If you build it...

Centerfield / John Fogerty









Everything I know about baseball I learned from Kevin Costner and “Jim.” Which is to say, I know not much, and most of it is nostalgic. I purport to be a Red Sox fan, but this is simply regional loyalty. I have never been to a baseball game. I did go to a local team softball game…once, my friend’s husband played. But I hardly paid attention. And…no, not even little league. Pee wee football, basketball, soccer. Even field hockey games, but never baseball. The close was going to see Field of Dreams with Jim.



Jim and I entered graduate school together and became friends in the way that people thrown into unlikely situations do. There were three of us who entered that particular grad program that year and we couldn’t have been more different.


I had just graduated college, had decided that I did not actually want to go to law school and therefore had no clue in the world what I was going to do. I was “engaged” and the deal was when I was done with school we’d marry. I wasn’t sure about that, and so, at least in part, I wasn’t done with school. The school had offered me a fair amount of money to go, all expenses paid and what at the time I had thought would be enough to live on. I was wrong about that part, but not having a better idea and no job, I went.


The second person in our cohort we’ll call Lola. Lola was shorter than I, a little less than ten years older and a radical lesbian feminist with pagan religious beliefs. Half of what I learned in graduate school, I learned from Lola. Half way through our academic experience, she decided that none of those attributes did she want any more. She stopped talking to me, and I was very upset about it at the time. I can only imagine it was because I was associated with her early days. She never gave me a clue and eventually I was hurt and mad enough not to care. Last I heard she was married (to a man) and was a stay at home mom with two kids.


The third person in our group was Jim. He was twenty years older than I and was right off the streets of New York. Already at 40-something, he had a graying beard and temples. With a stereotypical ethnic New York/New Jersey assertive manner and style, he stood out in a crowd. He’d actually worked in the field of Criminal Justice and from my perspective was quite worldly.


He’d moved to rural Connecticut a week before school started with his wife who was from Brazil. She was shorter than I, more fiery than any woman I’ve met before or since and at the time was 9 nine months pregnant. The first week of school the house he was renting was burglarized and his wife threatened to go back to New York. She didn’t at least at that point. (Ten years later, they were divorced and I had learned that they’d only gotten married one month before they arrived and their son was born.)


As Jim had age and experience and Lola had alternative lifestyle, I pretty much ranked as the wide-eyed third. I held my own academically. The advantage of this position was that I still had respect, but both parties seemed to take it as a mission to expand my horizons. I would not have described it this way at the time, but distance can some times make a picture clearer.


At any rate, Jim loved baseball. He reported stats and followed games. His wife did not. So when he asked if I wanted to go with him to see Field of Dreams, I said sure. He was also very delighted after the fact to explain to me who Shoeless Joe was and in mock horror explain the rules of the game. And this was my introduction to baseball.


At some point after that, I rented Bull Durham and learned a little more. But baseball never stuck. I’ve lost touch with Jim. Of the three of us, I finished first and got out. He did research in Africa, got divorced and became less of a man of mystery for me as I got older. I still think about him and wonder how he’s doing. And of course, whenever I think of baseball I think of Jim and Kevin Costner.