After work, Frank drives over to where the softball field used to be – the field he was at during his last ORB session, the one where he first saw Marianne play ball.

Nostalgia, they call it. The desire to reconnect with one’s past.

The field isn’t there anymore. He vaguely remembers when they paved it over, made it into a parking lot to accommodate a little strip mall.

The strip mall is gone too, now – torn down to make way for a seemingly endless double-decked row of identical little apartments.

Who lives there now? Do they know they’re walking on what used to be Marianne’s softball field?

The only consistent thing is change, he thinks, and hates the thought because of what it’s done to him.

But there’s no such thing as a sacred softball field.

There’s a new park about a half mile up the road. Frank drives past; a softball field, green and shiny, with a new fence and new bases and new infield dirt sits lonely, unused. The only kids in the park are zipping up and down ramps on skateboards, a little ways away.

Frank parks, turns the car off, shakes his head.

Change….

He watches them for awhile. They fall down a lot. It looks painful.

I bet I could do that, he thinks, then catches himself.

You’re no kid anymore.

Probably fall down and break something. Those kids, they’re like rubber, they bounce back up and go again, almost like they’re trying to fall. Trying to test themselves. See how many times they can fall before they break.

Me, I’m half-broken already.

He can’t believe no one is playing ball.

What I wouldn’t give to be out there playing the outfield again, to be out there swinging a bat….

His old bat, the one he used through high school and even later on, playing the occasional neighborhood pickup game well into his 40s, is still in the garage.

I should dig that out, maybe call Mitch and a couple of the guys and….

He laughs at the thought.

Bunch of old men, acting like kids, probably can’t run twenty steps (although I did OK that night in Joliet when I went after that guy who stole the – well, whatever that thing was that he stole) but where’s the harm?

Then he thinks about the little souvenir bat he got at Wrigley Field back in 1991.

Never did find the damn thing.

He knows it’s around the house someplace.

You can’t spend your whole life wishing you were sixteen again.

No.

But you can remember what it was like.

Nice one Lex

Another excellent write...