{"id":6918,"date":"2021-04-09T07:03:50","date_gmt":"2021-04-09T14:03:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=6918"},"modified":"2021-04-09T07:03:52","modified_gmt":"2021-04-09T14:03:52","slug":"bleacher-ruminations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/bleacher-ruminations\/","title":{"rendered":"Bleacher Ruminations"},"content":{"rendered":"<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-6918\" data-postid=\"6918\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-6918 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m sitting on aluminum bleachers behind the backstop of a ball field in a city park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s a fine weekday morning. I am waiting for someone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A kite is hung up in an oak tree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A brown dog plays stick with its owner in center field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not a trace of lime in the batter&#8217;s boxes. It&#8217;s been close to 45 years since I stood in a limed batter&#8217;s box and faced a pitcher. What did I do in that final at bat? Did I realize it was going to be my final at bat? I think I did. Tennis was taking over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Will anyone play organized ball on this field this summer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I can see traffic on an Interstate Highway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Contrails dissipate in the sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Squirrels dart here and there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An empty school bus drives by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A woman walks a husky mix. I wince. I miss my husky mix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lots of fine Doug firs in this park. Oak, Doug fir. What&#8217;s the difference? Everything, including the metaphors each species of tree offers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To my right, two men clad in black practice some sort of martial art with sticks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m thinking about a short story I started 14 years ago but stopped for a reason I no longer recall. I started it with my creative writing class and actually read part of it aloud to the students. They didn&#8217;t like it. I wrote about 750 words and it&#8217;s about a Black high school basketball player in rural Oregon who excels at shooting long distance shots off the backboard and becomes a legend. In fact, the story is called \u201cOff The Glass.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some crows fly overhead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A couple of bees are drinking from a water fountain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Spring is here, but I don&#8217;t feel a spring in my step.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m sitting on aluminum bleachers behind the backstop of a ball field in a city park. It&#8217;s a fine weekday morning. I am waiting for someone. A kite is hung up in an oak tree. A brown dog plays stick with its owner in center field. Not a trace of lime in the batter&#8217;s boxes. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6919,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6918"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6921,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6918\/revisions\/6921"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}