Hydro Field

I need to check on a few details in this story and flesh it out a bit more to meet my length requirement but I kind of like it...


HYDRO FIELD

For nine years, starting when I was about eight years old, I played in the recreational softball leagues in my hometown of Pickering, Ontario. As I got older and moved up in the levels, the parks that we played at changed. From dirt or gravel diamonds with three pieces of fencing directly behind home plate and no benches to speak of, to large red dirt diamonds with fenced in dugouts, bleachers for parents and lights that come on when it got dark. The smaller diamonds were located in parks, in suburbs, next to shopping malls and public schools.

When I was bout fifteen or sixteen, in the last league level before adult leagues started, we were assigned to play at Hydro Field. This was not the field beside the looming metal power line structures; it was located next to the Pickering Nuclear Power Plant, off of Sandy Beach Road. It was so close that the parking lot for the ball diamond backed onto one of the Power Plant’s employee parking lots, with a tall chain-link fence with warning signs dividing them.

One night, during the fourth inning, we were up by two runs, and I was standing in the on-deck circle. All of a sudden a very loud siren filled the air, with a horn sounding every two seconds or so. For a moment no one moved. Heads had turned in the direction of the Nuclear Plant, but when no visible sign of the apocalypse appeared, the umpire shouted “PLAY BALL!” and the game resumed. I hit a double out into left centre field that scored another run, and by the time the fifth inning started we were up by four and the siren had stopped howling.