Baseball field in Milford, Connecticut. Photo by Katelyn Avery.

An empty baseball field lay before me. I was playing catch with my younger cousin Alex (boy) when I saw this travesty. We were passing with (male) lacrosse sticks when I finally realized there were no bases on the field beside us. This meant that no pickup games could be played here. Someone may start a game if they owned their own bases, but that’s a long shot.

The worst part about this naked baseball field was its forgotten existence. The field was shoved in the back of a school yard away from the play systems and basketball hoops. An elementary school housed this field but the children attending the school were being deprived. The proximity kept them away from the potential kickball field. Even if the kids did walk over to the field the missing bases destroyed any hope for a game.

My cousin passed the ball to me, but it ended up flying passed me onto the baseball field. I ran over into the sea of dirt and found that it was not as solid as my childhood baseball fields. The dirt was still wet from the rain and the bottoms of my shoes were now filthy. I scooped up the lacrosse ball and ran away from the footprints I had just made.

The ball was now covered in mud and I was covered in sensible thoughts. Now that I was actually using my mind I realized the bases were probably put away to stay safe from the weather. Maybe the kids weren’t being deprived. Maybe my imagination takes a few leaps. I don’t think I was going out on a limb though. As a kid I never saw an empty baseball field. That was about as welcome as sin. Something you only heard of in stories but couldn’t picture in real life. But now I had faced the horror of a defective baseball field, and my tracks were there to show.

-Katelyn Avery