Steve Lundeberg

As anyone who’s ever visited this old blog once or twice before surely knows, I’m a devotee of the National Pastime and continue to play it deep into middle age,  preparing as we speak for my upcoming 17th season in the Oregon Men’s Senior Baseball League.

The other night, I was taking batting practice in our barn as my wife Roberta walked by. For some reason, I asked the question: “So if I were playing a role in a movie, would I look believable as a baseball player?”

“Yes,” she said. “Although not so believable while wearing those overalls.”

I’d forgotten that I’d transitioned into batting practice from my farm chores without changing into more sports-oriented clothes, but I still found a quick comeback.

“I’m trying to be like Roy Hobbs,” I said, evoking the star-crossed farmboy hero of “The Natural.”

Actually, what I was trying to accomplish with the overalls had nothing to with the mysterious star of the fictional New York Knights. Even though I sometimes get teased — “Hey Dad, you look like Bob the Builder,” my daughter Pam recently said — I’m sort of partial to overalls when working around our place, for a couple reasons:

– I don’t need to remember to grab a belt to keep them  from falling down, and

– If my work involves hay, overalls tend prevent a certain uncomfortable situation: Hayseeds embedded in the bellybutton.

btw, a couple years ago I allowed myself to be photographed in my overalls for a blog post dealing loosely with Henry Fonda, Tom Joad and “The Grapes of Wrath.”

If you click on the link above, you can read the post, but for some reason the photos of myself and Fonda/Joad don’t appear, so here they are again; wouldn’t want you to have to miss them:

Henry Fonda as Tom Joad.

Lundeberg as Fonda as Joad.

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