The following article was originally published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
It’s a good field, with rich history and the echoes of many games over the decades. But the field of dreams was temporarily turned into a horror Wednesday, as U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise and others were shot at a baseball practice.
I coached many a Little League game on the adjacent field and many a game for older youths on the “big field” at Eugene Simpson Stadium. My oldest boy played high school home games there for the T.C. Williams Titans. Future major league players have played high school ball on this field.
Simpson is a 64-year-old complex, set in the heart of Alexandria, just a few long home runs distant from the Potomac River in what, until Wednesday, was known as the tree-canopied, family-friendly neighborhood of Del Ray. It’s named for the family that donated the land in this historic city, one of the oldest in the nation, where the founders were known to frequent the pubs.
Like neighborhood baseball parks all over the country, Simpson is a magnet on soft spring and summer nights, when the ping of aluminum on cowhide is the cadence of life, and the cheers of young voices remind us of the unbroken string that baseball has been in our history.
Gunshots were the sound at daybreak Wednesday.
The incongruity and audacity that shattered the peace, and all its “thoughts and prayers” accoutrements that follow in these moments, has temporarily turned that soft history hard.
Simpson can never be the same again. But nothing says it has to surrender its gentle past to the violence of one.
Clark Griffith, the onetime owner of the Washington Senators, lent his grounds crew to help build Simpson before its grand opening in 1953. That was a different time in America, a year before Brown vs. the Board of Education began the desegregation of schools, including here.
The movie “Remember the Titans” tried to capture that, and it was set a scant 18 years after Simpson opened. Today, T.C. Williams High School is still a work in progress.
Griffith’s Senators were a bunch of likable losers. “Washington — first in war, first in peace, last in the American League” was the popular saying.
Today, the peace shattered, that saying feels like a quaint and naive notion from a long time ago.
Simpson “was believed to be one of the finest (fields) of its kind in the country” when Griffith’s crew and Alexandrians finished building it, one newspaper account said.
More than a thousand people showed up for opening night in 1953, the sky aglow from a $9,500, state-of-the art lighting system installed by the city. Businesses all across Alexandria had donated to help raise the $20,000 to build the field and stands around it. Spectators overflowed out of the new stands, and many hung over outfield fences to watch the first game.
The Senators’ own announcer, Arch McDonald, called that first game from a press box still fragrant with fresh lumber.
Legend was that that opening night, threatened by a heavy rain, was only able to go forward after a military officer at the Pentagon, less than four miles up the road, commandeered a helicopter to hover overhead and dry the field.
Bob Feller, the great fastballer for the Cleveland Indians, liked to come to Simpson to conduct baseball clinics when his team was in town to play the Senators.
Over the years, Simpson fell into disrepair. Games still went on, but the press box and other exterior structures crumbled.
Little League went away for awhile, then came back with a new spirit and freshness that baseball brings every year. The city and donors spiffed up the stadium, new lights were installed, and now it’s a gem again. Alexandria Little League has been one of the few in Northern Virginia to continue “teener ball,” so that kids who can’t afford to or may not make the “traveling teams” that have proliferated in recent years can still play America’s game.
In 2003, Feller — aging but still ornery — came back to rededicate Simpson Field for its 50th anniversary. He threw out the first pitch at opening day for the Alexandria Little League. It was a big deal.
He was 84 and needed help in and out of cars. But as he strode to the mound, from some deeply buried reserve, Feller summoned a little of the cocky strut that he was known for. He made a big deal of winding up that first pitch. And then he threw a strike — at the knees, over the corner.
The writer is a national correspondent for the Post-Dispatch, based in Washington, and a 30-year resident of Alexandria. Previously, he was a national correspondent and columnist for USA TODAY, and the author of “Imperfect Union,” a book about a New York Times correspondent’s search for his wounded son in the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg.