Another Special Memory

        I've loved the game of baseball for as long as I can remember. Playing it. Watching it. Reading about it. Studying it. Talking about it. It's been a lifelong obsession.

        I take long walks in the early hours on these late spring mornings of 2016. They are not only time for exercise, they're time for thought and reflection.

        Lately those thoughts have been repeatedly drifting to the time I played organized baseball. That time was solely in my youth, up through the age of 17. The passion I had for the game was ever present back then, but athletically I never qualified as a great player. In fact I was nowhere near close, an average ballplayer at best, with flashes of good performances mixed in with many strikeouts and errors along the way.

        One moment in particular from my playing days continues to frequent my mind lately. It's a moment that actually occurred during a inter squad practice game. I was 16 or 17 at the time and in this particular contest, I was playing center field.

        I remember I was shaded a bit to the right field side of center so I could get a better visual angle of the pitcher/batter confrontation. I don't recall the pitcher's name, but the hitter was my teammate Steve. He was known to be a good hitter and I was on my toes out there in center field as a result.

        The memory of the sound made when bat met ball that particular moment is still vivid in my mind. That sound helped me immediately recognize that Steve's blast was headed to the deep left center portion of the outfield. I remember doubting I could get there before it fell to the grass. I remember thinking that wouldn't stop me from trying.

         I recall watching the ball initially come off the bat but then intentionally taking my eyes off it and running as fast as I could toward the spot I felt the ball was headed, glancing up in mid stride a couple of times as I continued to make my way across the outfield grass while trying to get to the spot where the ball would land.

        Gravity was pulling the baseball toward its destination on the deep left center grass while I was closing in, running at full speed, trying to stop it from hitting the ground. As the path of the ball came within 2-3 seconds of crossing my own, I realized for the first time I had a legitimate chance to catch it.

        Just before our paths collided, I raised my left arm as high as I could above and behind my right shoulder. I stretched that limb as far back and above my head as it could go and just after I jumped to get even higher, I heard the thump of ball meeting leather.

        That baseball landed in my glove. While it wasn't a spectacular catch that saw me dive across the grass or anything of the sort, it was in fact a good defensive play.

        Immediately after hearing that thump I brought my arm down and looked in my mitt to verify what I had just heard, felt, and seen. I had just stunned myself. I had caught a fly ball, covering more ground during a ball's flight than I had ever covered before. I was standing in the outfield on a baseball diamond in Aurora, Illinois. The air was warm, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and there were puffy clouds dotting the sky. I was breathing heavily from sprinting. I was now holding a baseball. I was smiling.

        Upon conclusion of the inning I ran back to the dugout where I encountered my teammate Steve. He too was smiling. 'Nice catch!' he said to me. That most simple of compliments. This most simple of memories. They are both like a treasure full of gold to me.

        I'll be 49 years old come this October. I can't really run at all these days, as my knees have been hobbled by osteoarthritis. I miss being able to run. I miss it terribly.

        I'm lucky though. When my mind starts to spiral into feelings of sadness and frustration that osteoarthritis has brought to my life, more times than not I'm able to counteract those negatives with thoughts of a moment in time. A moment in time in which I ran, with healthy and youthful knees, with every ounce of energy I had, and ended up catching a baseball on a hot summer day.

        I may never be able to run again. I really don't know what the future will bring when it comes to the state of my knees. Regardless of how the rest of my days play out in that regard, I hope I'll always be able to draw comfort and happiness from that day I ran across the outfield in pursuit of a white sphere. I'm pretty sure that smile I mentioned earlier will revisit me, each and every time I think about catching that baseball.