By Colter Hettich, Features Editor

I fell into a hole in the world.

Around 2 p.m. last Sunday, a group of men, young and old alike, gathered in a grassy field in the Buffalo Gap Historic Village. Donning ivy caps, knickers and knee-high socks, the players arrived with nothing but a few wooden bats and a baseball.

Every other Sunday on this field, the game of baseball exists as it did in 1860. The dust blowing into your mouth serves as a reminder that you’re not dreaming. No scoreboard. No gloves. No home runs. Just a passion for something more than a game.

These men would tell anyone about their passion for researching vintage baseball and perhaps collecting baseball memorabilia. That’s what they told me.

But something else drives this assorted bunch to play month after month, year after year.

I could not literally see it, but I could see it. Competition and camaraderie saturated the air; there was no escaping a disputed call ending in high-fives and laughter.

They had found a hole in the world, and I fell in after them.

They have lives just like me. They have pressures and expectations just like me. They have relationships and problems just like me.

Yet together on that field, playing like gentlemen, they honored more than tradition – they honored each other.

I can’t help but wonder if that is what it really takes.

Does it take temporarily removing ourselves from what we know?

Does it take unfamiliarity? What would it take for all of us to relax, enjoy a few moments with others and treat each other with honor?

Perhaps noise clouds our thought process.

For two or three hours that afternoon, something freed me from the blanket of noise that seems to find me everyday and cover me from horizon to horizon. My world was absent of beeps, horns, music, machines and clicks.

Beside the game, only the sounds of squabbling chickens and the perpetual, rhythmic creaking of the old windmill just outside the first base line made it to my ear.

I had forgotten that my thoughts had a sound. Maybe I am nothing like everyone else; maybe I am exactly like everyone else.

Some days I couldn’t escape noise if I were deaf. Some days I would check myself into an institution if I didn’t have noise.

Thanks to the gentlemen of the Buffalo Gap Chips, I now understand that escaping the quicksand and noise of everyday life does not necessarily mean sitting alone in silence.

It could mean a hike, a walk or even a baseball game. The experiences we all need lie humbly under our noses.