FIELD OF DREAMS
(to Alan Bituin)

Q: What is the most precious sport?
A: Baseball, being played in a diamond.

Baseball is my most favorite sport. But life could have been better if I were not baseball's least favorite person.

The distant past backs me up. When I was a kid and playing baseball in the Philippines I hurt somebody real bad. I was trying out for a slot in my Grade School's Afternoon Session All-Stars when the incident took place. I remember vividly. I was at the plate, popping my fingers and knocking the dirt off my sneakers with the bat, limbering, focusing, when a surge of energy came into my being and drilled me to crunch anything that was round. My bat knew the shape but I knew the pitcher's drill - he always threw a strike fastball for his first pitch. Thus when it came I swung and hit the ball with all the force coming from my legs and upper body and all that was damn gadabout. The ball flew over the 2nd baseman's outreached arm and while sprinting towards first, with an exagerrated o for a mouth, I knew I had a good shot at double. But even in my focus while doing the first 90 feet I noticed that something was wrong. Everyone on the field but me was rushing towards the homeplate. I looked back and saw a commotion. I joined the fray. In the spectators' stand behind home plate lay my beloved classmate Evelyn. She was holding her face. It was covered with blood.

It must be the energy. Aside from the ball my bat searched for another round figure. Outcome, after I crunched the pitched ball I threw my bat indiscriminately. It hit E's face. It was a beautiful and very round face.

My baseball career was over way before it started. The school banned me from playing the sport - which was not necessary as that act of imprudence (and negligence) was a monkey that did not leave my (now aching) back and out of which I vowed not to touch a baseball bat ever again. Goes to show that that stigma had the character of a baseball bat; narrow in size but broad in killing one's dream (like Evelyn? who always wanted to become The Face?).

I could have been history's Alex Rodriguez, the world's highest paid athlete after signing 252 million to play for the Texas Rangers some years ago. (The story behind the mind boggling figure stands as rich as the figure. No, Alex's agent did not pluck the amount from out of Texas' polluted air but, hear this, was based on then current record holder of the highest contract ever signed. Alonzo Mourning, signed to play for the Miami Heat, had a 126 million contract and Alex's agent must have thought, Hmmm, Alex, my boy, it is not enough that we top that, we might as well double that!)

There were 2 things why I could not have been history's original Alex Rodriguez. First, the Grade School stigma. Second, believe me please, I hate to be a millionaire; that would have been the real stigma.

The great short story writer John Cheever said that to be an American and not playing baseball is like being a Polynesian and not knowing how to swim. I believe him. Baseball is very much a part of the American psyche, the sport that represents the very facbric of Americana, along the likes of the following in their respective fields: a hamburger patty or pop soda, a David Lynch movie, a Frank Lloyd Wright edifice, a native New Yorker, a San Francisco neighborhood, a Rogers and Hammerstein musical, a Bruce Springsteen song, or why go far, a John Cheever short story. But of course like all truths (save The Absolute One), it has its exception: my American friend James Rose who bitches at my invitation to watch a baseball game, "National pastime, my ass!"

Baseball's reqs could have found everything in my solid possession. Yes, during my prime. In Grade 6 I run the 100 m dash at 11.55 seconds, running on empty, wearing worn out sneakers on track that had never seen good days. I had a sharp eye: from a distance of a mile I can find somebody cute. (Chipper Jones of the Atlanta Braves said he can tell the kind of pitch from the way the seams - the balls stitches - appear to him while being thrown. For example, if it they were a mere "dot", it had to be a fastball. Barry Bonds had it differently: the way the pitcher shows his hand before the pitch tells the story. Me? I just imagine the ball as big as a bandehado.) I had the genes, too. Two of my cousins played for the National Team (Blu Boys) and all the schools I attended - all the way up to college - had good baseball programs. Besides, baseball was a good Filipino sport's prototype.

Years ago, while on a plane ride to someplace, I sat beside a thirtyish Cuban who talked to me without intro -

"You a Filipino?"
"Yes, you have a problem with us?"
"No, not really."
"Good. Good for me."
"Actually, I had been to the Philippines."
"Oh yeah? You're trying to assassinate our president?"
"Ha-ha. No, I was a kid then, we went to play Little League Baseball at IRRI."
"Oh cool. I'm sure you lost."
"But of course. We were 12 years olds supposedly playing our peers. But man, if you pitched an 80 mph pitch, you can't be 12 years old."
"Oh cool. You know man, I think, with our baby-faces, you must have played with our Little Leaguers fathers, man. Har-har, Cuba should have known better, man."
"Yeah, man, Cuba should have known better."
---------
POSTSCRIPT:

Dear Alan Bituin,

Last weekend I went to Jupiter, Fl to watch the Grapefruit League featuring the Florida Marlins vs. the St. Louis Cardinals for their spring training and experienced firsthand what had been known as the great Midwest Spring Rite which, national pastime my ass, included watching the Cards play spring ball. Prior to their 1st game I tried my hand at the batting cage. After oh so many years I picked up a bat again. I was inside that batting cage, net and all, looking and lusting at that Louisville Slugger bat like a long lost lover but with the spectators of all ages and sexes and races including a very cutie whom I spotted from a mile away watching me, I felt awkward and emotionally vulnerable. I tried to focus my attention to the pitching machine - a lobster that threw a standard fastball at 45 mph. Child of a chicken. In our Tagalog freaking lingo, sisiw. I saw the first pitch. I knew the drill. I did not swing. Second pitch, I swung. All air. Third, fourth, fifth pitches. Air, air, air. The distance between my bat and the ball, on all occassions, were probably a foot, give and take a few inches. I heard people laughing like I had never heard people laughed as loud before.

I am not Alex Rodriguez. Perish the thought. History was right, I will never be a millionaire by being the one person I wanted to be: a baseball player.

But then, as far as age goes, I never tell it, never give it away. Wherefore unlike you in that respect, my dear Alan Bituin, I never lie.

I saluted at Albert Pujols and did the thumbs up with Scott Rolen up close when I saw them, and had the Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria sign my baseball and 3rd baseman Mike Lowell, my program. But I had you, Alan Bituin, in my small mind. No, I could not have been Alex Rodriguez. No way. Instead, I could have been you. In fact, that very moment I was you, Alan Bituin. Or Alang Bituin.

No Star.