Yankee Stadium. The long ball, the side retired with one left on. What of him, abandoned, his base hit wasted, they did not bring him home. No. He is sad. One man, left on. Oh, those pinstripe Yankees and their fabulous names—Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, The Babe, The Mick, and Maris, I remember the homerun race of ’61—I could tell you all about it, I could. And the words and phrases of the game—these we could say to each other, like—7th inning stretch, like on-deck circle, like sacrifice fly, or my favorite of all—high and away, a sweet nothing if ever there was. If I owned a racehorse, I would name it High and Away, and you would ride him hard, wearing flamboyant jockey colors, scarlet and orange, powder puff summer sky baby blue, and goggles on your eyes and a cap strapped under your chin, you, in raised crouch position, lashing the magnificent beast with your whip. We could talk about these things. I believe we could.

But sometimes the game is called on account of weather. Turbulent, gray, clouds roll in, a web of heat lightning arcing sideways in the west, the first distant cannons of thunder, the sheets of cold rain drilling down. A low pressure front, wind blowing in off the lake, gusting to thirty, dew point climbing, temperature dropping, a rifle crack splitting a tree down the middle, people running for shelter, the creeks boiling into canals, the air charged electric, some big dogs howling. Under a flapping awning you and I could shout above the hollering storm, about annual precipitation, the coldest spot in the nation, the tornado alleys, the eye of the storm. You might say gulfstream, cumulous, nimbus, El Nino, chinook, the wind chill factor. I could pantomime the storm of the century with my cold-front hands, my shoulders tight, my teeth in a clench. We could speak of it sometime. We could discuss these things on the stiff green furniture downstairs in the lobby. We could.

Bio: Lee Kisling