Shagging Fungos

Believe it or not, when I was a kid this used to be one of my favorite things to do in the world. Just grab my mitt on a sunny summer's day and ride my bike down to the schoolyard, in hopes of finding some kind of game of 'work-up" or "three flies and you're up" where I could join in. And eventually enough kids would show up that we could have a "real" game (even if it was just teams of five or six), but until then...well, let's just say that there's nothing in the world that feels quite as good as the feeling of running down a well-hit fly ball and dramatically gathering into your glove at the last possible second -- just watch a dog fetch a tennis ball, and you'll have some small idea of the potential for joy.

And then as I grew older and started to play more Organized Ball, I discovered that there were actually coaches whose main job was to hit fly balls for developing players like me to catch. It's not quite the same as standing in at third base and fielding the two or three hundred ground balls a day that will eventually make fielding ground balls feel almost instinctive, or shagging in the outfield during Batting Practice, which lets you practice getting a good jump on the ball at the crack of the bat as well as catching every ball that is hit your way. But the personal attention is always a great gift, and a talented fungo hitter can make the baseball do just about anything they like.

And now I find myself riding past empty schoolyards and wondering where all the kids have gone, or resting in bed on a hot summer afternoon wishing I still had the ability to run down a long fly ball, or even play a decent game of Catch. And if I concentrate really hard, I can still remember in my body the feeling of loping over a grassy outfield, closing distance with every stride until at last I snatch the ball from the air with my glove at precisely the moment we both arrive at the exact same place. There's nothing like it in the world. Except maybe doing the exact same thing in an important game, and robbing your opponent of an extra-base hit....