Hustle
Cairn: Self-Discipline; Web: Play, Fathers, Sports, Generations
I can still hear my father’s voice whenever I hit a hard grounder. “Dig! Dig! Dig! Dig! Dig!” Hands on his knees, barking it out like a mantra to the baseball gods. Out of the batters box my head was down as I sat into my legs and I’d trace that baseline now plowed up by churning feet and I didn’t give a damn where that ball was — still skipping across that yellow sand, in the fielder’s glove with fingers seeking laces, or in the air headed toward first. I just dug. I hustled.
I wasn’t great at baseball. I was too weak to hit well, too weak to throw well. But, damn it, I could hustle. It was the only thing that made me decent. In the field, if I was playing left, I could bust it to back up a play at third. In right, you’d bet your ass I’d be behind first waiting for that overthrow. In center, I’d bust it to wherever the hell I needed to be, right up on short or second at the end of the play.
And I lived for the basepaths: legs twitching at the ready like a racehorse in the stall and then the open air snap of batter contact and I read the ball and it was either head down and get to the bag or look up at coach at third, read him, trust him, get to where he told me to be. Don’t look at the ball. Don’t think. Just hustle. Then read the third baseman. Read the catcher. Slide outside. Dive. Get to that base anywhich way you needed to. Leave your feel. Get dirty. Dig. Hustle. And all the while, I heard that voice still and quiet in my mind even as the rush of sound buffeted my ears from outside: the wind, the cheers, the leathery thud of ball in mit, the scraping grate of a slide. But within: Dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig.
But that feels like so long ago.
Maybe I’ve lost the hustle. Or, maybe, I just don’t know where I am. Nobody went out before the game to drop the lines in cascading flows of chalk to tell me where to run. Nobody popped the bags in their sockets and rocked them back and forth to make sure they sat deep in the pipes so that I didn’t get hurt. They don’t let fathers do that in the real world.
But my father did a damn good job with what he had: a ballfield and a boy who didn’t know who he was. And now I’m here, wherever that is. I think I’m on base. I must be: steady job, married, three kids. I have to be. On first? Second? Taking a lead off of one or the other? I haven’t been picked off yet. I know that. I’m not dumb enough for that. I see my kids at least. They’re waiting to step into the batter’s box. So I can’t get picked off. I can’t take the bat out of their hands. But I see them there, waiting. So I know I’m on base — somewhere out here. But I feel like I’m not moving.
Maybe I’m just waiting for the pitch. Maybe that’s it. I need God, fate, the universe, to throw a pitch. And I need someone to put the ball in play. Or do I need the pitch to hit me? But I’m on the bases! Or, damn it, am I in the batter’s box too?!
All I know is that I need to get back to hustle. I need to get back to digging it. I need to churn up that yellow sand in coved little waves that keel off my heels and I need to feel that deep, heaving burn in my chest from that desperate sprint to safety. I am not good enough to hit the homer and jog the bases. I need to hit that grounder hard toward the hole, drop my head, and bust my ass and if I need to, dive recklessly into whatever base I’m headed toward. Do whatever it takes to get to the next bag.
And I can. I can dig. I can hustle. Because someone taught me to.
