Field of dreams

I’ll admit, there are plenty of strange sights just right now — things you might not ever have expected even six months ago.

Physically distanced people lined up outside of banks; fellow grocery shoppers decked out in surgical masks, gloves and showing a sparrow-like urgency to get as far away from you as they can.

But for me, one of the strangest is not the things that have stopped, but one that has gone on.

My daily foot travels take me on a semi-regular loop around St. John’s ball fields: Lion’s Park, the Edgar Hartery Ballfield, the small kid’s league field at Kelly’s Brook, St. Pat’s Ballfield — even the quirky, centre-of-a-city-block Bill Rahal Ball Park, where a masters’ league plays softball.

All of them are closed due to COVID-19. And all of them are fully maintained, as if a full-on baseball game might break out at any moment.

At Lion’s Park, the netting’s up to stop the long balls heading out into the parking lot, the grass on the infield and the outfield are manicured perfectly, and the sand and fine gravel of the base paths are rolled perfectly flat. The other morning, a groundskeeper was trimming low branches on trees behind the backstop.

But the gates onto the field aren’t just padlocked, several are chained shut and the chain is actually crimped in place.

At Edgar Hartery, the big mower is charging around the outfield, subduing, for now, the army of brilliant yellow dandelions. The morning air is full of the rich smell of cut wet grass, and everything, from the mound to the bleachers, is ready to go.

At Bill Rahal field, a city worker is lying on the ground, working from underneath to replace the boards on the bleachers, even though there’s not a fan in sight who’s going to need a place to sit anytime soon.

There are fresh tire tracks from hauling the smoothing bar along the base paths, and the paths are raked as flat as plaster on your wall.

It’s all a bit ethereal — even more ethereal than the mowers working so diligently around the playground equipment that no children are allowed to use.

Maybe it’s because I had kids in baseball many seasons ago; maybe it’s because I still linger by active ball fields for an inning or two, just like I sometimes drop in on house league hockey sometimes to smell arena air, buy fries and gravy, listen to the shouting and the occasional celebration of goals and saves made.

You might even catch me walking the foul line during a baseball game, outside the fence and bringing back the lost balls that have been dinged sideways into the lupins and alders.

The sound of the game, even the strange ping of aluminium bats, which I would never get used to, are a key piece of the seasonal symphony to me — like the shouts from the community soccer field at the end of my street, which I’m not hearing now, either.

It reminds me of that line from W.P. Kinsella’s novel, “Shoeless Joe,” which became the movie “Field of Dreams.” In it, an Iowa farmer hears voices that tell him to build a ball field that will lure the spirits of the 1919 Chicago White Sox to come and play. The words he hears?

“If you build it, they will come.”

Maybe, if you mow a field for long enough, if you make sure the baselines are smooth and the stands ready, maybe then, the players will eventually come, too.