Seeing Green

It's my favorite moment going to a ball game (and if you have to ask what kind of ball game, you're reading the wrong blog). As you walk inside the concourse, looking for your aisle, you eventually get to it and it's usually a bit of an upward grade so you ease up that slight rise and then it's there--your first view of the field you'll focus on for the rest of the game. It's always a thrill, a reminder that adrenalin can ooze slowly, that first glimpse of green, and if you're lucky, a player or two.

Getting that moment on film is what made it clear Ron Shelton knew something about baseball when Bull Durham begins. He doesn't spend much time romancing the since torn down Durham Athletic Park (there's a HOK stadium there now, of course, for we prefer our recreated history to the real thing), but he has the camera do the concourse prowl and the first field peek.

It's almost enough that I want to forgive him for helping make Kevin Costner a star.