Claire O’Sullivan was somewhere near the clubhouse. The problem was figuring out where. “RF at the clubhouse,” she texted. That didn’t make much sense.
The clubhouse at Robin Roberts Stadium is in left field, but right field it was. A few minutes passed before another round of messages started. Where are you? Right field. Where are you? Right field. Clubhouse. Eventually, O’Sullivan realized what she’d been doing. She was in left field. There wasn’t much to do but laugh.
The game had been over for a little while. O’Sullivan had changed out of her New York Heights uniform, and it was still hot outside, even pushing 10 pm. Before the microphones came out, she stopped to sign for a young fan and was given a friendship bracelet.
O’Sullivan had started once for New York and worked out of the bullpen a few times. The jobs require different ways of watching a baseball game.
PRESS PLAY
A few hours earlier, her manager hadn’t called her name yet. Robin Roberts Stadium was still filling.
It was hot and humid enough that sitting still didn’t offer much relief. Outside, three young girls in matching burnt-orange jerseys with black pinstripes posed in front of the WPBL signage while a mom or coach took their picture. “Legacy” was written across their jerseys. I didn’t know who they were or where they were from. They were three kids who apparently liked baseball enough to get a mom or coach to shuttle them to a WPBL game in Springfield, IL.
Inside, the starting lineups were posted.
Denae Benites came into the night with eight home runs. Then she hit number nine.
Somebody in the stands had come prepared. A black homemade board carried the Heights logo on one side and the Firebells logo on the other. DENAE | KELSIE 09 | 09. A Firebells fan held one side, a Heights fan held the other. Someone cared enough about a home run race in the first season of a professional women’s baseball league to make the thing, bring it to the stadium, and change the number when Benites went deep.
It was Heritage Night. Curaçao, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic were represented around the ballpark, and the crowd seemed a little louder than it had on other nights in Springfield. The cowbells were especially noticeable. They cut through just about everything.
So did the home-plate umpire. She had an emphatic strike-three call that carried through the stadium. The PA system was loud enough that it sometimes competed with the sounds coming from the field, but when the ball met the bat, contact sounded different that night. Crisp. More pop. Ping!
Then Suzu Narasaki came to the plate.
Her walk-up music was impossible to ignore. Bright, hyper Japanese pop that sounded a little like somebody had turned a game show into a song. It may have been the craziest walk-up music I’d heard all year. Sorry, Suzu, not for me.
At some point, players came onto the field with a T-shirt cannon and started firing shirts into the crowd.
Then came a conga line.
For the first two or three innings, the view of the game was mostly from field level through a camera. After that, it moved into the stands. The baseball was still there. It just stopped being the only thing I was watching.
An outfielder between pitches. A player leaning over the dugout rail. A coach talking. Someone laughing. Someone pissed off. A conversation happening a few rows away. The ball could be on its way back to the pitcher while something more interesting was happening twenty feet away from it.
PRESS PLAY
Ayami Sato was sitting in the stands.
I said, “Mata aete ureshii desu.” which means “Nice to see you again.”
My Japanese wasn’t particularly good. Sato smiled; she understood it anyway. Most conversations with the Japanese players I’d met had worked in a version of the opposite direction: English, with Google Translate filling the gaps. Translate it to Japanese, translate it back to English to make sure Google hadn’t turned it into something ridiculous, then send it. Sato didn’t need Google for this one.
Later, a fan approached her with a baseball. She told her she was a big fan and asked for an autograph. Sato took the ball, signed it, and stopped for a picture. Then came the bows. One, another, another. There were about three or four of them before the interaction ended. The exchange lasted a minute or two. Then everyone went back to the regularly scheduled baseball programming.
A few pitches later, Boston Hunter, Beth Greenwood was explaining Boston sports via the translation option on Sato’s phone. Not box scores or standings, but the particular fervor surrounding them and what happens when a Boston team wins a championship. It was the kind of conversation that can apparently happen in the middle of a professional baseball game while professional ballplayers are hanging out and conversing in the stands. I’d love to see more of that in baseball.
Hinano Beppu was somewhere else in the ballpark. Messages went back and forth trying to connect, but it never quite happened. That’s OK; there were photographs instead. One of her making a funny face in the dugout, then a couple of more conventional portraits. She laughed about them in the messages.
During all of this, on the field, Firebells player Andréanne Leblanc had a rough sequence at first base. There had been awkward plays around the bag, and one left her shaken enough that the attention around first turned toward her. Manager Matt Williams came out. Leblanc was checked on, and she stayed in.
PRESS PLAY
Getting from Australia to Springfield, it turned out, could involve Japan, the Women’s World Cup, an American work visa, Toronto, Chicago, the Bean, deep-dish pizza, and a discussion about which country makes a better steak. Claire’s review of Chicago deep dish was not complicated. “It was okay.”
Back in the stands, conversations started and stopped. Players talked with each other. Fans came over. Somebody wanted an autograph. Somebody needed a picture. Somebody was explaining Boston.
The longer the night went, the less unusual those little intersections seemed. A professional baseball game was happening on the field, but there were dozens of smaller things happening around it, most of them with no reason to become anything more than what they were.
PRESS PLAY
New York led 9-4. The Heights went to the bullpen, and Claire O’Sullivan took the ball. The Firebells started reaching base. Alexia Jorge reached first. Skylar Kaplan singled. A routine play went wrong, and Samantha Gutierrez followed with a two-run double.
9-6.
O’Sullivan struck out Ela Day-Bédard looking, and another out followed. Two outs. First base was open. Kelsie Whitmore came up to bat. New York intentionally walked her. The crowd booed. Joely Leguizamon came up next and singled up the middle on the first pitch.
9-7 and the bases were loaded.
Andréanne Leblanc left the on-deck circle. A few innings earlier, she had needed attention at first base. She had stayed in. Now O’Sullivan was on the mound, and Leblanc was at the plate. The count went full. Two outs, bases loaded, 9-7.
Pitch.
Swing.
Center field.
Game over.
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