Field of Fantasies

by Rick Wilber

  DeRosa drank a glass of water and sighed. He felt tiredness heavy in his eyes and shoulders. Maybe the heat had gotten to him, or maybe he was still sluggish from sleeping on the balcony. He shuffled to the couch, sat, lay back and slept. He dreamed of the trees, full with thin, earth-tone eucalyptus leaves and overfull with the moist, drunken smell of spring.

  DeRosa awoke to footsteps and then the doorbell chimed. Eugene Kelly opened the door and walked in carrying an overstuffed bag of groceries. He dropped it on the counter.

  “You looked good playing ball out there, Eu,” said DeRosa, sitting up. “You’re really starting to give the ball a whack. How much do I owe you?”

  The bill came to twenty four dollars. DeRosa came up to the counter and counted out the money.

  “Thanks, Eu.”

  DeRosa stuffed the crumpled bills into Eugene’s hand, grasping the boy’s hand in his own. Eugene’s hand was smooth and small.

  “That was a great play you made behind the plate today.”

  “Yea.” Eugene shrugged. “Thanks.”

  DeRosa walked over to a closet by the door, reached in and grabbed his jacket, holding it by the collar until he had extracted another five. DeRosa saw his own shadowed face reflected in the mirror hanging inside the closet door. He thought he looked worried. Deep lines cut down his cheeks, bruises weighted under his eyes and wisps of white hair stuck out from atop his head at odd angles. He wondered what Eugene must think of him, looking the way he did. DeRosa hung the jacket back in the closet.

  “Something for you,” he said, dropping the wadded bill on the counter between them.

  “It’s too much.” Eugene turned his head.

  DeRosa backed away.

  “Take it.” He smiled and nodded his head too much.

  Eugene rubbed his nose. His face was blank, unreadable. He took the five and wiped it flat. He folded all the bills together and tucked them in his front pocket

  “I’ve got to go,” Eugene said, turning his shoulder away from DeRosa toward the door.

  “I was hoping you’d catch a few with me.” DeRosa came forward, leaned his bare forearms against the edge of the counter to support himself. He grinned at Eugene. “Still plenty of time before the game. You are coming back up for the game?”

  Eugene shrugged, nodded without turning. “I’ll be back around five. I’ve got some homework to do.”

  “Homework? You can forget about that righ t now.” DeRosa moved back into the closet. He took down a ball and glove from a shelf. The mitt was old, dark from many oilings, with short, squat fingers that barely covered DeRosa’s hand. “These are the Giants in the World Series. Doesn’t happen very often. We almost won it, you know, back in '62.”

  “Yes,” Eugene said with a trace of boredom. “If the Yankees’ second baseman doesn’t catch McCovey’s line drive in the seventh game. I know.”

  “That was Bobby Richardson, an excellent second baseman. Think about it, will you? That was twenty-seven years ago. Haven’t been back since. Besides if Whitey Lockman had just sent Matty Alou home from third on Mays’ double, McCovey wouldn’t even have gotten up to the plate.”

  “I don’t know,” Eugene said.

  “Come on.” DeRosa put his jacket on, turning the collar down. The nylon rustled as he strapped the Velcro straps around his wrists. The jacket had Giants scripted in black across the back. The orange had worn to white at the forearms. The gold lining had dirtied.

  They walked down the front stairs and set up in front of the garage. DeRosa warmed his arm up slowly, his pitches barely reaching Eugene who squatted on the balls of his feet fifteen feet away. Eugene looked bored, but then the ball started to break. It would cross the plate, flutter, and shift suddenly, all at once, exploding in all sorts of directions.

  “Could you show me that?”

  DeRosa moved forward and took the ball.

  “Hold the ball by your fingertips. Don’t use your knuckles.”

  Eugene walked out and threw the ball a couple times, nothing.

  “The ball should barely have any rotation at all,” DeRosa said. “Too much rotation or no rotation at all and nothing happens. If you throw it right, you should be able to see the ball tumble.” DeRosa demonstrated, turning the ball an inch on its axis. “Try it again.”

  The sky was clear, without a trace of clouds or wind.

  “It’s a great day,” said Eugene, wiping the perspiration from his cheek.

  “Not really,” DeRosa said. “Not really.”

  “What do you mean?” Eugene licked his lips.

  “Nothing. It’s just bad luck to have weather like this in San Francisco, that’s all. It’s no big deal. Throw the ball.”

  * * *

  DeRosa’s dream was sharp as morning light. He was sitting on the warm grass outside the stable where the milk men parked the horses after the morning run, watching Joe DiMaggio. Not the Yankee Clipper. Not yet. Not even the pride of the Seals or Galileo High School.

  DeRosa’s older brother, Monty, was hitting batting practice to a bunch of his friends, while the younger DeRosa sat in foul territory watching the players and guarding the extra equipment.

  DiMaggio played third, his usual position back then. He was tall and gawky, thin with a strong but erratic throwing arm. It was only when he batted that one could see the savage, slashing swing that would one day lead him to stardom.

  On this day, DiMaggio played more fluidly than usual, handling even the toughest short hops effortlessly with soft hands, gunning the ball over to first with perfect crisp throws. DiMaggio’s delight was obvious. Unlike his later days with the Yankees, when cameras hounded him everywhere, DiMaggio was relaxed without even a hint of self-consciousness. Baseball was his escape from the world, from his family’s fishing business, from his father.

  The morning light swirled warmly about DeRosa’s cheeks as he laid back in the shallow grass. Dom DiMaggio sat next to DeRosa, pounding his fist into his tiny child’s glove, longing for his chance to play. DeRosa picked up an extra ball, stained green from overuse, and tossed it to Dom. Dom smiled and threw the ball back, lobbing it gently, allowing his arm to loosen up slowly.

  They continued throwing the ball back and forth, looping high arcing tosses and sharp ground balls, forcing one another to move left or right into the hole or back for a high fly ball. Even as they threw, DeRosa knew Dom would be great, eventually following his older brothers, Vince and Joe, into the major leagues, leaving DeRosa behind to scan the box scores over his morning cereal before making his way to work.

  * * *

  DeRosa awoke with a start. The kitchen door was rattling loudly. He stood up and a force bigger than himself knocked him back. Spider web cracks burst suddenly through the plaster board walls with a crack like the snap of a whip. A green glass ashtray fell from a kitchen counter, ringing off the linoleum. Stacks of magazines slid from a shelf and spread across the floor. A glass on the table beside DeRosa rocked, waves of brown ice tea sloshing over the rim, tipped and spilled, clanging on the table. Plates and glasses clinked in the kitchen cupboards and the whole house, the walls and floors, and below the floors, rumbled like heavy machinery.

  Before DeRosa struggled to his feet again, it was over. He was breathing heavy.

  “That was a big one,” he said.

  Books leaned askew on their shelves; ice tea drained noisily from the table to the hardwood floor; a photograph finally tipped off the edge of a mantel and fluttered down to where the baseball rocked, slowed, stopped.

  “The game was just starting,” Eugene said.

  Eugene surveyed the room from where he sat in front of the blank television set. Eugene knelt in front of the television and clicked the on/off button several times. DeRosa turned a switch on a lamp beside the couch. Stepping over the puddle of ice tea, he walked over to the open counter between living room and kitchen and picked up the phone receiver

  “Dial tone,” he said. “But no power.”

  Eugene stood and walked
, steadying himself along the wall and doorframe, into the bathroom.

  “Let’s go outside,” DeRosa called, retrieving his Giants jacket from the couch and shuffled over to the door. Eugene emerged from the bathroom.

  “What about the mess?”

  “Leave it, come on.”

  They walked downstairs and out into the street. Neighbors were emerging, or standing staring at their houses; a group had gathered down the street around a portable radio to listen to reports and exchange stories about the quake.

  “You O.K.?” someone asked without bothering to stop, moving toward the throng. A man with a wrench offered to turn off DeRosa’s gas line. DeRosa conferred with him, then stared up at his house. No cracks along the foundation. Eugene returned from talking with his mother.

  “Look,” Eugene said. “What’s that?”

  DeRosa turned and looked out from Telegraph Hill. Off to the left, towering over the row of houses and trees, he saw something dark and menacing. He had to walk further down the street before the image took shape. Thick smoke mushroomed over the Marina.

  DeRosa headed for an old white fifty-eight Cadillac and unlocked the driver’s seat.

  “Get in. I’ll turn on the radio.”

  They sat in DeRosa’s car and listened to the radio until the main news stories, the fire in the Marina, the cancellation of the Series, the collapse of the Bay Bridge and the 1-80 expressway, began to repeat. Out in the Pacific, the sun set— canary yellow spreading over the sea.

  “Come on,” DeRosa said. “Let’s drive.”

  “They said not to,” Eugene said. “There’s no street lights or signal lights.”

  “It’s all right. We won’t go far.”

  DeRosa started the car and pulled out into the street. Tipping over the edge, they rolled downhill.

  They drove in silence, slowing down only when something caught their attention: the fallen brick of a house front, long cracks in the sidewalk, or the long drifts of smoke rising over whatever remained of the Marina. The city was quiet as the sun melted away like margarine, sickly yellow burning to black.

  As the sky darkened, no lights came on anywhere. The city felt strange and empty, somehow different.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” DeRosa said. “A night like this could promise anything. You could remake the world on a night like this. Just fold it up and start over. Look at it. No lights to anchor it down and make you believe in it.”

  Eugene rubbed his leg and looked out the window, away from DeRosa.

  DeRosa smiled. “This is history you’re seeing. Living history.”

  Eugene didn’t respond.

  “O.K., I guess it’s time to head back.”

  “What’s that?” Eugene asked.

  “What?”

  “That.”

  A bright light lit up the sky, obvious and out of place in the dark city.

  DeRosa drove towards the light, sometimes losing it altogether behind houses and hills, sometimes just following the glare in the sky. DeRosa rolled down the dark streets, winding his way to the light, finally turning a corner and heading straight into the glare. For a moment, he couldn’t see a thing.

  “Hey,” DeRosa said.

  “What is it?”

  DeRosa leaned forward over the dash and looked up, as if getting closer would clear his vision and make the stadium and the lights resolve and disappear.

  “That’s Seal stadium.”

  “How come the lights are on?”

  “They tore it down years ago. There’s supposed to be a Safeway here now.”

  Eugene turned and looked at DeRosa.

  “I don’t understand.”

  DeRosa stared up at the lights.

  “Neither do I, but it’s really here.”

  DeRosa turned off the engine of the cay flipped off the car lights.

  “Let’s take a look,” DeRosa said, stepping out, leaving the door hanging open. He walked in front of the car and stared upward. A cheer sounded from inside.

  Eugene sat and watched DeRosa, who was smiling, bathed in an even white sheet of electric glare.

  “Let’s go in,” DeRosa said. “Sounds like there’s a game going on.”

  Eugene got out slowly, pushed his door closed with both hands. DeRosa had already swept off into the deep shadows around the edges of the stadium.

  “Wait up,” Eugene said, then hurried after him.

  They entered the ballpark along the first base line. The thick, richly colored grass, lit up by the lights, glowed like an emerald. A series of goose eggs on a narrow hand-held scoreboard in dead away centerfield showed the score tied at zero midway through the sixth inning. Seals and Oaks. Pacific Coast League.

  They found a pair of empty seats farther down the left field line among a swirl of orange pennants.

  The Seals wore white uniforms with navy pinstripes and the letters “ea” and “Is” written inside the upper and lower halves of a large letter “S” to form the word “Seals.” The Oaks wore more conventional navy blue uniforms with Oaks inscribed across the chest.

  “Pretty nice,” said DeRosa, looking around. “That’s Joe Marty, the Seals right fielder at the plate. He played a couple of years in the Major Leagues. A friend of mine once went to his bar in Sacramento, said he was the most foul-mouthed person he’d ever met. That’s what can happen, I guess, when you get to be around my age.”

  “Who’s pitching?” asked Eugene.

  “I don’t know,” DeRosa admitted. The Oakland pitcher looked young, baby fat still resting heavy in his cheeks. “Might be Ed Walsh, Jr.”

  Marty lined a two-two pitch down the line at third. The third baseman dove to his right, picked the ball off the short hop and gunned a throw to the bag at first, beating Marty easy.

  “Nice play,” said Eugene. “These guys are good.”

  “Yes.” DeRosa smiled, not the shy smile that Eugene was used to, but rather a big grin.

  A Seals left-hander lined out to deep right for the third out of the inning. The Oakland outfielder caught the ball on the dead run, took off his glove and threw it behind him as he walked off the field into the dugout.

  “What’s all this doing here?” Eugene asked.

  “What? This game? I don’t know.”

  “Are you here. I mean, do you think you might have been to this game before?”

  “You mean as a kid? Maybe. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  DeRosa scanned the people in the seats around them.

  “What did you look like then?” Eugene asked.

  “A lot like I do now, only younger.”

  “That’s a big help. What color was your hair?”

  An Oaks batter lashed a line drive into the gap between right and center. DiMaggio seemed miles away as he charged the ball, closing the gap slowly with long, loping strides. DiMaggio caught up with the ball suddenly on the third hop, extended his glove effortlessly across the width of his body, changed directions in midstride, and threw a strike to second base, holding the batter to a long single. The crowd stood to cheer.

  “I thought he didn’t have a chance,” said Eugene.

  “He made plays greater than that when he played for the Yankees. The fans in New York took it for granted after a while.”

  DeRosa’s palms began to sweat and his body felt light and a little strange. He rubbed his hands against his legs, his nerves starting to feel the heightened tension of a scoreless game.

  Marty doubled off the right-centerfield wall to start the eighth, but was thrown out at third on a perfect relay throw from the Oaks second baseman who went out onto the outfield grass in rightfield to take the throw.

  Still tied, 0-0 with one out in the ninth, the Seals’ shortstop, Hal Rhyne, beat out a bunt down the first baseline, bringing up DiMaggio. DiMaggio knocked the heel of his bat against the ground, dislodging the circular weight around the barrel and walked intently toward the plate, head down, but with his eyes up, tracking the pitcher.

  “Watch this,”
said DeRosa, pointing.

  DiMaggio dug in, redistributing the dirt around the back of the batter’s box. He fouled the first pitch straight back, missing the ball by less than an inch. His swing was pure and savage—his weight shifting forward, his face contorting in expectation.

  The second pitch, just off the outside corner was called a ball. DiMaggio stepped out of the box, looked over at the third base coach who flashed a long series of signals.

  DiMaggio took a sharp curve ball, just catching the inside comer above the knees, for another strike.

  DeRosa shifted nervously in his seat. Eugene rubbed his hands together.

  DiMaggio ripped a line drive down the third base line that just hooked foul. He fouled off the next couple of pitches before laying off a ball in the dirt—

  evening the count at 2—2.

  “I don’t know,” muttered Eugene.

  DiMaggio stepped back out of the box, turned to face the fans behind home-plate. His face was young; his hair was dark. He looked more uncertain than DeRosa ever remembered seeing him before. He couldn’t be much more than nineteen or twenty years old, his whole life ahead of him.

  “Get him, Joe,” yelled DeRosa.

  DiMaggio stepped back in, took a fastball, high, 3—2. The fans rose to their feet.

  The catcher threw the ball back to the pitcher; walked slowly out to join him on the mound. The manager popped his head out of the dugout, walked out toward the mound, pausing for a second as he passed over the foul line. He said a few words to his catcher, looked over to the bullpen where a pair of righthanders warmed up, before focusing his attention back to his pitcher, gesturing with sharp movements of his hands how he wanted DiMaggio pitched. At last, the home plate umpire broke up the meeting, starting in toward them, waving his arms.

  The manager jogged slowly back to the dugout. The pitcher milled about behind the plate, picked up the rosin bag while the catcher settled back behind the plate. The fans stood up. DiMaggio stepped in.

  The catcher stuck his bare right hand out to his side. The crowd booed loudly.