There is a scene I run into again and again when I watch baseball.
A sharp line drive off the bat. The moment I think, “That one is going through to center!”, the announcer says, “Oh, right back to the pitcher. Too bad.” The voice of the announcer cracks, and the batter runs toward first base for nothing and comes back. That ball was hit on the sweet spot for sure. So why did it go straight at the pitcher?
You can just say, “Bad luck today,” and that is the end of it. But when the same thing happens over and over, I start to feel, “Maybe this is not a coincidence.”
Maybe It Is Not Luck, Maybe It Is Instinct
One day the thought came to me.
People have a history of living by facing each other and helping each other.
For tens of thousands of years, people survived by looking at the faces of other people, listening to the voices of other people, getting help from other people. Looking toward where people are. Sending things back toward where people are. Maybe that is soaked deep into the body.
At the moment a batter hits the ball back, he is probably not aware of it. But I feel that somewhere in his unconscious mind, he is sending it back toward where a person is. When the ball goes between the fielders, that is only by chance. Really, he is hitting it back at a person.
A line drive straight back to the pitcher is not a coincidence. The habit of facing people is carrying the ball there.
When I think that way, I feel I can see a little of why it keeps happening on the days it keeps happening.
Back When I Played Racket Sports
I played tennis when I was a student. Table tennis and badminton too, only for fun, but I think I was better than a beginner. I have a little confidence in handling a racket.
From that feeling, I can say this. At the moment you try to return a shot from your opponent, the body puts the racket out by reflex. Instinct moves first, before thinking.
And at that moment, the body is probably looking toward where the opponent is. You cannot make the ball touch the top of the net or the edge of the table on purpose. But when it happens, it keeps happening.
Fielding in baseball is probably the same. The first step, the way the hips are turned, the height the glove is held at. In the end it is ruled by feel and by years of experience. When that unconscious choice matches the instinctive swing of the batter toward a person, the ball flies straight at the fielder, as if it is being pulled in.
The Moments I Could Never Explain
When I think about such things, memories of my own past come up.
In junior high school, during fielding practice, I lost sight of a fly ball. I did not know where the ball had gone, so I backed up blindly, lost my balance, and turned around. At that moment the ball was sitting inside my glove. Even now I cannot explain what happened.
When I played tennis in high school, in smash practice I hit the ball on the sweet spot of the racket close to ten times in a row. It was making a good sound. For me, that was far too good to be true.
In softball, I once batted left-handed, even though I am right-handed. Only for that one swing, the ball looked like it was in slow motion. I hit it on the sweet spot and it went for a hit.
There are several moments when I felt my body move before my mind did.
Those were probably the same thing. Not the mind, but something soaked into the body moved first.
I Compare It to My Own Life
And then a thought comes to me.
There is a part of me that cares too much about other people.
I read the face of the other person more than I need to. I worry about things I do not need to worry about. I am so careful that I hold back what I want to say.
At the company where I worked until retirement, it was like that many times. When my wife was not well, I went to work instead of taking the day off. I thought it would cause trouble for the people on the floor. Now I understand that was the job of the managers. But back then I was only thinking about other people.
In a contest, this kind of habit puts you at a disadvantage. You want to hit your own ball, but you end up sending it back toward where the other person is.
Still, I do not think of it now as a fault, or as a mistake.
Turning Toward People Is Also One Way to Live
For the body to move toward people is not a bad thing.
For tens of thousands of years people helped each other that way, and that memory happens to come out on the surface as a line drive back to the pitcher. In my life it happens to come out in the shape of caring too much about people.
The batter in baseball and I may be doing the same thing at the root.
Without meaning to, looking toward where people are.
Without meaning to, hitting it back toward where people are.
You can call it coincidence. You can call it instinct too. Logic cannot measure all of it.
But when I think that way, even watching a batter show his frustration over a line drive back to the pitcher, somehow I can look at him with a slightly warmer feeling.
“So you were hitting it back toward a person too.”
I Want to Be Someone Who Can Say a Thing Exists Even Without an Explanation
There are people who can say that something exists even when they cannot explain it, and people who brush it off with, “It is just your imagination.”
On a day when I am watching baseball and the line drives keep going straight back, I find myself wanting to be the first kind.
And I become able to look with a little kindness at the way I care too much about people.
That too is a habit soaked into me. It is one drop from tens of thousands of years of people facing people.
Someone who can think that way, I feel, can be a little kinder to himself and to others.
Other things I have written about baseball in Japan:
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