On Deck
A line of trees grow on Canarsie Pier in Brooklyn. The son of an electrician and a nurse, Garrett Weir is just a sapling himself, young and wiry, but the boy shows a lot of promise. It’s 1995. He’s not quite 14 as he casts into the surf. After a beat, he leans his rod on the wrought-iron railing and stares intently at the water. As his mind wanders, the shimmering rollers start to take shape. Where only foam was just a second ago a sandy mound has risen. Kentucky bluegrass sprouts. Faceless shadows dig their cleats into a newly formed infield, staring him down. He picks up his rod. He imagines a fast ball, and that satisfying sound a baseball makes when it connects with a wooden bat at just the right spot. Thwack! His name lighting up the JumboTron. A crowd erupting in cheers. Fishing is his escape, but baseball is his calling, and together the two will propel him to heights he could only dream.
The trees have been replaced, and the boy is now a man, but not much else has changed as I stop by Canarsie Pier 25 years later. It’s 3 p.m. on a sun-dappled Friday, the height of summer, and the water’s edge is a flurry of activity. It’s not a pier as you might imagine—a long, wooden dock that juts out into the ocean—but a massive concrete peninsula with a parking lot in the center that is ringed by a shaded inner promenade. I park kitty-corner to a derelict
