Yesterday, as soon as the rain stopped, I took myself on a walk.  I’d been cooped up all day and needed to blow off some steam.  I began my .6 mile course around the mountain when two cars passing each other forced me off the road and into the playground.  It would have been just another shortcut if I hadn’t noticed something.

There, in the grass, far from the tennis court, sat a lonely tennis ball.

It was obvious what had happened.  Someone had hit the ball out of the court and hadn’t retrieved it.  If it hadn’t been such a beautiful, new and un-chewed tennis ball, I might have thought it was a dog’s toy.  But it was nearly pristine.  And given that it had rained most of the morning, I’d have expected it to look downtrodden and forlorn.  It didn’t.  In fact, it was so fresh that it looked ready to play.  I could almost hear it calling to me.

I was prompted to pick it up and indeed discovered that it was perfect.  I decided that the perfect place for a tennis ball was obviously the tennis court.  I’m kind of intuitive like that.  It’s a gift.  So, I did what any kid with a ball would do.  I threw it back where it belonged – badly.

Instead of arching beautifully over the fence, it hit the top and dropped short – straight into a deep gap between the fence and a six-foot-tall retaining wall.  I had taken this perfect plaything from a playground and imprisoned it behind a chain link fence.  Doomed to play no more.  Again, I could almost hear it calling for help.

I sighed, walked around through the gate and looked at the now depressing tennis ball.  I simply couldn’t leave it there.  It was too perfect.  Too ready to play.  Too lonely.  After pondering for a minute, I found a stick and slowly, a few inches at a time, nudged the ball toward the end of the wall were I could rescue it.  After standing up a few times at the sound of a passing car to pretend I wasn’t doing what I was so clearly doing, I got the ball out.

It was joyful.  After being in jail, it wanted to play.  So, I obliged.  I mean, how could you deny a request like that from a newly released ex-con tennis ball?  But I had no racket.  And no partner.  What to do?

First I tried bouncing it.  It was as resilient as one popped straight from a vacuum-sealed can.  I tried dribbling it and it seemed to enjoy that.  I dribble higher and began to move.  Then I tried shifting hands.  After a few awkward moments I got it down.  Then I tried patterns.  My heart rate kicked up a notch.

Given my failure at throwing, I decided to practice that.  It’s not easy to throw a tennis ball.  They start off arching like a baseball and then lose inertia as the air grabs the nap and fall short.  Just like what happened to my earlier throw.  So I worked on my technique. (Really? Tennis ball throwing technique?)  Yep.  And I got better at it.  I wasn’t doing this for me, after all.  It was for the recently and unjustifiably imprisoned ball, you see.

I tried juggling, which my wife is as good at as I am bad.  But I thought I could handle one ball.  Right again.  But a little unsatisfying.  So I drop-kicked it.  As it arched high into the sky, I imagined it let out a small cry of glee.  Or was that me?  It dropped to the court with a satisfying plop and a new game was born – tennis ball soccer.

I tried all my old (OK, very old) college moves.  I tried to kick it over the net but couldn’t quite get enough loft.  Then I added some top spin and kicked it through a gap beneath the net.  As it blazed across the green concrete it hit a rain puddle and sprayed a magnificent rooster tail high into the air.  That was fun for several more kicks and led to the game of not letting the ball stop – no matter what!

I quickly changed the rules to mostly not letting it stop after a few furious jogs down the court.  Huffing as I was, it was still a blast.  Joy, even.  And as I stopped to catch my breath I thought, how could I leave this great ball, this giver of joy, out here alone on the court after all of this?  It was personal now.

Of course I couldn’t.  It now sits here on my desk as I write.  We occasionally reminisce about our adventures – the homelessness, the jail break, the celebration – and we smile.  Good times.  I’ve been fantasizing about getting a racquet.  Not for me, you understand.  Just to let him be what he was meant to be – a ball in flight – and joyful.

Just in case you think I’m one tennis ball shy of a match, here’s a video by play scientist Stuart Brown.  Yes, I said it – a play scientist.  Now, how do you get a job like that?

(You’ll want to hit the fullscreen button for the pictures.)