I had been in Nicaragua just four days when, one afternoon after a brief rain, the unmistakable sounds of a baseball game wafted across Calle Calzada through my window. I went to alert my friend, Donna. Her house, and the adjacent guest house she runs in Granada, is across Calzada from a complex of ball fields.
We hurried over and found a space in the middle of a grandstand of wooden bleachers. It had filled with fans who were shouting, jeering, hooting and trilling, like TV Indians on the war path. You would have thought the bases were loaded or something, but no, players were still milling about or chopping practice grounders.
This was to be a contest of fast-pitch softball between St. Lucia and Arsenal.
"They don't cheer like this in Pittsburgh," I told Donna.
Truth is, they don't cheer like this anywhere I've ever been.
The U.S. Marines exported baseball and its cousin, softball, to Nicaragua in the early 20th century, and Nicaraguans have been baseball-crazy ever since. Except for Panama, Nicaragua is the only Central American country with a baseball tradition. It has produced only one major-league superstar -- Denis Martinez, Granada's favorite son -- but its fat, older, anonymous guys are just as adept with a grapefruit-sized ball and aluminum bat as our fat, older, anonymous guys.
Most of the players that day wore patched-together uniforms. The few fit players looked as though they once had higher standards. They wore parts of Marlins or As uniforms, and hygienic stockings. Others wore bright green or red or blue shirts with some kind of name on them, and some wore shorts. A few players actually wore shirts that read "St. Lucia" and "Arsenal."
It was not obvious whether St. Lucia and Arsenal are towns or neighborhoods of Granada or clubs affiliated with organizations, and I was never very sure of the score because the game dissolved several times into lengthy squabbles. Plus the scoreboard didn't work.
All in all, there was some good play and some woeful play. Balls off aluminum bats went "thunk" and skidded past a shortstop whose glove has never seen dirt into an outfield not fit for grazing. One center fielder was as fleet as a player can be, streaking to nearly every fly ball to the outfield. He would get under it, waving off whichever other fielder was closest, then promptly lose it in the sun.
With each slide into a base, the base had to be replaced.
The game-long ruckus in the stands turned to fever-pitch in the bottom of the sixth with St. Lucia threatening. The sidelines swelled with fans -- and why not? There was room -- and partisans collected on the St. Lucia dugout, rattling the tin roof, shouting and stomping as the Arsenal pitcher loaded the bases by walking a player Donna and I had nicknamed Jewels. Jewels was solid at third base but had moved over to pitch earlier in the game in relief of a starter whose five-inning longevity owed much to overzealous batters.
Appropriately, the hooting, cheering, howling, jeering, singing and screeching got louder as the outcome weighed heavier. The dejected shortstop kicked the hard dry stubble underfoot, and a coach in sweat pants, his body shaped like a question-mark, made hapless attempts to appeal to one of the umpires, for what, I had no idea.
Then, suddenly, arguments popped up around the field like little wildfires. The fans went absolutely loco. This went on for a while before the game resumed, with the bases still loaded. The batter's forearm muscles twitched. He wagged his bat around like a ceiling fan. He toed the ground with his forward foot.
Then the pitch. Heavy thundering swing: "THWAK!"
Every outfielder turned and began running. Fans exploded all over the field as one, two, three, four players strode across home plate.
St. Lucia had beat Arsenal 9-7 -- I think.
As I stood watching the scene, grinning in awe, my mind replayed Russ Hodges' crow of frantic elation: "The Giants won the pennant! The Giants won the pennant! The Giants won the pennant! Oh my God, I can't believe it ..."
It wasn't Bobby Thomson rounding the bases on a dried-out, sun-baked, Third World ball field. But it didn't have to be. That's one reason why, even now, with major-league baseball being played in my own neighborhood, I think of Nicaragua from time to time.
Diana Nelson Jones receives e-mail at djones@post-gazette.com.
E-mail this story 
