Page 25 of The Show

Second, while I might be lying in the middle of a baseball field, I wasn’t drunk or passed out.

I was thinking. Because when I reallyreallyneeded to think, this is where I came.

This – the baseball field - is where I always felt my dad, more strongly than anywhere else, which probably had nothing to do with the fact we’d scattered his ashes here and everything to do with the hours and hours I spent down here as a kid with him.

Does it surprise you my parents had a full-size baseball field on their property?

It shouldn’t.

For my tenth birthday, all I’d wanted was a baseball party. I wanted to have all my friends from school and Little League come. Sometimes, when my cousins were over, before it was a baseball field, we’d head down to the regular field at the bottom of my parents property and mark it up – three bases, home plate and the mound.

It was one of the benefits of having a large family; there were always enough players for a game.

Anyway, that’s what I’d wanted for my birthday. A game.

The week before my birthday, I had to go and stay with my grandparents. I didn’t ask why because I loved visiting my grandparents, and sometimes I’d go there just to get away from a house full of annoying sisters where I could have time alone. It was amazing. My gramps and I would play pirates in the lagoon in their garden every evening when I’d get home from school. The week flew past, and my parents collected me the morning of my birthday and took me home to get ready.

It was as we were approaching our house I felt that something wasn’t quite right. As we drove past the entrance and continued down the lane, I knew it for certain. My dad pulled the car up in front of some huge wooden gates covered in balloons that definitely hadn’t been there the week before – the gates or the balloons. My mom turned round from the front seat and smiled,

“Happy Birthday, Sweetheart.”

I looked at my dad in the rear-view mirror to see him wink at me as the gates creaked from their newness and swung open. “Happy Birthday, kiddo.”

My belly had started gurgling in excitement. The car slowly drove up a newly laid gravel path. I could see the back of our house in the distance, the blue water from the pool shimmering between the bushes, and in front of it was the coolest, most awesome thing I’d ever seen in my entire life.

A baseball field.

An actual honest-to-god, real-life baseball field.

“I think he likes it,” my mom whispered to my dad, taking in my open mouth.

I opened the door before the car had ground to a full halt, and jumped out running to the painted white lines marking the edge of the field. What the week earlier had been a stretch of worn grass, was now the most magnificent combination of checkered greens, in the right hand corner of which was a diamond, surrounded by a rich brown fan of terracotta sand.

I’d followed the white line to the home plate, sitting in the sand which stretched along each side of the field in a wide, neat line leading to each base.

“Penn…”

I’d spun at the sound of my dad’s voice to find him standing next to a dugout I hadn’t even noticed.Penn’s Teamwas printed across the top of the white awnings in navy lettering, just like The Yankees. A little further down, a similar awning hadGuestsprinted on it.

I walked round in silence, too stunned to speak and not wanting to break the magic of what I was experiencing; each discovery more incredible than the last.

Spectator seating; a scoreboard; floodlighting, and finally batting cages – they’d thought of everything. It was just like The Yankees, but better, because it was mine.

When my guests arrived, they were all given a custom uniform with their name on the back. We’d played all afternoon. My team lost and I didn’t even care. It was likely we lost because I was still so speechless that all this was mine, I wasn’t paying enough attention to where the ball was going.

It was the most incredible day of my life.

My tenth birthday hasn’t yet been topped.

Penn’s Field, as it became known, was the new place to find me. I still hung out in the treehouse, but I was more likely in the dugout or on the mound. After my dad died, I spent all my time here. I got my grief and frustration out in the batting cages. I studied down here, I lost my virginity here, I hid from Lowe down here when I no longer wished to be subjected to her and Lauren, and their revolving door of moronic boyfriends. When I was fourteen I wanted to move down here, but my mom drew a hard line at having a room built.

While I didn’t come here daily anymore, I still came here anytime I needed to solve a problem, or think, or talk to my dad.

Right now, I needed to do all three.

I tossed the ball in the air again, keeping the stitches straight so they landed exactly between my fingers.

The problem?

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