Ben Kamper
Captain
“Hey. It’s me.”
“I’m sleeping.”
“I got nominated for Captain tonight.”
“Do you really think that’s a good idea?”
“Can you hear me? I’m the most skilled player on the team. By far.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“It’s what I’ve been working for all summer.”
“You know how you are.”
“This is a good thing. I’ve been working on it.”
“Maybe you could be—”
“What?”
“Well, you know. Less you.”
Race
My dad used to hold a race for baseball cards after practices, before baseball cards became Collectibles. Each players sprinted around the bases and he kept time with his black plastic wristwatch that had a timer in it. He called each player’s time as they stamped on home plate.
After games, he tossed the two best players from the game wax-covered packs and they opened them up in the dugout as I shagged the scattered balls and bats and stuffed them into the canvas bag I’d carry back to the car. The first thing the winners always did was shove the broken stick of pink gum into the wad of Big League Chew already in their mouths.
“Get anyone good?” I asked my teammate Ashton, his hat cocked so that the shadow didn’t cover the glossy fronts of the cards.
“Not yet,” he said. He flipped over the last card to read the stat lines on the dark, unvarnished back.
Perfect Season
This was basketball. It was less fun maybe than baseball, but I played better. Something about the physicality of it appealed to me. I’ve never had much of a jump shot, but I can bang the boards. The secret is to come down with your elbows out.
The team wore red jerseys and was somehow affiliated with the ymca. The shirts had these textured basketballs on them, with dimples raised above the silk-screen. I can feel them under my fingers even now. The shirt even smelled kind of like a basketball.
None of the games had been close even though we had a retarded kid on the team that we had to play. My dad made up the trophies to say “Undefeated Season” on the engraved plate. They were in the back seat of his company car when we drove out to the game.
We were down at halftime. We’re not really a family that’s about big speeches. Before we broke the huddle for the fourth quarter, when we were still down by two and the retarded kid had to play at least half the time, my father said, “The trophies already say we’re undefeated. Let’s go.”
Sod
The house on Hazelton Lane was build, then the pool was put in, then the basement was finished. My mom designed the front yard, with granite boulders and rose bushes. I helped pour the concrete for the basketball hoop in the driveway. Then the sod came.
It came on palettes from somewhere. It was called Tiff Grass, cut in rectangles four feet by three. Dad and I started in one corner of the backyard and worked our way down, tamping the sod with our feet and making sure that the corners and edges lined up. The fertilizer underneath the soil turned my fingernails black for days. He used scissors from the kitchen to cut the corners and the curve around the cool deck.
Once we laid the lawn, we turned on the sprinklers, and no one could step on the grass for five days.
Pirates
Dad was an assistant coach. Minors—the first times kids pitch to one another. I played left field and sometimes second base. I could throw on target, and I wasn’t afraid of the hot grounder. But I didn’t have the arm to make the throw from third.
There were talented kids on that team. Shane Hastings had a kind of vision that you have to be born with and ran like the wind. I spent the night over at his house once and asked him how he ran so fast.
“You have to run on the balls of your feet, like this,” he said. He raised up off his heels and pumped his arms.
“All right. One two three go,” I said, and started running while he was standing still. He caught up to me before we’d left his yard. When the gap widened to two houses, I stopped running. He jogged back to me, bouncing while I caught my breath.
“Just keep it up. You’ll get faster,” he said.
Rockies
Chris Donnell was our flame-throwing pitcher. He couldn’t always get the ball over the plate, but it came away from the mound in a hurry. This was my thirteen-year-old season, and the Mets had a kid that threw even harder. His ball exploded into the catcher’s mitt, and he looked like he was sixteen.
It’s easy to be a fearless hitter. You stand in the box until the count is really in the pitcher’s favor. 1-2, 0-2. Then you have to swing. Keep your elbows in and your knees bent. Feet parallel. Catch the ball with the bat. Usually, the count doesn’t go that high before you get to take a walk.
Here’s what it feels like to get hit by a pitch: the ball sizzles through the air, but not toward the right place. You turn and hear it against your back before you feel it. Then the space between your shoulder blades is hot and you start to feel the capillaries break before you go down on your knees and try to keep it together because everyone’s watching. The spot throbs with your heartbeat as you take your base and you don’t wipe at the sides of your eyes. You brush off your knees as you step on first and swing your shoulders to try and rub the feeling away.
Soccer
Dark blue jerseys, definitely. Maybe the number 10. I played fullback, which is the last line of defense before the goalie. I remember the “ayso” patch over my heart. Silk-screened.
Playing fullback was boring because I never got the ball. When I did, the object was always to kick it back downfield, where everyone else could run after it. It’s a role, but it’s hard to win the game from the defense. All you can do it lose it.
My dad says, “At a certain point, it started looking like real soccer, and I had no idea what was going on.” And maybe there were banners, but when I see them now they look kind of cheesy.
Soil
When the house on Hazelton Lane was under construction, we went often to the lot to check on the progress. The house had a basement, and I remember the excavation more than anything else. How week after week we’d come and descend deeper into the ground. Annie and I ran our hands over the unformed walls and watch the dust stream off under our fingertips. At the beach I hate the feeling of sand in my shoes, but we’d come back from the lot with our Roos covered in dust.
The contractors were still digging for a while, and dirt clods were everywhere. Some were the size of our heads, but I could be them up despite the weight. I tossed them across the lot at my sister, watching them fly the three feet before they broke against the ground into pieces I could hold in my fist. Annie came over and we’d throw them. They exploded like fireworks, leaving behind dust that didn’t taste anything like sand.
American Martyrs Field
“It was my Pony League year,” my dad says. Joey and Paul are standing around the pitching mound and the girls are sitting in the shade of the visitor’s dugout. I can smell the sea spray even this far inland. My brothers are listening close. “It was the sixth inning and I was facing Billy Monette, one of the most feared pitchers in the league. Last game of the season and we were half a game out of first place. I worked the count to 3-1 and I knew that he’d have to throw me a strike. The fastball came out of his hand and I closed my eyes and swung. It came off my bat like a bullet, and I knew it was gone.” He turns his back on us, craning his head up and over his shoulder. We all turn and his finger points into the parking lot. “It flew over the fence and over that flag pole.” Both of my brothers are squinting.
“And my mom was standing right over there.” He’s pointing back over the home dugout, where there’s a sandy hill covered in what looks like ivy. The infield grass under my feet feel like shag carpet.
All-Stars
The season ended just when it started to get really hot. In the last practice, our coach tore pages from his notepad and we were each supposed to tear off a piece and pass the sheet on. Then we passed out the handful of golf pencils. The assistant coaches stood behind us, trying to keep us together for another five minutes.
“We thought we’d let you nominate our guys for the All-Star team,” Coach said. “Write two names on your ballot, and we’ll take the two highest vote-getters.”
We wrote on the backs of our gloves, being careful not to tear through the fragile paper on the pliant surface. I was relieved that the season was over. My dad’s hand was on my shoulder, and he whispered in my ear.
“Do you want me to put in a vote for you for All-Stars? I can put you in if you really want to.”
I couldn’t quite see his face; he was standing in front of the sun. I already had two names on my ballot, and neither of them was mine.
Benedict Field
The fields we played on were on the western edge of Tempe, Arizona, next to where the school district parks the buses. There were eight fields, and two teams from each league would play at the same time each night. Sometimes we stayed late to scout next week’s opponent.
Because of the heat and the soil, they seeded the fields with a blend of winter rye and Bermuda grass that drove some kids’ hay fever crazy. The grass was rough and when we fell or dove or slid it didn’t offer much cushion. We liked to show each other our gashes and scrapes when we came back into the dugout.
They’d aerate the field twice a year, between baseball and soccer. The ground would be littered with plugs pulled from the irrigated grass. The plugs were hard and dense and the outfielders threw them at one another until Coach told them to get their heads in the game.
Little Devils
Pop Warner Football isn’t ordered by age, like Little League does, or basketball. They assign by weight. I was a big kid. So was my dad. He hit puberty early, and so in his pictures from junior high he’s in the back. He’s a head taller than everyone else his age—like my brother. But I was, you know, big.
Because they place kids by weight, when I played Pop Warner, game days started early. My dad woke me before the sun rose. Five-thirty a.m., if we were going to take a long trip. We put on our shoes and ran until my sock cuffs were drenched and water dripped down my forearms. I shivered in the cold and was more interested in watching our breaths trail behind us than I was about making sure I sweated out every last ounce. He ran 10Ks and later marathons and never seemed to get winded. When I stumbled, he ran backward.
After the weigh-in, Coach walked down the line and rapped us on the jock to make sure we were all wearing cups.
Catcher
There comes a point when smart people realize that talent has taken them so far, and will take them no farther. I came to that point after the Pirates, but hope abides. After the Astros, I knew that once talent reaches its terminus, you must find a role.
We took the big canvas bag to Wagoner Park, and it must have been 90 degrees. Under the gear, it was closer to 100. The dust is the same, the pitcher’s mound is the right distance. The sunlight’s a little higher.
Carchers look like they rest on their calves, but they crouch. After about three minutes, the calves and hamstrings start burning. I had just enough arm to make an okay throw to second. The ball would get there. It might not get anyone out, but the point was to make batters think twice when they call “balls in, coming down” between innings, and not to loose the pill into center field and give anyone an extra base.
What I could never get over was the sound a ball makes as it comes it. It sizzles. Like steak in a skillet. Or water drops on an iron. It’s one things to be in the batter’s box. Making yourself a target is a whole other deal. That was when I knew my days were numbered.
Photograph
Over his desk on the fourteenth floor of Abacus Tower my father has hung a poster-sized photograph of me as a child. A toddler. I’m wearing a red jumpsuit with no sleeves and a blue cap embroidered with the logo of the Los Angeles Dodgers. My shoulders are cocked and a black plastic baseball bat is clenched in my hands. My elbows are out. I’m looking at the camera. Until very recently, this was the only photograph of me in my father’s office. I imagine:
“Oh, is this your son?” a client says, pointing. Her other hand may flip the hair that falls over her shoulder.
“That’s my first-born.”
“How old is he?”
“Twenty-four.”
Cardinals
They still play the games at Benedict Field, though ten years have passed. My dad coaches my brothers’ team. Under twelves. Mark and I drive down from Ahwatukee to watch them play. Paul pitches and Joey catches.
Joey’s tall behind the plate and intimidates batter when they come up to bat. He stands when runners try to steal, but he throws like a girl. He pushes the ball away from his shoulder. The second baseman backs up the shortstop and calls Joey “T-Rex.”
On the mound, Paul is lean. He slouches and shuffles. He makes jokes with the third baseman. He says he has four pitches, but Dad doesn’t let him throw his curve ball more than four times a game. It’s his out pitch.
There is a fence in the outfield we stand behind. Mark and I play catch between innings. I wear a cap low over my eyes and Mark smokes cigarettes and provides color commentary. The kids manning the outfield have no idea who we are.
Settling
The house on Hazelton Lane sat on a shelf. The dining room, kitchen, garage, and two bedrooms were over the foundation. Everything else floated over the basement.
The contractors had never built a basement before. Not until two years later did anyone else in the development build one. The contractors sunk six wells in the back yard so that we could escape in case of fire. Spiders lived in the wells, and crickets.
Annie’s room was above mine. It was pink and she got a vanity for Christmas one year that she was always sitting at and brushing her hair. When she jumped on her bed, a powder of plaster fell onto my comforter.
Extreme heat can cause even dry ground to expand. The house began to settle, and the halves of the house began to separate. The crack started at the weakest point, on the upper left hand corner of Anne’s bedroom doorframe. The contractors said that there was nothing they could do.
Every two months, someone would come over while we were at school and cover the crack with spackle.
Reds
My nine-year-old year. My dad coached this team, and Kenn Hanson was his assistant. They’d known each other since grammar school in Manhattan Beach, and then at Southern Cal.
When Kenn came to practices, he’d close out the day by giving us batting practice. Each player had an at-bat and the rest of us took the field, playing wherever. I tried to learn the schedule so that I always got to second base before everyone else. Eight of us covered the outfield. There were two extra infielders on each side of the little circle of dirt that we called a mound. Kenn threw the Dreaded Knuckler: thrown without spin, it just kind of floats across the plate. In the best of circumstances.
“Isn’t this better than a pitching machine?” he said, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and his hat cocked high.
Tee-ball
I think we were the Blue Jays. There’s a picture somewhere. It looks like a baseball card, with the borders and Tempe National Little League in script along the bottom. The jerseys were powder blue
Tee-ball is mostly about getting the kids outside. There are no fences and you’re really not supposed to keep score, but there’s always a dad who keeps a scorecard with 5-4-2 or E7 on it. I can’t remember who our coach was, but I’m almost certain that it wasn’t my dad. He was a young attorney then, trying to make his mark.
There are the caps and the gloves and the ball, right? It’s like baseball, but they still let girls play and no one even notices. You swing as many times as it takes to put a ball in play.
Checklist
_ 1. Soccer _ 2. Benedict Field _ 3. Tee-Ball _ 4. Soil _ 5. Reds _ 6. Sportsmanship _ 7. Race _ 8. Sod _ 9. The Cage |
_ 10. Astros _ 11. Little Devils _ 12. Settling _ 13. Catcher _ 14. Separation _ 15. Perfect Season _ 16. Pirates _ 17. All-Stars _ 18. Cottonwood |
_ 19. Pride _ 20. Rockies _ 21. Full Contact _ 22. Photograph _ 23. American Martyrs Field _ 24. Practice _ 25. Captain _ 26. Checklist |
The Cage
There are two kinds of machines. One has an arm like an ice cream scoop that flips the balls on a spring. The arm bounces twice after every pitch. The other has two spinning tires and the ball drops between them at speeds and direction dictated by the pressure and rotational velocities of the tires and the entering velocity of the yellow rubber ball.
Nothing feels as good or meaningless as a well-hit ball in the cage. Watch it soar into the net or carom off the center pole, but know that another ball is coming at you in another four seconds.
When the ball strikes wrong, the bat howls under your palms and somehow instinct tells the hands to hold tighter instead of dropping the damn thing. Take a ball and shake out your fingers.
“Don’t hold the bat so tight,” dad says.
Full Contact
The game started out informally. A bunch of guys got together on a Sunday afternoon in February and started throwing a football around. More people started showing up, and there was enough for a full game. Twelve men on each side. Boys on each side. Play got a little chippy, and then people were hitting each other. Guys were blocking and tackling and hitting.
I played inside on both lines. I didn’t remember any techniques; I imitated what I’d seen the Wolverines and Broncos do. An elbow to the chest can push a man off the line as easily as a punch in the mouth. Dive at his knees once, and he’ll think twice on second down. After the second week, I invited my dad to come out and watch me play.
We started playing fifteen-on-fifteen. Maybe more. I collected a sack and a tackle for loss before the team from Best Hall started double-teaming me. I knocked a defensive tackle on his ass—a pancake block—and talked trash as I stood above him. He got up swinging and his teammates had to hold him back. They pulled him to the sideline to cool off.
“It’s just a game, brother,” I said to his back.
Two plays later, my hand got kicked in a pile. My pinkie swelled until I couldn’t bend it. I walked off the field cradling my hand to my chest.
“You boys play rough,” Dad said.
When I pinch the knuckle on my right hand, something moves around the bone.
Astros
There are nights when your team does well, and there are nights when you play well. Sometimes they overlap. As an Astro, in my ten-year-old year, I must’ve gone 0-4 and had a couple errors. It was not a good night.
My dad pulled me aside after the game. He was in his shorts and sneakers and the polo shirt they give coaches. My face was hot and wet and I just wanted to go home.
“What happened?” he said.
“What?”
“Tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you call David’s mom a fucking bitch?”
“I don’t know.”
“Go apologize, then we’re headed home. Right now.” My dad knew the one place on the arm, the flesh above the elbow, where the least amount of pressure hurts more than anything. From there he lifted me off the bench in the dugout and tossed me out.
Losing is never fun. Ever.
Cottonwood
Despite all the grass and trees, this is a desert. The house on Hazelton Lane has a cottonwood tree in the yard of our neighbors. Cottonwood trees are moisture-demanding.
The grass out back started dying and the sprinklers were malfunctioning. They’d put in a spray system so that we kids could run through it when it got really hot in the summer, but now it was more like a drip deal. Contractors were called out and they started digging.
What they found inside the pipes looked like something from another planet. Brown and wet and fibrous and smelled mostly of earth. Yards of it on the path leading off the porch. The root system from the tree had crept the 70 feet from the neighbor’s house into our pipes.
“It’ll keep happening unless they get rid of the tree,” the contractor said.