All The Field's A Stage

Bound Brook High School Echo 1976   Into the post-anthem stillness slink the pre-game rituals. Players slip on last-minute pads as much for luck as protection. They don't look at the cheerleaders, but are acutely aware when and by whom their name is called. A few stretch, dribble, or run a high-stepping sprint beside the bench. Ball handlers spray Stick-Um onto hands and forearms. For the best teams the personal rituals coalesce.  I was on a high school baseball team, the red and white Bound Brook Crusaders, that started out having a mediocre season at three wins and two losses. Before the next game an old man who had just retired showed up with a giant pack of Big Red. On his way to man the old wooden scoreboard along the right field foul line he slipped a spicy stick of the new chewing gum to each player along the home bench. Then he boomed "GO BIG RED" before our at-bats that produced more runs each inning than in any previous game. After that romp over a rival team, t...

Bound Brook High School Echo 1976 A coach pulls open the double doors and sounds take over:      First silence as movement catches attention;       Spikes clatter on concrete or sneakers slap the boards as players file out;      A murmur arises as more turn to watch uniformed young bodies clumping beside the field or court;  It builds to a roar as the team, at a signal from a captain or coach, jogs to the sideline, mostly silent except for a few screamers slapping backs.  A drum roll grabs all ears before lone trumpets launch into the Star Spangled Banner, teams and audience alike scrambling to pull off head gear and stand facing the flag. The song is interminable as everyone struggles to remain motionless, all the while stealing glances at the size of the other team. The band concludes to another round of cheers for them, for the song, for it being over, for the start of the game.   The playing of the national anthem...

(Bound Brook High School Echo 1976) That's what a player literally senses at the start of a game as the team bunches inside a locker room door.  Someone forgot their clean socks and is wearing a moldy pair. Another is superstitious and won't wash their lucky undershorts. At least one of the toilets down the hall doesn't flush. Add the menthol bite of liniment and the aerosolized sweetness of pre-tape spray to the isovaleric acidity of excitement and there you have it, locker room stench.  The smells are enough to knock somebody over, but not these bodies. Some bounce back-and-forth on sweaty feet. Others joke about the partying they'll be doing that night. At least one will go around grabbing a teammate from behind and popping their back. Still others will hide to the side, turning more pale as the minutes tick away until game time. The crowding together of heated players starts to feel oppressive, like the feeling in a sauna when you've had enough steam and despera...

(Randolph-Macon College yearbook 1979)        "And all the men and women meerely Players". Thus begins a monologue in Shakespeare's As You Like It, and so shall this exposé on what it feels like to be an athlete in front of a crowd.       I've tried and failed to convey this conflicting sense of fear and power, of agony and jubilation, of mud and magic in various fictional stories, interest usually lost at the moment of describing a game situation, something inscrutable or even insufferable to the uninitiated. The posts that follow will shift the narrative to the inner dialogue of someone who's played several sports at all but the professional level.       The stories will walk, no run the reader through the stages of a game from an athlete's perspective:   The sensual entry onto the playing field;  Pre-game rituals culminating in the start of play;  Creation of a mantra to narrow focus to the play at hand;...