On Friday night I went down to the Roger’s Center with a friend to watch the Blue Jays play the Orioles. I think my favourite part of the game took place in the sixth or seventh inning. It was at this point of the game that it was announced that “The World’s Fastest Grounds Crew” was about to give the base paths a bit of a polish.
The crew, wearing their unifroms, stood by the outfield fence gearing up to charge into the infield when the music began. I noticed that one of them was a good head and shoulders shorter than the rest of the crew. He looked particularly wound-up, like he’d been listening to death metal in preparation for the big performance.
When the music began and everybody started to run toward the infield, he was the first one out of the gate. Holding a broom in one hand, and with his arms pumping furiously, he sprinted just as hard as he could, while all around him the taller guys loped easily past him. In no time at all, he was the very last in the pack. No matter, when he got to 2nd base, he began to maniacally, but uselessly, sweep at the dirt, almost like he was trying to stab it. This went on for maybe 15 seconds at the most, and then he looked from side to side, bent down and gathered up three handfuls of dirt, which he put in his pockets, before sprinting off with the rest of the crew to their home beyond the outfield wall.
This, the story of how he collected infield dirt from a Blue Jays game, a story that will last generations in his family.
It’s almost always the periphery stuff that’s of most interest at ball games.
This game also commemorated the World Series winning Jays teams of the early 90’s. The lineups of both of those years were present, and trotted out on the field between innings, so that we might all reminisce.
The players, most only ten years out of playing in the major leagues, looked pretty much the same. Kelly Gruber still looked simple, Tom Henke still looked like a geek, and Joe Carter still looked like an affable ham. Roberto Alomar, perhaps the most talented Blue Jay to ever take the field, looked physically the same, but something within seemed to have shifted. His face, which projected an almost supernatural composure and calm when he played, had hardened into implacability.
He appeared guarded and suspicious, as if he didn’t trust the world around him and wanted the fans to know that he didn’t care what they thought of him—even though he did. He stood apart from his old, grinning teammates, looking truly unhappy. In spite of doing something he was brilliant at for a career, and in spite of the almost unimaginable riches and fame that came to him as a result, he still did not like his life. Watching, it was easy to see that of the two, the boy from the grounds crew who took home the souvenir dirt, was by far the luckier of the two.