, for letting me live in such a place."
Now at the airport, I say hello to a meeting-weary state park official, who asks if it's really true that two kids from Haines are going to Harvard next year. I say yes, and we talk about how weird Haines is. It's hard to imagine that a town with a popular school board member who calls people "Enviro-Nazis" can send two students who were born and raised here to an Ivy League school. I assure him that Haines isn't really what he sees and hears at meetings. He looks doubtful.
Our state representative, Albert Kookesh, looking pale, tired, and ready to get out of Haines and never come back, tries not to make eye contact with a guy in camouflage, but it's no use. I hear snippets of their conversation "...taking away rights... locking up the valley ... vocal minority". A biologist with Fish & Game wears sunglasses, and a cap pulled low, no doubt hoping no one will recognize him. A cruise line lobbyist talks loudly about keeping government regulations out of the tour business. The plane lands and my daughter hops down the steps, we hug and laugh and she says it's great to be home.
That night we all sit in the stands at a Little League game, watching my son's team, the Pirates, play the Mariners. There are just two teams in the Haines Little League and they play each other every Thursday and Saturday. This is the first summer in 15 years that Haines boys have played hardball. Until now small children began with T-ball and graduated to slow-pitch softball. Baseball seems so fast, and dangerous. Mothers wonder out loud if it's safe. The bleachers are full of families, friends and neighbors of the Little Leaguers and their coaches. "Greenies" and right-wingers share the stands peacefully.
The uniforms and equipment are hand-me-downs from Juneau. My son's coach, Ann Marie Fossman, took one look at the donated pile of extra large jerseys and her 9-12 year old players and altered them herself, laying each one on top of a smaller shirt, cutting out the extra material and sewing the sides back together.
All dressed up for the game, our children look like boys from a different era. They seem much more American. They tuck in their shirts, obey the rules and hustle on and off the field. Above all they are earnest and happy. They do their best to shrug off a dropped ball, and can't conceal the joy of a hard hit. They remain good sports -- both winning and losing. The lessons learned on the field are much stronger than a lecture at the dinner table because they figure them out themselves, with their teammates, friends and parents watching. I feel like waving a flag and singing the Star Spangled Banner every time I see them whip the ball around the bases in the standard warm-up.
One appreciative fan says, "Isn't this is wonderful?" repeatedly. He's at every game and doesn't have any children on the either team. " It doesn't get any better than this," he'll announce out of the blue or "why would anyone want to go to big league game when they could be here?"
The crowd murmurs "it's O.K." or "good swing" when anyone strikes out, and applauds appreciatively when either team makes a nice play. There was one fan early on that seemed a tad aggressive, rattling the novice pitchers with a steady "hit the mitt kid, hit the mitt." One little boy shouted back "What do you think I'm trying to do?" and that pretty much was the end of that. A stranger watching a Haines Little League game would think this is the nicest town in the country.
There are people smarter than I, who have made wise analogies about baseball and community, baseball and democracy, baseball and the American Dream. The late Bartlett Giamatti, the Yale professor who became Commissioner of Major League Baseball, wrote "Baseball fulfills the promise America made to itself to cherish the individual while recognizing the overarching claims of the group." Which is why I choose baseball games over public hearings every chance I get.