by Jon Weisman
In a sport played upon grass, a sport that is pastoral at its core, you’ll find concrete everywhere. In the dugout, in the aisles, in the concourses, floors of concrete, columns of concrete, walls of concrete.
I’ve stolen an opportunity this afternoon, while some Dodgers are doing early drills, to take my computer out in the visitor dugout at American Family Field in Milwaukee. Last night, you might have seen Blake Snell looking at a screen in between his innings of Game 1 transcendence. Me, I’m just a communications guy with an office laptop who from time to time likes working anywhere but a desk.
I’m on the dugout bench, made of mostly unsanded wood planks, eye level with concrete dugout steps kicked and clicked by cleats, proudly pockmarked with the life of a ballpark. Over my head, beyond the low-lying dugout ceiling, a stratosphere of beams and lights exists to protect the fans from the outside elements. Massive windows beyond the outfield remind us there’s a world out there, somewhere very far away.
Back to earth, past the top step of the dugout, a segment of the red dirt wraps around the field. (I think it’s red, though the less color-blind among us might easily correct me.) Working for the Dodgers, I’ve spent some time standing on that dirt. Lately, I’ve found myself scraping it into small piles with my Dodger blue and white sneakers, kind of soothing, don’t know why, don’t really want to know why.
Beyond the dirt, the grass.
I can walk on the grass. I have walked on the grass. Others in my position walk on the grass without even thinking twice.
I think twice. I’ve never stopped feeling a certain unique reverence for that grass. I am part of the Dodger organization — I’ve even been encouraged to call myself a Dodger, something I can promise takes getting used to. But in this world, I’m a man of gray concrete and brown wood and red dirt, who thinks the green grass of a Major League baseball field exists on another plane, almost floating. Especially at Dodger Stadium. We can pretend otherwise, but it’s not really for mortals, is it?
Don’t worry about the flowery prose betraying that I take myself too seriously— there’s a part of me that can be as cynical as can be about life. Still, that part of me disappears at the border of the grass.
Baseball in the material world was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.