Field of Fantasies

by Rick Wilber

  And then we’ll play catch, take a little infield, some batting practice, catch a few flyballs, and just play the game, loosening up for the season to come, ready to find whatever realities, whatever truths, there are out there on the diamond. I think maybe it will happen that way.

  At that moment, I stood there, face wet in that cool spray. Then walked over to the low fence, hopped it, and jogged to the harbor. The open boat was just thirty yards away, heading toward the gray sheets of rain sweeping in from the bay. Steve was in it, rowing. I could see the happy smile on his face. It was the happiest I ever saw him. Cora, there with him, turned around to look at me. I raised my hand. They both raised theirs, and then they waved, and then the rain came down harder and the gray closed in and they were gone.

  Although he has often written about Native peoples in Canada's Hobema Reserve and has a deserved reputation for that work, W. P. Kinsella is best known for his baseball fiction. His Shoeless Joe novel in 1982, and the movie adaptation of it, Field of Dreams, in 1989, dramatically altered the landscape of baseball fiction, opening the door to speculative baseball fiction from the strange and wonderful to the supernatural and fantastic. As the writer most responsible for the mainstream popularizing of fantasy and baseball, Kinsella was extremely productive through the 1980s and 1990s before an accident nearly ended his career. He has more recently returned to writing with the award-winning Butterfly Winter. In this story from early in his career, Kinsella displays a wonderful sense of the absurd in a witty, gently mocking, study of a high-school student who finds success with Leo Durocherand the New York Giants.

  How I Got My Nickname

  W. P. Kinsella

  IN THE SUMMER OF 1951, the summer before I was to start Grade 12, my polled Hereford calf, Simon Bolivar, won Reserve Grand Champion at the Des Moines, All-Iowa Cattle Show and Summer Exposition. My family lived on a hobby-farm near Iowa City. My father who taught classics at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, and in spite of that was still the world’s number one baseball fan, said I deserved a reward—I also had a straight A average in Grade 11 and had published my first short story that spring. My father phoned his friend Robert Fitzgerald (Fitzgerald, an eminent translator, sometimes phoned my father late at night and they talked about various ways of interpreting the tougher parts of The Iliad) and two weeks later I found myself in Fitzgerald’s spacious country home outside of New York City, sharing the lovely old house with the Fitzgeralds, their endless supply of children, and a young writer from Georgia named Flannery O’Connor. Miss O’Connor was charming, and humorous in an understated way, and I wish I had talked with her more. About the third day I was there I admitted to being a published writer and Miss O’Connor said “You must show me some of your stories.” I never did. I was seventeen, overweight, diabetic, and bad-complexioned. I alternated between being terminally shy and obnoxiously brazen. I was nearly always shy around the Fitzgeralds and Miss O’Connor. I was also terribly homesick, which made me appear more silent and outlandish than I knew I was. I suspect I am the model for Enoch Emery, the odd, lonely country boy in Miss O’Connor’s novel Wise Blood. But that is another story.

  On a muggy August morning, the first day of a Giant home stand at the Polo Grounds, I prepared to travel into New York. I politely invited Miss O’Connor to accompany me, but she, even at that early date, had to avoid sunlight and often wore her wide-brimmed straw hat, even indoors. I set off much too early and though terrified of the grimy city and shadows that seemed to lurk in every doorway, arrived at the Polo Grounds over two hours before game time. It was raining gently and I was one of about two dozen fans in the ballpark. A few players were lethargically playing catch, a coach was hitting fungos to three players in right field. I kept edging my way down the rows of seats until I was right behind the Giants dugout.

  The Giants were thirteen games behind the Dodgers and the pennant race appeared all but over. A weasel-faced bat boy, probably some executive’s nephew, I thought, noticed me staring wide-eyed at the players and the playing field. He curled his lip at me, then stuck out his tongue. He mouthed the words “Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” adding something at the end that I could only assume to be uncomplimentary.

  Fired by the insult I suddenly mustered all my bravado and called out “Hey, Mr. Durocher?” Leo Durocher, the Giants manager, had been standing in the third base coach’s box not looking at anything in particular. I was really impressed. That’s the grand thing about baseball, I thought. Even a manager in a pennant race can take time to daydream. He didn’t hear me. But the bat boy did, and stuck out his tongue again.

  I was overpowered by my surroundings. Though I’d seen a lot of major league baseball I’d never been in the Polo Grounds before. The history of the place .. . “Hey, Mr. Durocher,” I shouted.

  Leo looked up at me with a baleful eye. He needed a shave, and the lines around the comers of his mouth looked like ruts.

  “What is it, Kid?”

  “Could I hit a few?” I asked hopefully, as if I was begging to stay up an extra half hour. “You know, take a little batting practice?”

  “Sure, Kid. Why not?” and Leo smiled with one comer of his mouth. “We want all our fans to feel like part of the team.”

  From the box seat where I’d been standing, I climbed up on the roof of the dugout and Leo helped me down onto the field.

  Leo looked down into the dugout. The rain was stopping. On the other side of the park a few of the Phillies were wandering onto the field. “Hey, George,” said Leo, staring into the dugout, “throw the kid here a few pitches. Where are you from, son?”

  It took me a few minutes to answer because I experienced this strange, lightheaded feeling, as if I had too much sun. “Near to Iowa City, Iowa,” I managed to say in a small voice. Then “You’re going to win the pennant, Mr. Durocher, I just know you are.”

  “Well, thanks, Kid,” said Leo modestly, “well give it our best shot.”

  George was George Bamberger, a stocky rookie who had seen limited action. “Bring the kid a bat, Andy,” Leo said to the bat boy. The bat boy curled his lip at me but slumped into the dugout, as Bamberger and Sal Yvars tossed the ball back and forth.

  The bat boy brought me a black bat. I was totally unprepared for how heavy it was. I lugged it to the plate and stepped into the right hand batter’s box. Bamberger delivered an easy, looping, batting-practice pitch. I drilled it back up the middle.

  “Pretty good, Kid,” I heard Durocher say.

  Bamberger threw another easy one and I fouled it off. The third pitch was a little harder. I hammered it to left.

  “Curve him,” said Durocher.

  He curved me. Even through my thick glasses the ball looked as big as a grapefruit, illuminated like a small moon. I whacked it and it hit the right field wall on one bounce.

  “You weren’t supposed to hit that one,” said Sal Yvars.

  “You’re pretty good, Kid,” shouted Durocher from the third base box. “Give him your best stuff, George.”

  Over the next fifteen minutes I batted about .400 against George Bamberger, and Roger Bowman, including a home run into the left centrefield stands. The players on the Giants bench were watching me with mild interest often looking up from the books most of them were reading.

  “I’m gonna put the infield out now,” said Durocher. “I want you to run out some of your hits.”

  Boy, here I was batting against the real New York Giants. I wished I’d worn a new shirt instead of the horizontally striped red and white one I had on, which made me look heftier than I really was. Bowman threw a sidearm curve and I almost broke my back swinging at it. But he made the mistake of coming right back with the same pitch. I looped it behind third where it landed soft as a sponge, and trickled off toward the stands—I’d seen the play hundreds of times—a stand-up double. But when I was still twenty feet from second base Eddie Stanky was waiting with the ball. “Slide!” somebody yelled, but I just skidded to a stop, stepping out of the baseline to avo
id the tag. Stanky whapped me anyway, a glove to the ribs that would have made Rocky Marciano or Ezzard Charles proud.

  When I got my wind back Durocher was standing, hands on hips, staring down at me.

  “Why the hell didn’t you slide, Kid?”

  “I can’t,” I said, a little indignantly, “I’m diabetic, I have to avoid stuff like that. If I cut myself, or even bruise badly, it takes forever to heal.”

  “Oh,” said Durocher, “Well, I guess that’s okay then.”

  “Yon shouldn’t tag people so hard,” I said to Stanky, “Somebody could get hurt.”

  “Sorry, Kid,” said Stanky. I don’t think he apologized very often. I noticed that his spikes were filed. But I found later that he knew a lot about E Scott Fitzgerald. His favourite story was “Babylon Revisited” so that gave us a lot in common; I was a real Fitzgerald fan; Stanky and I became friends even though both he and Durocher argued against reading The Great Gatsby as an allegory.

  “Where’d you learn your baseball?” an overweight coach who smelled strongly of snuff, and bourbon, said to me.

  “I live near Iowa City, Iowa,” I said in reply.

  Everyone wore question marks on their faces. I saw I’d have to elaborate. “Iowa City is within driving distance of Chicago, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and there’s minor league ball in Cedar Rapids, Omaha, Kansas City. Why, there’s barely a weekend my dad and I don’t go somewhere to watch professional baseball.”

  “Watch?” said Durocher.

  “Well, we talk about it some too. My father is a real student of the game. Of course we only talk in Latin when we’re on the road, it’s a family custom.”

  “Latin?” said Durocher.

  “Say something in Latin,” said Whitey Lockman, who had wandered over from first base.

  “The Etruscans have invaded all of Gaul,” I said in Latin.

  “Their fortress is on the banks of the river,” said Bill Rigney, who had been filling in at third base.

  “Velle est posse,” I said.

  “Where there’s a will there’s a way” translated Durocher.

  “Drink Agri Cola. . .” I began.

  “The farmer’s drink,” said Sal Yvars, slapping me on the back, but gently enough not to bruise me. I guess I looked a little surprised.

  “Most of us are more than ballplayers,” said Alvin Dark, who had joined us. “In fact the average player on this squad is fluent in three languages.”

  “Watch?” said Durocher, getting us back to baseball. “You watch a lot of baseball, but where do you play?”

  “I’ve never played in my life,” I replied, “But I have a photographic memory. I just watch how different players hold their bat, how they stand. I try to emulate Enos Slaughter and Joe DiMaggio.”

  “Can you field?” said Durocher.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I’ve always just watched the hitters. I’ve never paid much attention to the fielders.”

  He stared at me as if I had spoken to him in an unfamiliar foreign language. “Everybody fields,” he said. “What position do you play?”

  “I’ve never played,” I reiterated. “My health is not very good.”

  “Cripes,” he said, addressing the sky. “You drop a second Ted Williams on me and he tells me he can’t field.” Then to Alvin Dark: “Hey, Darky, throw a few with the kid here. Get him warmed up.”

  In the dugout Durocher pulled a thin, black glove from an equipment bag and tossed it to me. I dropped it. The glove had no discernible padding in it. The balls Dark threw hit directly on my hand, when I caught them, which was about one out of three.

  “Ouch!” I cried. “Don’t throw so hard.”

  “Sorry, Kid,” said Alvin Dark and threw the next one a little easier. If I really heaved I could just get the ball back to him. I have always thrown like a non-athletic girl. I could feel my hand bloating inside the thin glove. After about ten pitches, I pulled my hand out. It looked as though it had been scalded.

  “Don’t go away, Kid,” said Leo. “In fact why don’t you sit in the dugout with me. What’s your name anyway?”

  “W P. Kinsella,” I said.

  “Your friends call you W?”

  “My father calls me William, and my mother...” but I let my voice trail off. I didn’t think Leo Durocher would want to know my mother still called me Bunny. “Jeez,” said Durocher. ‘You need a nickname, Kid. Bad.”

  “I’ll work on it,” I said.

  I sat right beside Leo Durocher all that stifling afternoon in the Polo Grounds as the Giants swept a doubleheader from the Phils, the start of a sixteen-game streak that was to lead to the October 3, 1951 Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff. I noticed right away that the Giants were all avid readers. In fact, the New York Times Best Seller Lists, and the Time and Newsweek lists of readable books and an occasional review were taped to the walls of the dugout. When the Giants were in the field I peeked at the covers of the books the players sometimes read between innings. Willie Mays was reading The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat. Between innings Sal Maglie was deeply involved in Carson McCullers’s new novel The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. “I sure wish we could get that Cousin Lyman to be our mascot,” he said to me when he saw me eyeing the bookjacket, referring to the hunchbacked dwarf who was the main character in the novel. “We need something to inspire us,” he added. Alvin Dark slammed down his copy of Requiem for a Nun and headed for the on-deck circle.

  When the second game ended, a sweaty and sagging Leo Durocher took me by the arm. “There’s somebody I want you to meet, Kid,” he said. Horace Stoneham’s office was furnished in wine-coloured leather sofas and overstuffed horsehair chairs. Stoneham sat behind an oak desk as big as the dugout, enveloped in cigar smoke.

  “I’ve got a young fellow here I think we should sign for the stretch drive,” Durocher said. “He can’t field or run, but he’s as pure a hitter as I’ve ever seen. He’ll make a hell of a pinch hitter.”

  “I suppose you’ll want a bonus?” growled Stoneham.

  “I do have something in mind,” I said. Even Durocher was not nearly so jovial as he had been. Both men stared coldly at me. Durocher leaned over and whispered something to Stoneham.

  “How about $6,000,” Stoneham said.

  “What I’d really like ...” I began.

  “Alright, $10,000; but not a penny more.”

  “Actually; I’d like to meet Bernard Malamud. I thought you could maybe invite him down to the park. Maybe get him to sign a book for me?” They both looked tremendously relieved.

  “Bermie and me and this kid Salinger are having supper this evening,” said Durocher. “Why don’t you join us?”

  “You mean J. D. Salinger?” I said.

  “Jerry’s a big Giant fan,” he said. “The team Literary Society read Catcher in the Rye last month. We had a panel discussion on it for eight hours on the train to St. Louis.”

  Before I signed the contract I phoned my father.

  “No reason you can’t postpone your studies until the end of the season,” he said, “It’ll be good experience for you. You’ll gather a lot of material you can write about later. Besides, baseball players are the real readers of America.”

  I got my first hit off Warren Spahn, a solid single up the middle. Durocher immediately replaced me with a pinch runner. I touched Ralph Branca for a double, the ball went over Duke Snider’s head, hit the wall and bounced halfway back to the infield. Anyone else would have had an inside the park homer. I wheezed into second and was replaced. I got into 38 of the final 42 games. I hit 11 for 33, and was walked four times. And hit once. That was the second time I faced Warren Spahn. He threw a swishing curve that would have gone behind me if I hadn’t backed into it. I slouched off toward first holding my ribs.

  “You shouldn’t throw at batters like that,” I shouted, “someone could get seriously hurt. I’m diabetic, you know.” I’d heard that Spahn was into medical texts and interested in both human and veterinary medicine.r />
  “Sorry,” he shouted back. “If I’d known I wouldn’t have thrown at you. I’ve got some good liniment in the clubhouse. Come see me after the game. By the way I hear you’re trying to say that The Great Gatsby is an allegory.”

  “The way I see it, it is,” I said. “You see the eyes of the optometrist on the billboard are really the eyes of God looking down on a fallen world .. .”

  “Alright, alright,” said the umpire, Beans Reardon, “let’s get on with the game. By the way, Kid, I don’t think it’s an allegory either. A statement on the human condition, perhaps. But not an allegory.”

  The players wanted to give me some nickname other than “Kid.” Someone suggested “Ducky” in honour of my running style. “Fats” said somebody else. I made a note to remove his bookmark between innings. Several other suggestions were downright obscene. Baseball players, in spite of their obsession with literature and the arts, often have a bawdy sense of humour.

  “How about ‘Moonlight,’ ” I suggested. I’d read about an old time player who stopped for a cup of coffee with the Giants half a century before, who had that nickname.

  “What the hell for?” said Monty Irvin, who in spite of the nickname preferred to be called Monford or even by his second name Merrill. “You got to have a reason for a nickname. You got to earn it. Still, anything’s better than W P.”

  “It was only a suggestion,” I said. I made a mental note not to tell Monford what I knew about his favourite author, Erskine Caldwell.

  As it turned out I didn’t earn a nickname until the day we won the pennant. As every baseball fan knows the Giants went into the bottom of the ninth in the deciding game of the pennant playoff trailing the Dodgers 4—1.