The Gal of Summer

"I don't know if I like baseball. There's so much involved in the game, all the strategy and subtle little things that are hard to catch."

I'd think my own thoughts are accidentally spilling from my lips, but for the nasally New York accent. I turn around and see a little gray-haired guy in jeans and incongruous black loafers, kneeling on the concrete aisle next to the Yank's seat.

"You from New York?" he asks in a low, conspiratorial voice.

"Yeah. I wish I was there right now," says the Yank, with exaggerated gloom.

The little guy keeps up his quiet banter, and I'm guessing that he picked the Yank out during one of the big boy's broadcasts. I've witnessed moments like this before, when sports serves as a bridge between strangers. I harbor a secret hope that one side benefit of this endeavor will be to gin up that instant connectivity for myself. (After all, a girl has to relate, right?) Unbelievably, to me, anyway, by the bottom of the sixth, the Nats still have not scored a run. I turn to Bruce. "If it's a bad game, doesn't it seem like it should be going faster?" I ask. "It is going pretty fast," he says. "Really?" I reply. "It's been two hours, and there's still a third of the game left."

"The whole joint is asleep!" the Yank bellows.

In the ninth inning, I'm startled out of my semi-slumber when the Nats manage to load the bases. The Cardinals' manager huddles with the pitcher on the mound. Bruce tells me that after they confer, the manager will follow baseball tradition and hand the new pitcher the ball, pat him on the butt and jog off.

"Why the butt?" I ask.

"For good luck," he says.

"Why not the shoulder?"

He pauses a second. "I don't know."

The good luck pat doesn't work. Nats center fielder Marlon Byrd gets a clutch hit, and suddenly, incredibly, the score is tied at 4-4, and the game goes into a 10th inning. I'm starting to understand what Bruce meant when he said that in baseball, there's always reason for hope. But my optimism fizzles when the Nats make their third error of the game, giving away the winning run. I feel as if I've been jolted into action by the sound of a fire alarm only to be told someone pulled it by accident.