On the playing fields, the sun was relentless. Even when clouds passed overhead the humidity was more than enough to make things uncomfortable.
"The heat, I don't know how I stand it," said a beleaguered Baraldi after pitching 12 innings to a group of children. "If I didn't love baseball so much, I sure wouldn't be out here."
As scorching heat sprawls across the country - producing record-breaking temperatures, drought, ozone gas and fear of the greenhouse effect - any activity other than sitting in the basement with a bottle of soda becomes taxing.
Yet some people - especially kids - ignore the heat to pursue their usual summer schedules.
For others, no matter what the temperature, summertime offers pleasures ranging from a vacation on a working farm to a nostalgic night at the drive- in.
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For the baseball players at East High School, the summer schedule means camp. Billy Cleary, a 9-year-old from West Whiteland, spent the last few weeks alternating between a soccer camp, a basketball camp, and was finishing up with a week at baseball camp.
Cleary - and others gathered at Coach Baraldi's baseball diamond - said the heat meant nothing to them. "What heat?" he asked, moments before batting his second home run of the afternoon, and running breakneck around the bases.
The temperatures certainly didn't seem to affect their performances. Among the 7-year-olds, strikeouts were as rare as front teeth.
"Those who really love baseball will be out here in 200-degree heat," said Don O'Brien, 20, a counselor. "I think the heat limbers them up."
Still, some of the baseball players longed for cooler - and wetter - sports. Paula Oakes, an 11-year-old from Downingtown and the only girl at the camp, said she joined a swimming team just to be able to cool off during the day. Mike Hamilton, 11, of Bethel, said he longed to be back at the Boy Scout camp he attended in the Poconos earlier this month, where he could cool his heels alternately in a swimming pool and a lake.
"It's tough to be back," he said while seated with other campers around a water cooler between innings. "Very."
By the end of the day, Baraldi was ready for a cooler site, or at least one with shade.
"I had four errors," he said, shaking his head. "Must be time to cool off."
In Coatesville, some campers found a way to be active and keep cool: Playing basketball in an air-conditioned building.
At Camp Carefree, sponsored by the Easter Seal Foundation, a group of nine learning disabled and physically handicapped children gathered at a basketball clinic that was part of a weeklong series of activities including a talent show and swimming lessons.
Todd Walton, a 13-year-old from Sadsbury who has cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair, got some help from a counselor to make a foul shot. After two tries, the ball went in the basket, and Walton's friends cheered.
"Summer's my favorite time of the year," said Walton, who added that he spends much of his free time in the water - either in a swimming pool at the camp or in a river near his home. "I could stay in the water all day."
Susan Mateka, the director of the day camp, which is held in the Child Development Center, said summer camp provides a break from the frustrations of the school year.
"They almost knock me over when I take attendance after they get off the morning bus," she said.
Families in search of a summer vacation occasionally head to a farm in Chester County, where they can rent a place to stay and milk a cow or bale some hay.
Elmer and Vera Rohrer own a 153-acre dairy farm on a rural hillside a few miles south of Cochranville, past the Russelville Grange, past a farm that advertises "pick your own" nectarines and past a sign that offers "cute kittens" for $2. They welcome visitors.
"People from the city seem to like to come here and get away from things for a while," said Vera Rohrer. The farm is so peaceful, she said, that the occasional passing car was once a topic of conversation in the evenings.
Guests at the Rohrer farm can rent a small cabin built at the edge of the woods, next to a pond with an inflatable tire raft. The cabin was built 22 years ago by Vera's father.
As the sun rises, the guests can either stay asleep or rise to help with the chores. One guest recently walked up the road to an Amish farm every day to help bale hay after a cutting.
Last week, Carl and Carol Papino of Rhode Island stayed at the farm with their three children. Within hours of their arrival, they visited the milking parlor in the barn to watch the afternoon farm ritual as four Holsteins were hooked up to milking machines.
Their son, Matthew, 7, learned how to milk a cow by hand, to his parents' delight.
"His friends will certainly want to hear about that when we go home," Carl Papino said. "He's certainly never done anything like that before."
There are other simple pleasures: tasting raw milk, feeding a new-born goat
from a milk bottle and taking a swim in the pond.
"It's a farm pond and a little yucky. You might want to wear your sneakers," Vera Rohrer said, "but at least it's cool."
After the heat of the day has broken, some people from Chester County head south over the Delaware County border to the Route 202 Drive-In. Long a landmark, the movie theater is one of only three drive-ins left in the Philadelphia suburbs.
"You come here, and it feels almost like 1965," said Pat Dickerson, 38, of West Chester, who drove to the drive-in in a convertible with her husband, Dick, 41.
The two met in 1965, she said, and spent many of their dates at the drive- in, watching James Bond movies and horror favorites such as Night of the Living Dead.
"We love it when the stars are out and the moon is up," she said. "In the summer, it's a very mellow evening."
Attending the drive-in on a weekend requires some stamina because three movies are shown each night. The theater closes at 2 a.m. or later, but the Dickersons - who sometimes take their 10-year-old son, and his pajamas, in the back seat - planned on staying to the very end.
"We're die-hards," said Dick Dickerson.
Still, the loyalty of drive-in fans doesn't do much to preserve the theaters themselves, the last of which are falling victim to high real estate prices. The Route 202 Drive-In's future is unclear, said the manager Fred Mayes, who has worked part-time at drive-ins since 1963.
The projectionist, Franny Campbell, a 20-year-veteran of the business, said the future looks dimmer than an unpainted movie screen.
"I've worked here for five years, and every year they say the theater will close," he said.
That's a shame, he said, because drive-ins "are the way people were meant to watch movies."
"No matter how hot," he said, "this is all part of the endless summer."
