Home Game, Peniel Park
Home Game, Peniel Park
—after Genesis 32
By Kevin Seidel
The asphalt driveway sloping up out to center,
garage door our backstop, first base a low branch of pine,
third a buzzing thicket of bottle-brush, all other
positions left open in that narrow field
where we hit everything except baseballs—
cracked white whiffle balls, tennis balls,
crumpled newspaper wrapped in masking tape.
Three years older, I kept the game
close, kept you on the verge of tears,
never let you win.
But after my short baseball career was finished,
you in college still playing, stirring up rumors
of scouts, I came to watch
and saw an old man with a cigar
unlit, already smoked, chewed down
to a nub he spun between his teeth
fling open a tattered lawn chair
grin at the gathering crowd
and sit just behind the backstop fence
a shade right of home plate.
Some power went out from him
through the stands. I felt it
run through me in jagged lines—
an ascending in arcs crackling
air current of electricity
that surged and rose up
from the crowd—the anticipation
of greatness, sparked by that old man
who seemed more than scout
a patriarch of the game
its ancient ways visible
in the slope of his shoulder
almost legible in the lines of his face.
Generations of players
passed before his eyes.
You came up to bat in the first inning.
I remember the stillness
before the second pitch. Then
the whir, crack, long finish
of your swing as quiet
we watched the ball disappear
over the roofline of houses
beyond the left field fence.
Applause broke from the crowd,
as you rounded first base,
and left me in tears irrepressibly happy,
proud, grateful after years of pain and practice
you’d finally supplanted me in this game,
that you were the one to bear its blessing.
The old scout saw what he came for, stood,
clapped shut his chair, and left muttering
something only audible at distance,
a wrinkle of laughter around his right eye.
Every field a trace of Peniel park
where our boys are learning now
to catch and throw, stay down
on grounder after grounder,
move under fly ball after fly ball,
know the rhythms of the game,
its languor and lightning both.
We talk most about hitting.
Drive your hip when you swing,
we say, that’s where your power comes from.
Yours? We should know better,
leading them toward this dangerous
something no technique controls,
no repetition summons. All practices
private devotion, all games
a combustible liturgy, a calling out
to a power that playing keeps
just beyond our grasp, a power that leaves us
limping our ordinary lives, tender
as we watch our boys stand lithe and alone,
poised in the batter’s box, waiting.
Kevin Seidel teaches literature at a Christian peace and justice school called Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. This is his first published poem.
Elliot Lin is a college student who spends their free time musing about sports and how they shape or reflect identity. You can find their other baseball-related illustrations here, or on Twitter @hxvphaestion and Tumblr.
The Twin Bill is a nonprofit organization with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. You can support The Twin Bill by donating here.