THE BALLPLAYER *

Time creates a legend. Baseball creates a legend in time. A legend is something too extraordinary to be contained, too amazing to be grasped. Something great attainable only through story. There exists a natural disconnect between gods and men. You may see them with your eyes, hear them speak. Watch their ever graceful imperfect waltz on the diamond. Yet they remain just a painting…a statue. The stroke of a brush, a name in lights, an idea. They are everywhere though foreign, witnessed but not touched, common but untraceable. They pop into modern culture like a train, here then gone before recognized. Fifty steps away into another time. They exist only on the field confined to the laws of baseball, a separate gravity. Then once past the holy ninth, they dematerialize to dust and scatter down the avenue as the park sits empty. To reemerge on the back of a wayward gust and rebuilt in time solely for your anxious stare. They walk the streets like dustmen, emerge from shadows as kings. And become sanctified into an untouchable sainthood by the masses. Yet remain no more lively than a photograph.