CARLTON FLETCHER: My field of dreams is now just an empty cornfield

“Put me in, coach, I’m ready to play today.”

— John Fogerty

I fell in love with baseball not long after I started walking.

My dad, who played what country folks back then called “semi-pro ball” when we were kids, infrequent games that were little more than a bunch of folks getting together on Sunday afternoons and playing pickup baseball while wives ands girlfriends gossiped and kids ran around, dodging the stream of cars that brought nice-sized crowds to the games.

I played “T-shirt” and Little League as a kid, but what was most fun — one of those precious memories we all cherish — for me was when my dad, a brick mason who also took care of the farmland and livestock we owned after a hard day’s work, had the time to spend teaching my brother and me how to play the game.

I was no great player. My high school coach had all of us on the team write our goals for the season on an index card and tape it to the inside bill of our caps, constant reminders of our personal ambitions. I had done little to impress him, making the team because of my speed and defensive abilities. He came over to me just before the season started and asked, “Fletcher, what did you put down as your goals?” I handed him my hat, and he saw that I’d put down “HIT .275” as my primary goal.

Now, coaches generally encourage their players, sometimes to an extent that both know are unrealistic. Not my coach. He said, “Fletcher, if you hit .275, we’ll win the region.” It turns out that I ended up selling myself short. I hit .420-something for the year, and we came out of nowhere to win the state Class A championship, along the way beating a Mt. de Sales team that had not lost a game in several seasons to claim the South Georgia title in the semifinals.

I knew I was no great player, but former Fitzgerald broadcaster Charlie Ridgeway, who covered our games for WBHB radio and who once managed in the low minor leagues, told me that I had the speed and skills that were good enough to have a career. He encouraged me to go to tryout camps held in the area at that time, but I never did. It leads you later to ponder one of those “what might have been” dreams as you curse your lack of ambition.

My baseball-playing days ended in the state finals my senior year when we lost to Harlem High School. After that, it was a few pickup games like the ones my father once played and finally slo-pitch softball, where eventually you learned that no one was going to criticize you for not sliding or for missing an easy groundball, and you eventually relegated your love affair with the game to impassively watching it on TV.

I’ve enjoyed the vicarious thrill of seeing my favorite team, the Atlanta Braves, play top-notch baseball over the last few years, developing into one of the most dynamic lineups in the game. But even with the Braves’ success, watching players who had been adored and lauded by fans walk away like noncaring mercenaries to make unrighteous amounts of money has left me feeling a lot like I did back in those days when the Atlanta franchise was one of the worst in baseball.

Maybe it’s a sign of years passing, of changing perspective. But the little boy who used to run a mile every day to the end of our dirt road to pick up the newspaper and then cut out any story that had to do with baseball, saving them in a Reese’s Cup box covered in team stickers found in baseball bubblegum packs, along with a sheet on which I wrote the scores of every Braves game, has left the building. And for the first time in maybe my life, the promise of Spring Training holds none of the thrill it once did.

Oh, I’m sure I’ll watch the games again this year. I just don’t know how much I’ll care.