so gallantly streaming

It is the last game at the old minor league baseball stadium (it will be torn down for a local university's expansion). Dear, dear L- agrees play tripod girl and accompany me to the last game--although we soon learn there is actually a make up game on Monday night (more about that later). We waltz across the field in search of Bobby W-, owner of the Turks and, coincidentally, my camera's first quarry. Unwittingly, he drives away in the golf cart; we make chase, as do the eyes of the baseball team.

Somebody yells at Bobby to stop. He flips the cart around and, taking our hands, asks which one of us is going out with him after the game. I smile sweetly and ask him to submit for the camera--considerate subject that he is, he whisks us off to the outfield and answers my questions against the backdrop of the stadium and the familiar tinging of baseballs and bats. (He played on this field in high school; later in the evening he gently grasps his son's neck as they prepare to bid farewell to the turf).

Back to the stadium go we, where we meet an older, even saltier gent whose name I can't recall, but who Bobby informs me is loaded--loaded, I tell you! They are astounded to learn I do not have a boyfriend, and equally aghast when they hear that L- is a married woman. Indeed, there is nothing quite like discussing one's love life with old men while at work. But in between compliments and flirtations, they give me some good tips for shooting the game, and I mainly laugh when they tell me later that I'm a young 26, although I remind them I'm but five and twenty.

L- waits patiently in the stands while I capture b-roll and interviews; it is my first time at the ball field and I am sad that it is going--there will be another ball field, but how can you reproduce the stains and dirt and scents of over sixty years of baseball games? I dread the sterility of the new diamond, the erased echoes of girls and boys flirting in the stands in the golden light of a dying summer day, the undamaged scoreboard. What words have smashed against these walls? asks Maya Angelou. For is it not comforting, endearing, hopeful to think of visiting a dear, dusty place and adding one more evening to the strata of memory?

But it seems there will one more memory to bring to the sod and discarded peanut shells: L- and I had an offer we could not refuse, an offer that involves warbling the national anthem at the final final make up game. I fear she will win the harmony argument, leaving me to that eyebrow-raising high A--or is it a C? Unpatriotic as I may appear, on Monday night, Veterans Stadium will indeed be the home of the brave.