You’ll always find them in Section 101.
There’s Alexis Lavine and her husband, Phil. They’ve come to celebrate our city’s summertime ritual and watch the Greensboro Grasshoppers play in our sanctuary to baseball, NewBridge Bank Park.
Phil is the yeller. He stands. Alexis is the painter. She sits.
He’ll be there, beer in hand, a rambunctious 58-year-old fan in a crowd. He’ll shout toward the infield those lines of sandlot poetry that any diehard baseball fan can easily understand.
“Alright! Throw some strikes! Throw some strikes!’’
“Let’s hit the ball. C’mon, let’s hit the ball, Hoppers!’’
“OK, that’s a worm burner!’’
Alexis is 58, too. She and Phil just celebrated their 35th anniversary. He calls her “Lexie’’ for short. They’ve got two grown kids, and they’ve gone all over the world together.
But during their baseball nights, she barely notices her husband. She’s lost in her own world, a world of lines, shapes and colors of purple, gold and green.
She barely notices the crush of fans either. She’ll hardly look up, her face locked in concentration, as fans go back and forth, back and forth, carting arm loads of nachos and cotton candy to their seats.
Then, there are those who stare. Like the brown-haired girl from Friday night.
She sandal-slaps up from her seat near the left field line, stares at Alexis and exclaims: “What is that? Are you going to hang that up?’’
Alexis gets that a lot at the ballpark.
But she doesn’t mind. Nope. She’s in her zone — sometimes with a paintbrush between her teeth, always with a makeshift easel stretched across her jeans, as she catches colors as fast as she can.
She’s painting NewBridge Bank Park and the spiky skyline just beyond Bellemeade on cold-press paper. She gets there an hour before game time, sits in her seat and paints straight two hours — maybe three — until the light fades and she can no longer see.
She’s finished at least a half-dozen ballpark paintings that way. She’s sold them, too.
Yet, her work in Section 101 — this time, Seat 1, Row J — is not just about selling paintings. No, it’s about hanging with her husband. He’s a huge baseball fan. She’s … not.
Phil was no more than 5 when he stood on a crate and washed dishes at his kitchen sink so he could earn a nickel to buy baseball cards. He collected them, played games with them and hoarded a few of them.
Particularly Robin Roberts, a big-time pitcher with the Philadelphia Phillies.
His card? Sacred.
Phil became a bat boy, a ball player, a fan of the Phillies, Pirates and Orioles. He caught the first night game at Baltimore’s Camden Yards, and during a quiet moment, Phil did his thing.
“This is a ball park, isn’t it?’’ he yelled.
The crowd cheered.
He started playing baseball again in his late 40s with weekend camps and adult summer-league teams, and when he and Alexis moved to Greensboro in 2002, he continued to shag ground balls at second base during a 20-game summer season.
Then, the following summer, it happened. The injury.
“You think I can play in two weeks?’’ he asked the doctor.
“How much are they paying you?’’ the doctor responded.
He tore the rotator cuff in his shoulder. His playing days were done.
Still, he caught as many games as he could at NewBridge. And of course, he wanted his wife to come — even if she thought baseball was boring, had in fact been bored by it ever since their first date at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium.
She used to bring a book or watch the crowd. Then, last year, she sat beside left field and saw it — an opportunity to freeze forever our downtown and our summertime ritual bathed in a golden glow.
All from Section 101, the place where she and Phil always come together.
She paints. He yells. They’re happy. In our ball yard.
Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com
Visit www.alexislavineartist.com to find out more about Alexis Lavine’s work.
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