Once Upon a Fastball

by Bob Mitchell

  Maybe now’s the perfect time, thinks Kate, who up to now has not said a peep regarding the m word to her best friend and lover. Now’s perfect, because they’ll find a way to make it work despite all his issues and they love each other so much, fer chrissakes, and Love Conquers All, doesn’t it?

  She is curled up in her favorite rocking chair—comfy in her red Daffy Duck pajamas, blue terry robe, and fuzzy, fleece-lined yellow slippers—and gazes at Seth, who’s putting on his Red Wings and getting ready to return to his town house. He often stays over at Kate’s, but he’s got a meeting tomorrow with his department chairman and pressing work to do on the book and needs to be up late into the wee hours with his papers and his laptop.

  Seth has no desire in the world to leave. He’s feeling so good, between the terrific class with the bushy-tailed freshmen and the evening with Kate, and she’s looking so fine just now across from him—with that Rita Hayworth hair and those Elizabeth Taylor eyes and that Ann-Margret smile and that Brigitte Bardot body—and it’s still snowing and the snow is so gorgeous and it’s so cozy in here.

  “I had a real swell time tonight, sister,” Seth says, with his Bogie accent.

  “Me, too,” Lauren Bacall coos.

  “The piccata was poifect, just enough lemon—”

  “Seriously, Seth, you were amazing tonight. Where’d all that energy come from?”

  “Dunno. Had a great seminar with the kids today, did I tell you?”

  “Only three times.”

  “Kate?”

  “That’s me. What?”

  “I was thinking, naaah—”

  “What?”

  Kate is thinking maybe this is it, the big moment she’s been waiting for.

  “Well, would you ever keep a secret from me?”

  “Huh?” unhappy camper Kate blurts.

  “I mean, do you tell me everything?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Just wondering. You know how I’m wondering all the time. Well?”

  Seth employs all his inner strength to avoid spilling the beans concerning his 1951 visit with Papa Sol.

  Kate employs all her inner strength to avoid clenching her teeth and rushing into the kitchen to get a rolling pin so she can bop Seth one and knock some sense into him.

  “Well, I don’t know,” Kate says. “I suppose there are things I don’t talk about.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, maybe girl things, you know, stuff you might not be especially interested in. Or maybe stuff you don’t need to be thinking about. Nothing big. I’m sure there are little things I keep to myself, but that’s normal, right?”

  “I guess. Yeah, pretty normal. I’m sure all couples have their little secrets.”

  “Seth?”

  “Yep?”

  “Is there something you’d like to tell me?”

  “No, sweetie pie. I promise. Just wondering out loud.”

  For now, the agendas remain hidden, the talking is over, and the two lovebirds are reduced to chirping.

  “I love you, Seth Stein.”

  “I love you, Kate Richman.”

  Seth plants a kiss on Kate’s warm, full lips, gives her a big bear hug.

  “Seth honey, what’s that stain on your sleeve?”

  Kate’s place is only ten minutes from Seth’s, and he loves the walk between the two abodes. Snow blankets most of his Red Sox cap, including the big red B above the blue peak. He jokes to himself that he is now walking through the streets of Chicago’s South Side, because he is wearing a white Sox cap. Funny. Well, not that funny.

  Seth moseys down Oxford, past Annenberg Hall, then cuts through the Yard, past Thayer, University, and Weld, then Widener Library, and through the gate at Wigglesworth. Wigglesworth is his favorite word in the English language. Right up there with haberdasher.

  He is having an imaginary conversation with Papa Sol.

  “You know, I haven’t told a soul about the ball, not my students, not Gram, not Sammy, not even Kate—”

  “That’s my Setharoo.”

  “Not yet, that is. I’m still looking for answers. Then—”

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll do what’s right. Man’s gotta do—”

  “Not that I’m not tempted. After all, you did leave us without a word, so why the hell should I keep all your dirty laundry to myself? You sorta gave up your right to my loyalty when you left—”

  “Now, that’s a trifle harsh, Setharoo. Didn’t we have some good times? Didn’t you feel the love?”

  Again, the chicken-bone lump.

  “You know I did, Papa Sol. And that’s why I’m clamming up until I find out more. But it better be soon, because I can’t keep mum too much longer.”

  Terminating the dialogue, Seth turns left onto Mass. Ave., then straight onto Harvard Street, and now the key’s in the door.

  He can barely feel his appendages as he makes a pot of café filtre, takes off his Red Wings, and dials Sammy’s number on his cell phone.

  “Samaroo, that you?”

  “Nope, wrong again, Sherlock. It’s his mom.”

  “Hey, Julie.”

  “Hey, yourself.”

  “Listen, as long as I have you on the line, would you mind telling me why I haven’t heard from my son in almost a week?”

  “What am I, his keeper? Sammy’s twelve, and he’s a big boy. I think he can make this kind of decision all by his lonesome.”

  Seth’s cheeks become flushed, his lips tighten. Lovely facial reminders of how his ex is still a genius at pushing his buttons.

  “Well, Julie, do me a big favor and, if you can possibly force yourself, try not to say anything too mean about me to him. I’ve spent a big chunk of my life bringing that kid up and giving him my love, and I’d appreciate it if you refrained from driving any pesky wedges between him and me.”

  “You wanna speak to Sam? I don’t really have the time to listen to this—”

  “Yeah, put him on.”

  “Dad?”

  “Hey, Samaroo! How’s life?”

  “Not bad. And you?”

  “Thanks for asking. Pretty good, actually. Working hard on the book and Kate is cookin’ up a storm and next year I got a feeling the Bosox are gonna win the Series again!”

  “That’d be cool.”

  “So I haven’t heard from you in a while. Whassup?”

  “Nothin’ much. Soccer’s going good—”

  “Going well…”

  “Yeah, whatever. And school’s hard, but I’m doing pretty goo…well.”

  “That’s my Samaroo! Hey listen, how’d you like to go see the Revs play soccer down in Foxborough?”

  “Awesome. But I’ll have to ask Mom first—”

  “Sammy? Remember what we discussed last time? We don’t need to ask your mom’s permission for this. Anyway, I gotta run. Think about it, and I’ll call you again in a couple of days. Deal?”

  “Yeah, deal.”

  “Okay then. I love you—”

  “Love you, too, Dad.”

  That’s so damn sad, Seth reflects as he closes the phone. What a great kid Sammy is and how great we were together, just like Papa Sol and I were. But ever since Julie and I split to ring in the millennium, things aren’t quite the same with us. He barely ever opens up to me anymore, like he used to. She must be telling him shit….

  Seth removes his guitar from its hard black case, moves the capo up to cover the fourth fret. Nothing like a few good riffs to lift the spirit and warm the cockles.

  Sitting on his hard-backed guitar chair, with his Martin 000-28EC resting on his right thigh, Seth is in heaven. The thinness of her neck is just right for the lithe but short fingers of his left hand as they dart up and down the frets. Between sips of java, he soothes body and soul with the gentle, rhythmic back-and-forth of his right thumb as he Travis-picks his way through a medley of old bluesy licks, covering for Mississippi John Hurt, Rev. Gary Davis, Mark Spoelstra, Robert Johnson, Doc Watson, Dave Van Ronk.

  Coca
ine’s for horses, not for men

  They tell me it’ll kill me but they won’t say when

  Cocaine, run all ’round my brain…

  He gives up the double-thumb a while, does some assorted fingerpicking, comes upon Leigh Harline and Ned Washington’s classic 1940 “When You Wish Upon a Star” in his computer mind. One of his all-time favorite tunes. Having trouble working out the chord sequence, though. What the hell comes after the G and G variations in the second half of the second bar? D? Nope. D minor? Crap. Hmmm…Aha! Good ol’ F sharp diminished.

  Another sip of joe, and Seth looks down at the right sleeve of his shirt. Sees a thick yellow-brown stain, the one Kate noticed a while ago. Has no clue where it came from. Takes a whiff. Yuck. Smell is familiar, can’t quite put a name to it.

  After some mental effort, Seth identifies the mystery stain as mustard. But he hates mustard. Never eats the stuff. Another quick sniff, and he deduces that it is, in fact, ballpark mustard.

  Jumpin’ Jehosaphat.

  First the ticket stub, now the mustard stain. Did I really live in History?

  Out of the corner of his eye, Seth spies Papa Sol’s wooden box. He hasn’t noticed it since he first opened it up the other night, but now that it’s got his attention, it is beckoning to him, and he becomes a moth to its candle.

  Gotta get to my book, but first this. Just a quick gander.

  Sinking into his La-Z-Boy, Seth opens the top of the case, and there it is. The very ball Bobby Thomson cranked into the stands and into Papa Sol’s nimble left hand.

  Seth ponders the significance of this silly stitched-up hunk of horsehide. What baseball meant to Papa Sol, what it means to him, to America. Baseball, Papa Sol, History—all threads that connect themselves to one another and to Seth, like the very stitches on the ball that hold the flaps of horsehide together. So if he did travel back in time, was there a reason for it? Baseball, Papa Sol, History. A mantra that suggests that maybe there is some strange, powerful karma in the ball that is pulling him back, allowing him to discover secrets that until now have remained concealed.

  As he eyes the ball, Seth is filled with melancholy. He is sad that Papa Sol was never around to see his love for Kate blossom, to see the Red Sox finally win the Series, to see Sammy’s age turn double digits. How proud his grandfather would have been.

  Seth picks up the baseball and, onto its surface, slaps his separated index and middle fingers, a serpent’s tongue darting across the two parallel rows of crimson stitching. His thumb cradles the ball’s underbelly, and the three fingers, as if in a hypnotic trance, place themselves robotically in the curveball position. The same curve that Ralph Branca never threw to Bobby Thomson. The same one that, had Branca thrown it, might have made him the hero and Bobby the goat, instead of the other way around. On what a slender thread the vicissitudes of History hang, Seth thinks. How many major events have occurred that resulted from the age-old baseball vagaries: a bad bounce here, the wrong pitch there? History, like baseball: a game of inches.

  Seth rotates his hand with the ball in it clockwise, slowly but without releasing it, just like that curve Branca never threw.

  Whoa.

  Seth knows the drill by now: The room is spinning, now faster, and the Oz music—Dah-de-lah-de-lah—and the feeling of calm and the Beatles’ riff and now the Fantastical Historical Slide Show.

  This time, the chronological people and events passing before his eyes are different but no less fascinating. The invention of the abacus and the founding of Byzantium and Siddhartha founds Buddhism and the Peloponnesian War and Christ is born and Charlemagne dies and Erik the Red settles Greenland and Jamestown is settled and Galileo recants Copernicus and the French Revolution and Booth shooting Lincoln and the Scopes “Monkey Trial” and Churchill, FDR, and Stalin at Yalta and the Korean War and John Glenn orbiting the earth…

  And the final burst of the Beatles’ riff and the rousing, raucous, brash, clashing, strident, high-pitched, piercing, trumpety climax. And the tornado grinds to a halt. And Seth is deposited gently on the ground. It is no longer 2006.

  It is 1962.

  Seth knows it is, because he is in a kitchen on one of whose walls hangs an Official 1962 San Francisco Giants Calendar. The exposed page features a color photo of Giants manager Alvin Dark sporting a stupid-ass grin, his arm around the waist of one of his star pitchers, Juan Marichal. On the bottom half of the page is the month of October.

  Alone in the immaculate kitchen, Seth also knows that he is in Sol and Elsie’s Berkeley home, the one they moved into in ’58 to be with the Giants, the one he moved into in ’76 to be with them.

  He instantly recognizes this room where he spent so many magical hours during his formative years. And the homey, old-fashioned look, rather spiffy in its time: pink stove, pastel blue cabinets, pine paneling, Formica counters, turquoise electric skillet, manual juicer, venetian blinds.

  He crosses the kitchen to the bay window, peers out.

  Wow.

  Seth recollects how breathtaking the view was, and still is. He’s way up in the hills, the sky is clear and black and gorgeous. He gazes out at the glorious San Francisco Bay, first at Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge, then pans counterclockwise, to the twinkling lights of the city, and there’s Coit Tower and the Bay Bridge and, to his immediate left, the UC Berkeley campus with the Campanile—

  “Goddam Jints!” Solomon Stein spews from an adjacent room.

  “Sweetie, it’s just a game,” Elsie says, in a lame effort to console.

  With no caution, Seth leaves the kitchen, confident in the knowledge that he is once again invisible and inaudible.

  In the living room, he sees thirty-four-year-old Papa Sol, thirty-three-year-old Grandma Elfie, and the devilishly handsome fourteen-year-old barefoot lad with the long mop, that must be…

  Simon Stein.

  In the background, a stereo system receiver plays a Del Shannon LP.

  Papa Sol has sprouted a beard since Seth’s visit to the younger version of the carpenter, but the eleven years between visits have treated his grandfather kindly. Not a trace of gray, not an ounce heavier, not a wrinkle on his face.

  “Just a game? Maybe for you, Else, but the Jints and I, we go back a long ways.”

  “You tell ’er, Pop,” Seth’s father goads. The lad is wearing a Willie Mays T-shirt, a black Giants baseball cap with orange interlocking SF on the front, and frayed jeans with impressive holes on each knee.

  “Goddam Giants,” Sol grumbles. “It’s the World Series, against the Yanks, two games apiece, the big fifth game, tied 2–2 into the eighth, Jack Sanford’s pitching for us, he’s gone seven and a third with ten Ks, just sailing along, and pitching against Ralph Terry, who’s oh-for-four lifetime in Series decisions. And what does ol’ Jack do? Throws a gopher ball, a three-run job, to Tommy Tresh, a damn rookie! So now we’re down in the Series 3–2, in a hole. Goddam Giants! Damn Yankees!”

  “I know, honey pie,” Elsie consoles. “But think of it this way. Look at what this country is going through now, what with the Cold War and all that racial trouble. And you’re worrying about the Giants losing a ball game?”

  Del Shannon is singing “Runaway,” and Seth is feeling like one. Like he has run away from home to visit a strange, faraway land. The strangest part of which is the vision, right here and right now in this Berkeley living room, of the father he barely remembers, the dad he never got to know, the pop he never had the chance to bond with. Seth can’t take his eyes off this fourteen-year-old kid of whose loins he is the product, this adolescent who gave him life, started him off in the right direction, and then was snuffed out just like that by a goddam faulty airplane engine, robbing him of the joy of seeing his only child grow up and flourish.

  An exquisite shiver, starting from Seth’s nape, traverses the length of his spine and doesn’t stop until it reaches the tips of all ten toes.

  Simon Stein is seated in his rocking chair, facing Papa Sol on the couch.

 
“Okay, Simaroo, you ready?”

  Sol’s son nods.

  “Okay then, here goes…”

  Solomon Stein looks at Seth’s father intently, and the tension builds through his silence. And then: “Chuck!”

  Simon leaps forward out of his chair, propelled by passion. He assumes Chuck Hiller’s compressed stance in the batter’s box and then, with his imaginary bat, pretends to lay down a perfect drag bunt. Then back to his chair to await further instructions.

  “Orlando!” Sol barks.

  The fourteen-year-old lunges forward, coils up as Orlando Cepeda would, and explodes into the first sacker’s powerful swing, eyes gleaming with ferocity. Then back to his chair.

  Seth’s mouth is crowbarred open by the thrill of seeing his dad perform this baseball pantomime, the same family tradition Sol continued with Seth during his formative and adolescent years.

  Grandma Elfie beams in the background.

  The pace quickens, Papa Sol’s rapid-fire commands propelling Simon Stein out of his chair and into a succession of baseball silent movie clips, then back again to the chair.

  “Tom!”

  Simon crouches in Tom Haller’s catching position.

  “Willie!”

  Simon mimics Willie McCovey’s august and imposing left-handed batter’s stance.

  “No, the other Willie!”

  Simon giggles, then, his back to Sol, reproduces to perfection Willie Mays’s miracle, behind-the-back catch against Vic Wertz in the ’54 Series vs. Cleveland.

  Seth is taking all this History in, his fond memories of the same madcap exercise he used to perform for Papa Sol reconstituting themselves. The parallel between him and Simon Stein fills his heart as he watches the father he never knew sharing the same passion for baseball he knows so well.

  “Jimmy!”

  Jim Davenport leaps to snare a ball at the hot corner.