I have very fond memories of the most random places in the 1,000 miles between Louisville, Kentucky, and Chatham, Massachusetts. Every summer, my New England-native parents loaded up the current incarnation of our Chevrolet Astro van – we cycled through like five different ones over the years – strapped my sister and me into the back seats and embarked on those 1,000 miles.
The destination was the beach, but the journey was pretty good, too. We made a few big side trips – to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown and the candy paradise of Hershey, Pennsylvania. But mostly, the trip did not take us to tourist meccas or even silly roadside stops. We went to where the TripTik said there were hotels, to where the gas tank needed a fill-up, to where the toddlers in the back seat – my parents were brave souls – were nearing the point of having enough.
So there was some hotel near Youngstown, Ohio, up on a hill overlooking the highway, and my child’s brain and eyes and imagination made it so the swing sets behind the hotel actually swung you out over the highway (they, of course, did not).
There were rest stops for lunch, with picnic tables that had little seats for babies built in. I used to put my teddy bear there. He would eat imaginary peanut butter and honey sandwiches, because he was a bear and bears like honey.
There was this place called Hunt’s Landing, on the Delaware River in Pennsylvania. The Best Western there was not your run-of-the-mill highway-exit hotel. It had an indoor pool, a sauna, a gift shop, a big dining room where they had a breakfast buffet, a lawn in back with a trail that went down to the river. You could feed the ducks. We loved this place an inordinate amount.
There was the Dunkirk/Fredonia exit off the New York Thruway, with a hotel on the lake, a cool little town square, and – on the way back, if the timing was right – Buffalo Bills training camp at the college there.
I have always wondered why I remember these places. Most of them, I haven’t been to in 20 years. I would guess I’ve spent less than three days worth of waking hours in Fredonia, New York, but I feel like I know that town. I legitimately have no idea where Hunt’s Landing is, but if I ever see a sign of it on the highway, you’re damn right I’m taking the exit.
It’s something about journeys, about being somewhere that isn’t where you’re going, but also isn’t where you always are. There is no pressure of the usual routine, no crush of expectations for the vacation to come. It’s the in between, the leaving behind of normal, the cusp of possibilities.
Summer ball is like that, and maybe that’s why I like it so much.
It is a stop on a journey. No one sees it as the end-all, be-all. College ball is what matters. The next step, pro baseball, is on the horizon. But in these summer nights, there are memories to be made, fun to be had. There is the simple joy of the in-between. The players seem to feel it, and as a fan, you tap into that.
It is largely unexamined, as it should be, as it has to be. Had a great summer, the summer-ballers will say. It’s back home for a few days, then off to school. Fall ball picks up soon. The draft is next spring.
But in 20 years, when they haven’t been there in a long time, I’d bet they’ll have very fond memories of the most random places.