"We'd like to welcome everyone who skipped work today," the announcer wisecracks over the public-address system.The waggish voice echoes through the West End Field stands and off the Big Green Monster in left field, cutting right to the heart of what this day is all about.It's a day smack in the middle of the week, smack in the middle of the downtown lunchtime scurry.
A day when a retired law-enforcement officer finds himself "back in heaven" and a banker in a three-piece business suit finds himself slogging across a wet baseball field in diver's fins.
A day when an insurance worker with his wife and kids tries to keep his tie out of the hot dog mustard and when a teacher decides it's somehow fitting to let her P.E. class wallow around in rain puddles.
"Hey, man, what are you guys doin' out here?" a business-casual worker bee calls to acquaintances as he waits outside the ballpark to see the Greenville Drive take on the Kannapolis Intimidators.
"Oh, I just came here to do nothin'," the friend says as he's called out for changing from work clothes into shorts and a T-shirt.
Today is the Drive's very first "Business Person Special" day, which is stodgy, gender-neutral PR code for "Play Hooky for a Few Hours and Hope Your Boss/Teacher is Cool With That" day.
But it's more.
This — middle-of-the-week, daytime baseball — is an urban tradition, sharing a kinship with Philly and New Yawk and Bahston and the unmatched disciples of sun-baked-bleacher bummitude, Northside Chicago's Wrigley faithful.
It's an American cliche, the warm kind that makes you understand that cliches become what they are because they are true: father and son, beer and popcorn, anthems and flags. (If only they served apple pie at ball games. …)
The warm, humid air can't stop time from freezing.
Close together
Three old friends sit close together, as if they don't have an entire section of bleachers almost all to themselves.
Randy Robinson is squeezed in the middle, wearing one of those old, wool newsboy caps and sitting on a Publix grocery bag to keep his rear dry on this drizzly afternoon.
He stands and claps as Drive infielder Jeff Natale comes up to the plate (that Natale, he's a good one, I tell you). Before the season started, the mail carrier for the Taylors Post Office looked at a Drive schedule for the first workweek day game, marked down the date and turned in his annual-leave-day slip.
This, Robinson says, is the week on his rural mail route that he delivers the most junk mail. Better to spend a damp day watching foul balls buzz overhead than packing mailboxes full of bulky propaganda, he figures.
"I'd be out delivering junk mail on a 71-mile route today in this weather," Robinson says.
"And you know, it's his birthday."
He points to Lance Coulter, a retired Greenville County detention center officer celebrating his 59th birthday, wearing a Red Sox cap and still speaking in that distinctive Boston brogue even though he left home more than 30 years ago.
Robinson, Coulter and their portrait-painter buddy, Michael Del Priore, are out here today for Coulter. Coulter's a Fountain Inn guy; he wasn't sure about all this talk about a new downtown ballpark.
He doesn't get out a whole lot, and if he does, he prefers to do it during the day because his eyesight isn't what it used to be behind the wheel.
The moment he entered the stadium, Coulter was both here and there — here in downtown Greenville and back there in Fenway with his dad on a school day.
"Oh, yeah," he says. "With my dad. A lot of memories. A lot of memories. For me, it's like being back in heaven again."
Back. Again.
For some, a Big Green Monster stands beyond the Pearly Gates.
"My old energy is back up," Coulter says. "As soon as I walked in and saw that wall, I said, 'Oh man, bring me home.' "
Having trouble
The game has just begun and the Intimidators are having trouble intimidating. Already the Kannapolis shortshop has muffed two hard-hit ground balls.
Drive batters are putting a charge into the ball: "Hey, go back to high school there, mister!" a heckler shouts to the Kannapolis pitcher.
The Intimidators will have time to regroup and refocus in the dugout.
The menacing clouds have made good on their threat, and many of the 3,085 in attendance retreat back under the overhang that covers the concourse.
The first-base umpire waves his hands. Out comes the grounds crew with their shirts covering their heads and their walky-talkies flopping on their belts as they rush to spread the tarp.
The crowd cheers at the show within a show (and perhaps some mildly hoping to see one of them wipe out in the scramble).
Cindy Myers' Mount Zion Christian School middle-school P.E. and Bible-study class stands at the edge of the downpour where the overhang meets the right-field open plaza.
The girls run out into the rain, dancing around in their jeans, all grouped together to ensure that no one is doing this all by herself. They run back for shelter, but decide they might not have reveled in the opportunity enough.
They brave the deluge again and lie in puddles side by side. As they walk back, a stadium attendant sees their soaking hair and clothes and brings out an umbrella.
Thanks, but no thanks.
"We wanted a fun field trip," Myers says as she takes pictures and watches for lightning that never materializes.
"Since I like sports, this is right up my alley. Before we came down, they asked me if it rained would I let them play in the rain. Why not?"
The boys stay out of the rain. Ivan Bonnet's 13-year-old son, Kristian, elects not to join in the sideshow.
The class needed chaperones for the field trip, so Bonnet has left his auto-repair shop on White Horse Road to an able assistant, calling in every once in a while to make sure everything's going smoothly.
"Hey, they needed drivers," Ivan says. "I was telling someone, 'You know, there's a lot of people in Greenville who don't work. He said, 'Yeah, you're one of them.'"
The outfield video board is playing the "Anchorman" Channel 4 News Team's impromptu, a cappella rendition of "Afternoon Delight" and the "Saturday Night Live" skit of Will Ferrell fulfilling requests for "more cowbell."
In the shell of condos rising over the Big Green Monster, construction workers lean against newly installed windows and observe.
The 30-minute downpour is beginning to subside. A misty haze floats over the downtown skyline and obscures the view of Paris Mountain.
The grounds crew is back out to fold up the tarp and squeegie the excess water into drains just outside of the infield dirt.
The construction workers must now return to their clanging and banging, creating a tapestry of sound unique to daytime baseball as outfielders yell for fly balls over the symphony of hammers and power drills.
It's Aquaman
Co-workers are patting James Krout on the back of his three-piece suit as he reflects on his feat.
He did it. The banker actually put on a pair of flippers and a diver's mask and waddled onto a wet field between innings to win a koozie shaped like a baseball jersey.
The on-field crowd rabble-rouser with the microphone and free T-shirts dubbed him Aquaman.
Aquaman's bank paid for lunch and a ballgame at the park. In the search for an apt metaphor on "Business Person Special" day, a tan, three-piece suit becomes a big golden bullseye.
"It's definitely not something I expected when I came in here — not during a workday," Krout says. "But it's a great way to get away from the stresses of work."
Aquaman wants to pull his son out of kindergarten for one of these mid-week games, but, alas, the family lives in Liberty. He points out that it's quite a "drive" (a man who just walked around in flippers in front of 3,000 people has no reason to fear the pun police).
Restless crowd
A ball is fouled onto the grassy hill where parents watch the game and their children see who can roll down the fastest.
The crowd becomes restless. A man in a green shirt rushes after the ball and beats a kid to it.
"Give it to the kid! Give it to the kid!" the crowd yells.
In sports, there is a razor-thin line between hero and villain. The boos are imminent. The man relents.
The kid holds his arms up triumphantly. The man does, too. As the Roman gladiators learned, winning over a crowd is a matter of pride and self-preservation.
Grayson Bailes is the kid, and he's shagging grounders on the hill with his friends, a pair of 9 and 10-year-old brothers. Grayson's father, Greg, took the boys out of school in Laurens to come to the park with his son.
The boys all play on a travel baseball team, the Laurens Lightning. Greg coaches. Grayson had a doctor's appointment, and Greg took a day off from the box plant he runs in Greer to bring the boys to the game.
"We're just playing hooky," Greg says. "We had to go to the doctor, so he never showed up for school. Those two, I don't know what their mama used. She had to come up with something."
Ask Greg how old he is, and he's deliberately reflective — "I am a 40-year-old man."
He thinks about "40" as he sits on a picnic table at the top of the hill, sipping a beer, watching the boys play and waiting for another foul ball to come their way.
Greg says he never played baseball as a kid. He travels with the boys and lives his youth through their success and love for the game.
He watches them throw the ball and snap-off their catches. Tirelessly. Over and over and over.
An Intimidator in left field tosses a foul ball up to the hill. Then an attendant brings a third ball so Greg doesn't have to worry about any hurt feelings.
The Drive are on their way to a 4-0 shutout.
There's nowhere to be right now but here. This is baseball in the sunlight on a workday that isn't.
"You know, we're battin' a thousand, man," Greg says. "We're doin' good."
