Spring Training at the End of the World

Abstract

Spring Training at the End of the World Richard Black (bio) Baseball is the only sport I know that begins each year at its peak and goes downhill from there. —Furman Bisher, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 1981 The mother on the airport shuttle was wearing a tank top. I first noticed the tattoo on her shoulder as we waited curbside in a brisk, north wind for the Parking Spot van to arrive. The sky was spring-gray, and her brood surrounded her. One daughter in particular caught my eye. She was wearing sunglasses and what seemed like a long, blue fleecy robe. In her hands was a toy ukulele. When we boarded the bus I studied the family in some detail. The dad was military, I judged, by his tattoos and close crop and the way in which he seemed to hold their five children in check purely through his presence. There was one young boy, around eleven, the eldest child, and four girls. My eye kept returning to the youngest, clad in that comfy oversized blue fleece sweatshirt that looked like a robe on her small frame. Her sunglasses. That ukulele. "Will we see Natasha tomorrow?" she asked her mother. "No sweetie. And school is cancelled for a little while. And we may not see Nana for a few weeks either," her mother replied. "Because Nana could get sick?" another daughter asked. Her mother nodded. "See. Even if you get it you'll be okay, because you're young and strong. But Nana doesn't have the immune system you have. That's why we can't see her for a little bit." I was impressed by the way the kids seemed to take this news in such easy stride, like if they'd first learned how to skip, and also by the way their mother was able to communicate so clearly and yet honestly with them. I looked out the bus window. It was going to snow. About a decade ago I attended an academic conference in Albuquerque at the end of February. It was in the seventies and sunny all weekend. I had only packed a light fleece for the desert nights. My car had eight inches of snow on [End Page 59] it when I arrived back home to Kansas City on Saturday evening. The jacket I'd packed was no match for the raw northern wind, and my bare hands chapped and cracked in the cold as I had to brush the wet, heavy snow off my car and scrape the windshield. I thought of that trip when I saw the mother in her tank top and her daughter in the fleece robe and sunglasses, desperately clutching her ukulele like some totem of a sun-god they'd just abandoned. I knew from experience what it was like to return to a cold gray home after a stint in a sunny paradise. I knew it this day, as well, for I had to retrieve and don my Braves hoodie when I exited the plane and entered the chilly KCI terminal. The red and yellow of the script "A" logo-within-a-logo on my cap seemed incredibly muted in the dim slant of afternoon light after days of illumination in the spring training grandstands. I felt as if launched from sun-ripe Florida onto the gray and barren surface of the moon, stepping foot off of one planet and into an entirely different atmosphere, for this was the week that COVID-19 caused the sky to fall. ________ Daylight Savings Time began at 2 a.m. on March 8, 2020. This would mean a lost hour of sleep for an already-early drive from the northwest corner of Missouri to Kansas City International Airport to catch a 10 a.m. flight to Sarasota-Bradenton. My dad and I were going to spring training with the Atlanta Braves. We wouldn't be alone, though. We were joining the inaugural Road Scholar program entitled "Atlanta Braves Spring Training in Sarasota County." I was somewhat familiar with the Road Scholar outfit: my former colleague Jeff, a Tennessee Williams scholar, had recently completed a tour called "Ohio: Cradle of Presidents...