Where next shot will land
On the same day that the nation was watching video of kids and parents reacting to a fusillade of bullets being fired a few steps from a youth baseball game in North Charleston, S.C., Facebook reminded me that it was the 12th anniversary of me posting a video clip of similar duration that showed my son hitting a game-winning RBI on the big field at National Little League in Albany’s beautiful Pine Hills.
In case you haven’t seen the first video — shot by a parent from almost the same angle as my April 2010 footage — from Monday’s incident at Pepperhill Park, the first sign of trouble is the catcher suddenly abandoning his post and throwing off his mask as if he’s on the lookout for a pop fly — but instead of looking up, he sprints down the first-base line. The batter follows him at high speed. In the background, the third base coach drops to the ground and gestures for the kids to do the same. The chatter of bullets goes on and on, as if someone was whacking a piece of metal with a hammer, counterpoint to the screams of children and parents.
The police, who were on the scene in less than a minute, found several handguns abandoned and spent shell casings to go with the bullet holes in parked cars. It’s a miracle that no one appears to have been wounded in what the local police believe was yet another case of a dispute that escalated between two groups that were known to one another. Law enforcement offered a $10,000 reward for the arrest — not necessarily the conviction — of anyone involved in the melee.
My son, who through some strange speeding-up of time is now on the verge of graduating from college, started playing baseball at National Little League when he was tiny. By the time he aged out seven years later, he was no longer so small. While parents can’t and probably shouldn’t know everything that happens to their small children, my very strong impression is that for that stretch of time, National was the place where — outside of the four walls of our house a few blocks away — he felt safest. Where he was surrounded by people large and small who had his best interests at heart, and who were committed to the idea that if you showed up in the morning and mowed the field, laid down the lines and fired up the fryer for mozzarella sticks, a good day would be had by all.
This is, of course, a miniature version of the society we’re trying to leave behind for our children and the generations that come next — one in which we’re expected to follow certain rules of conduct, or face being asked to please find another league to play in.
What I’m talking about is not some kind of celebration of the sacred church of baseball. There are playgrounds, basketball
courts and skate parks all over this great land that surely serve as similar safe spaces for young people. Many of them have been hemmed in by gun violence down through the years, alongside more commercial spaces like malls, movie theaters and concert venues.
It’s not as if politicians in South Carolina didn’t bring up the plenitude of guns as a contributing factor to the gunfire at Pepperhill Park. Local reports included interviews with Democratic politicians talking about universal background checks, and Republicans proposing stiffer penalties for illegal firearms possession. We can be fairly confident that such cross-purposes talk will result in precisely zero legislative action. As a nation, we’ve managed to countenance far worse without providing more than lip service to the toll, and thoughts ‘n’ prayers for the victims and their families. (South Carolina was also the site of an Easter weekend mall shooting prompted by another dispute-between-two-groups that left 15 injured, nine of them by gunfire.)
Since my son was small, I’ve operated on the notion that every day your child feels safe and secure in the world is another small piece of armor you’re forging against what the world will ultimately hit them with, to a greater or lesser extent. Safe places remain bastions of security in your memory. I’m sure you have them from childhood, and if you’re lucky from your grown-up years as well.
I’m sure many of the parents of Pepperhill Park felt the same way about that field before the shooting started.
They won’t feel that way any longer. The park is now yet another place ruled by the possibility of gunfire. “I felt completely helpless,” Lori Ferguson, whose son was on the pitcher’s mound, told a local TV reporter. Speaking as someone who has seen a lot of line drives hit at my son when he’s pitching, I can’t imagine the prospect of seeing him exposed in that far more lethal way.
As the class of 2022 prepares to head out into the world, this nation needs to pay more attention to the many places where they’ll find themselves in peril due to this nation’s deadly allegiance to gun culture: the playing field, the shopping center, the church, the street side bar. How many more will be bloodied and defiled this summer, and the next, and the next?