Re-write

HYDRO FIELD

For nine years, starting when I was eight years old, I played in the recreational softball leagues in my hometown of Pickering, Ontario. The younger leagues start playing on dirt or gravel diamonds with three pieces of fencing erected directly behind home plate. These diamonds were usually located in community parks, named after people whose contributions to the neighbourhood had been long forgotten. As the fence was too small to be effective in keeping foul balls within the boundaries of the playing field, and since there were no bleachers for spectators to sit on, parents brought aluminum and plastic folding chairs, and crowded together behind home plate. As I got older and moved up in the levels, the parks that we played at changed. The rough dirt and gravel became soft red sliding dirt; the chain link backstop behind the plate became dugouts with fencing running all the way out and around centre field. The “look out!” zone, where parents had been too wary to sit was filled with aluminum stadium benches, and field lights came on automatically when it got dark. These larger, improved diamonds were usually attached to a school playground in a middle class suburb. There were signs screwed into the dugout posts that prohibited superfluous yelling.

When I was about 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 that can be seen in North Pickering; this park 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 was actually one of the Power Plant’s employee parking lots that were not in use in the evenings. The sign for the building whose parking lot we appropriated two evenings per week stated that it was the Ontario Power Generation Pickering Learning Centre. It stood at the entrance to the lot and was the first of many signs we passed going from the car to the field. The brown signs with stark white lettering telling everyone that smoking was not permitted were the most common. They were stuck on every side of the building and posted at intervals on the light posts and fencing. Besides the usual handicapped parking signs, this building also had, directly in front of the entrance doors, two spaces allotted for “Medical approved parking only.” About fifty feet past the dugout on the right field side, was one of those green boxes; like the ones that sit next to the street in residential neighbourhoods; except this one was attached to a large metal structure with wires coming out of the top. It was fenced off with warning signs of “Danger Hazardous Voltage” posted on each side.

One night, at the bottom of the fourth inning, we were up by two runs, and I was standing in the on-deck circle. Suddenly a siren filled the air, with a horn blasting every two seconds or so. For a moment no one moved. All that could be heard was the shriek of the siren. The grey miniature poodle had stopped barking the younger siblings of the players as they were no longer running amongst the trees at the edge of the parking lot. All 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. When my turn at bat came, I hit a double out into left centre field that scored another run, and by the time the fifth inning began, we were up by four and the siren had stopped howling.