The sky had turned green and angry. What couldn’t be seen of the horizon beyond the heavy swaying of midsummer trees was reflected in the mirrored buildings of downtown: crisp images of the impending storm; a maelstrom foreseen in the crystal ball of urban architecture; a static crackle of electricity in the blanket of heat over the park.

Of course, we kept playing.

The Advertising League was just one of a hundred softball confederations around the city aimed at young professionals whose sporting spirit was buoyed by beer and a barely concealed disaffection toward their creative competitors. I had been a ringer for my team—a Mormon typesetter, in fact, by the name of Grubbs—until the league decreed that players who had participated illegally for more than three years would be grandfathered in under their real names and occupations.

My four-year-old son William—he was called Willie back then—came to the games with me. He liked to play in the hard red dirt of Piedmont Park and drink the team’s orange Gatorade. He had befriended a homeless man named Beer-Can-Billy who would push his shopping cart across the scorched grass to share our beer and collect the empties. One of the treasures in his buggy was a red fire truck, and he let Willie play with it, saying each time, loudly, “My name is William, too, and you can borrow my truck any time you want!”

So, while Atlanta’s young advertising community—these bright and pretty twenty- and thirty-somethings—stretched their toned muscles in a ritual celebration of good fortune, Willie made siren noises behind the backstop, and Beer-Can-Billy drank. If you looked across the park, you could see this scene playing out on all the diamonds, each similarly populated by a curious mix of the affluent and the homeless, tenuously connected by alcohol and a slightly vertiginous familiarity.

We had ignored the initial distant rumbles of thunder, and when the storm sliced through the thick air to deliver its first sulfurous explosion, it was on us before we knew it. As a ball was lifted toward me in left field, I sprinted right past it to sweep up my boy and head for the covered pavilion a hundred yards away. Billy grabbed the fire truck and his shopping cart and pushed after us, rattling and gasping for air.

Within minutes the shelter teemed with people—softball players in colored jerseys, street people in heavy coats, random park-goers with cameras and summer reading. Lightning struck a tree next to us, and a large limb crashed to the ground. A moment of silent shock. And then the crowd cheered. It was as though we were all at a party to celebrate the power of nature and the simple joy of shared beer and cigarettes. One of the players handed a can of grape soda to my kid.

There was one other child. A dark-skinned baby boy, whose homeless mother pushed him in a stroller stuffed with a bag of their clothes and an oversized plastic package of Pampers. I had seen her before on the sidewalks downtown and had wondered if she were on her own.

Billy knew her. She’s from FRANCE. The kid’s father was an army guy with no morals that run off. She don’t even speak no English.

For her own part, the mother declined the ballplayers’ offers of beer and cigarettes, waving them off with a thin smile. She was more intent on soothing her baby, whose feet twitched nervously at the noise.

The storm raged. The rain came at us sideways, pushing all of us behind a long wooden picnic table as red rivulets of clay snaked across the concrete pad on which we stood. The giant oak next to the shelter had already lost one limb and was creaking loudly with every gust.

Yeah, man, Billy and his friends said. What she really needs is some money for some food, maybe a place to stay for the night.

I did some quick calculation, trying to determine how much money I would need in my wallet to cover Willie’s weekly Yoo-Hoo Chocolate and McDonald’s Happy Meal. Then I approached her with the rest. I think it was twenty-four bucks.

God bless you man, one of the bigger guys said to me. Jesus is seen that, he said.

I find myself wondering what happened to that woman and that child. She might have been twenty-five then, and the baby would be older than that now. In my more cynical moments I wonder if it went to drink for her or others, if she was able to protect the money, really get something to eat, maybe find some shelter—or if it found its way down and out of her life without contributing nourishment or comfort beyond the simple deadening of pain.

I also wonder why, as a group, these scores of bright young minds—these best-of-the-best thinkers and creators of public and commercial perception, these competent drivers of mass behavior—couldn’t immediately and decisively respond to the needs of this woman, her baby, and the cast of ragged characters around her. An uprising of sorts. Or some concrete statement of compassion or commitment. I don’t doubt their gentle hearts. I simply wonder at our collective inability to muster a miracle.

Except that one did happen.

As the skies began to brighten and the rain settled to a light drizzle, we decided to make our way out under the dripping trees and back along the leaf-strewn pathway to the parking lot. The ebullience of our group had disappeared with the gusts of dangerous excitement, and the people began to gather up their things into bat bags, coolers, knapsacks and shopping carts. The party was over.

Bat on my shoulder, I stepped over the puddles of muddy water as my son splashed flat-footed into them, and we caught up with the young woman pushing her baby toward the park exit. I took two or three steps before I realized Willie had stopped. I turned around.

He was standing over the stroller. Gently, he put his hand on the baby’s head, as if to feel the texture of the dark tight curls.

Hey, baby. He said it ever so matter-of-factly.

The baby’s knotty muscles relaxed. His fists unclenched. His face unfolded into a wide, gummy and most beautiful grin. Merci, his mother said to my child.

And so I realize. Strength in numbers is nothing but the collected power of tiny souls.

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