Before I can finish teasing him, he nudges his shoulder hard against mine and snatches the ball from my hand, somehow without our hands even touching. “Funny,” he says dryly, but he’s smirking as he tosses the ball up into the air and swiftly catches again. “So,” he says, his voice deeper than it was a second ago, “baseball. Our nation’s favorite sport.”
He starts to head west along Seventy-fourth Street as I match my pace to his, crossing over Third Avenue and continuing straight along the narrow streets. The city is heaving again with traffic, both vehicles and pedestrians, and it makes me wonder what New York would be like if one day it was ever completely still. It’s impossible to imagine these streets without the cars and the people and the noise. It’s impossible to imagine this city without the buzz.
I weave my way around people as we walk, trying my best not to bump into anyone, though everyone seems determined to nudge shoulders with me. I drop back a little and focus my attention all on Tyler. “Isn’t our favorite sport football?”
“I’m not even going to answer that question,” Tyler shoots back. He holds up the baseball between his thumb and forefinger, studying it intensely, like he’s never seen one before. “Okay, Eden, here’s the deal. Baseball is simple.”
“Hit the ball and run?”
“Yes, but no,” he says. He shakes his head and lets out a sigh. “It’s not that simple.”
I expect to have to force myself to keep listening as he goes on to tell me the rules, but surprisingly I don’t have to pretend that I’m finding it interesting. The more enthusiastically Tyler talks about baseball, the more I want to play. He informs me that there are nine innings, each played in two halves. There’s no time limit. Each team has nine players. He tells me about the foul lines. The roles of the pitchers, the fielders, the batters. Something about a shortstop. He tells me what a walk is. What a strikeout is. He even tells me that there are three bases before the home plate, despite the fact that I already know this. And eventually, he talks about home runs. He talks about them as though they’re easy.
And in the time it takes for Tyler to go over all of this, tossing the ball and swinging the bat in sync with his words, we end up on the perimeter of Central Park before I even realize it.
“Oh my God.” Glancing to my right, the greenery seems to stretch on along Fifth Avenue endlessly. I try my left instead, searching for the end of it all, but it’s the exact same at this side too. We’ve crossed over Fifth Avenue without me even noticing, and as I stand on the sidewalk in front of Central Park, I’m presented with trees. Lots of them. “I knew it was huge, but I didn’t know it was this huge.”
“I think it’s like two and a half miles north to south. Maybe half a mile east to west.” I shoot him a sideways glance, surprised at his accuracy. “I read that somewhere,” he admits sheepishly, shrugging.
“Where are the ball fields?”
“There are some in the Great Lawn. Kind of in the center of the park, so we need to head this way.” He tilts up the bat and points the barrel north along Fifth Avenue. “Now’s probably a good time to tell you that I’ve only stepped foot in Central Park maybe, like, five times. So if we end up lost, it’s totally on me.”
“Five times? In a year? And you live right next to it?” I stare at him in disbelief, my lips parting as he laughs.
“It’s not my kinda thing,” he says, right before fishing out his phone from the pocket of his jeans and pulling up a map. He studies it for a while before saying, “Alright, this way.”
We make our way along the side of the wall running along the outskirts of the park until we arrive at an opening to a footpath. There are some carts on the sidewalk selling hot dogs and pretzels, but we quickly shuffle past them and into the park.
The paths are winding and are surrounded by fencing that blocks access to the trees and shrubbery, which are quite literally everywhere. Everything is so green that it almost feels as though a filter has been added. Everywhere I look, I see green, green, green. It feels so relaxing. People are jogging and cycling and rollerblading past us as we stroll along. Tyler doesn’t seem to mind that I’m walking at a leisurely pace in order to take in our surroundings, because he saunters along by my side while swinging the baseball bat gently.
“There’s a track, right? A running track?” I don’t look at him as I talk, simply because I can’t tear my eyes away from everything. It’s so calm and relaxing, nothing like Manhattan as a whole. It’s like we’ve stepped into a completely different city.