His son is old enough to walk to soccer practice on his own now, and he comes later as Dad with water for his son and a book for himself. Though just after dinner, it’s nearly dark, full-on fall, and the first cold evening, the weather retreating out the forties after the sun has already given up for the day. The heavy stream of traffic along the field cuts itself back into bits with head- and taillights, the cars making the early dark darker. He questions everyone’s lax outerwear choices. He arrives at practice and sees his son’s team mostly goofing around in the field’s opposite corner. Half of the boys roll on the turf; the others half-listen to the volunteer coach try to explain a drill.
Many teams practice each night, and neighborhood kids not signed up for anything come out of apartment high rises to fill in the edges. The field alive with every kind of ball, he has to watch his head. He cuts around one practice and, apparently, through another, aiming for the padded wall along the far perimeter next to his son’s team where he can read out the hour without looking up. On his right, the side he uses to throw and kick, he notices some young girls practicing fast-pitch softball. Very fast pitch. One of them wears leggings and a giant sweatshirt, the other shorts, socks that give out just before the knee, and an even more voluminous sweatshirt. They seem oblivious to the cold. The word that comes to mind to describe their ponytails is severe. Hair grown long because that’s what girls are supposed to do, but probably pulled back each morning, triple-loop tied without looking. He sees no obvious parents for them. Their fathers must be off buying sleeves of hair bands from Walgreens and CVS.
He looks back. His son shoots at an open goal. The kick goes wide, and he fakes tragedy, deliberately blowing a somersault to end up on his back. A teammate sits laughing on his chest.
These girls are good. Huge windups, accelerating around and releasing at the bottom, their arms all about recruiting mechanical advantage. He has never seen anyone throw like that, not this young, not up close. The planet barely gets to pull on the balls before they reach the catchers’ gloves. Yes, catchers, two of them in full protection, also obviously serious. The gear must be permanently borrowed or owned, one of the two or three decent closets in their apartments conscripted for sports, the hall bathtub surrendered to the itinerant suitcases. He thinks to himself, still standing there, kids scrimmaging around him, that the softball season is a ways off, which means any reward from these throws in the cold is remote. At best. Women’s softball is a bigger thing now, sure, but still. They could all be elsewhere on a Thursday night, double-tapping on Instagrams of friends and their dogs or taking photos of themselves in mirrors with perfected looks of boredom or whatever fifteen-year-olds do when not doing things like this. How have they converted play — it’s a nice day let’s just get outside, maybe toss the ball in the park for a while — into work, into deliberate practice, repetition until the body perfects the motion and does the remembering on its own? How did they begin wanting to get better?
How did he do it? He remembers shooting baskets in a neighbor’s driveway by himself until the corner streetlight bloomed and he had to guess at the goal in the dark. The same shot again and again, not always better each time, but finding something in the last to put up another. The hand looking for, wanting, the feel of the ball. The impulse to stop having to come from something outside himself (night, dinner, a yell from across the street to come in it’s getting late). His parents encouraged him, yes — always in the seats at his games and concerts and competitions — but they were Good Midwesterners, not the kind of folks to ride their kids or the refs. Maybe his older brother, who needed someone out on the court to beat, a stone to sharpen his edges on. He had learned how to be hard enough, but, he’s thinking it through just now, when his brother left town to play for college teams, he just as easily could have let all the balls in the house go flat. Maybe he had the desire in him somewhere that was somehow lit by the games themselves, by play.
He considers going back home to get his daughter, much younger than these girls but old enough, he thinks, to see what’s going on here. To get it. But she’s probably in her room in a book, which is fine, don’t get him wrong. And it’s cold. Besides, she still doesn’t seem that curious about what her body can do. He decides against the fight needed to get her outside tonight.
When he was young, his son’s age, he believed he could run as fast as he wanted. He tells himself that when the weather warms he will take his daughter to the park and bring a ball and see what happens.
Soccer practice ends, and he waves to the team breaking back up into its parts. His son runs over to him carrying his jacket, and slips his hand into the one not holding the book. It feels cold but alive, like a new idea. They talk about Minecraft, or something like that, as they walk home. Neither he nor his son notices the pop of balls in gloves. Alone on the field, the girls pitch and catch, again and again.