Happy Opening Day to all who celebrate

The smell awakens something in me, mowed grass on a sunny April afternoon.

I’ve known this feeling from my earliest days when red dirt scratching on cleat spikes was my comfort zone, when Big League Chew lived in my cubby hole in the dugout. When Sammy and Mark were chasing Roger’s 61 across the Indian summer, when Ken Griffey Jr’s swing was as smooth as melted ice cream, and when I would call out their names stepping into the batter’s box, which was really just a patch of grass next to an extra glove serving as home plate.

My father likes to tell a story about the longest home run in the history of baseball. Where he’s from up in Erwin, the CSX train passed through town as it headed east out of the mountains, and ran behind the left field fence of the ball field. Barry Hopson hit a homer that landed in passing train car to the wide-eyed wonder of all who were present — only God and a train-yard engineer know how far it traveled.

My dream was to hit a home run. Maybe it was the Geoff Moore and the Distance song or Mark and Sammy steroid-smacking balls into the ether: I knew to prove myself a man, I had to hit one out of Joy-Rutherford Field, run the bases as “Macho Man” by the Village People played, and get to keep the ball. But I was a solid pitcher with warning track power.

Once, when I was 10 playing for Scott’s Farms, the family-sponsored team coached by Doc Whitmore, we were up a run looking for a final out against Lenoir Empire Furniture when their bruiser, Adam Jones, came to the plate.

Adam turned on a fastball, it whipped into the blue sky, a frozen rope. I didn’t move my feet; I stuck my glove up, and “WHAM.” The ball stuck to it like it had a wad of gum on it. My hand stung, but being swarmed by my teammates was worth the pain. The umpire, Chuckie Hairston, said, “Keep that ball; don’t let Doc take it from you.” It’s the only game ball I ever got.

Doc died a few years back. I can still hear him calling me “Samson” when I would toe the rubber on the mound.

The Erwin Little League still plays on Main Street down by the train tracks. Joy-Rutherford Field, where I grew up in Johnson City, is now a senior center. I hate to see it go, it felt like a piece of myself grew up on that field with the dandelions that would invade the outfield and frustrate Tom Mattingly, the groundskeeper (and coach of Oakwood Homes).

But just up Bert Street are new ballfields where, this spring, teams will take the field (I don’t think they are named for local businesses anymore). Big League Chew bubbles will pop with baseball mitts, moms will tell dads to “Shut up, you’re embarrassing him,” and the smell of mowed outfield grass will awaken in our chests that old feeling.

Let’s play two.