A Deep River Year
July 9,  2014

There we were, looking down on that wonderful emerald green field in the midst of the concrete city.   It was Fenway Park in Boston, a mystical place where a summer night means baseball.   We were up above third base, in seats which were a gift from my sons who had heard that the Chicago Cubs would be coming  to New England for a rare inter-league game between these two ill-fated teams.   I grew up rooting for the Cubs, as had my father, believing that someday they might have a winning team.   It has not happened yet.   In fact, it has been 106 years since the Cubs won the World Series.  But on this night in July the Cubs' pitcher was throwing a no-hitter into the eighth inning.  We, these men tied together by blood and story, joined in the chants and cheers and watched night fall over the great green wall in left field where so much Boston magic has taken place.  

I thought of my father-in-law, who grew up cheering for these Red Sox, and especially for his idol, the great Ted Williams.  In some sense, my father-in-law was a boy who never grew up.   He dreamed of playing baseball forever, and once he had a chance.  He was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers, and he made his way up through the minor leagues for a while.  He was a star for the Sheboygan Indians and remembers playing for the Greenwood (Mississippi) Dodgers, where in the heat of the Gulf summer they played in short pants as the girls in the grandstand hooted.     Once, in spring training, he caught a fly ball that Willie Mays hit to the wall in center field.  But because of an injury, he never made it to the Big Leagues.    Still, he got farther than most of us who dream of such things.  My father-in-law died last night, still reliving those memories and those dreams.

A Bartlett Giamatti, former president of Yale University who was later the Commissioner of Baseball, once said  that baseball "tells us that much as you travel and far as you go, out to the green frontier, the purpose is to get back home, back to where the others are."   My wife's dad  has been leading off third base most of his life.   Maybe at last he's sliding into home.   On that night last week in Boston, when the Cubs won 2-0, there was almost a no-hitter.   But the real glory of the game was up in the stands, on the third base side, where a father and his sons were together, ball caps on our heads, screaming our lungs out, remembering where home was.

A Baseball Dream

We played catch in the back yard,
my father, tongue clenched in his teeth,
left-handed mitt on his hand,
and I, a would-be second baseman,
who lived through his stories.
Once he met an over-the-hill Babe Ruth--
the great Bambino--
barnstorming through town
for a few bucks and, mostly,
for the love of it.
Some lucky Iowa boy
could be on his team
for one night, they said,
by heaving  a baseball
over the tallest building in town.
My Dad leaned back and threw it--
heart and soul he threw it--
up, up, higher than he ever dared dream.
He recalls that the ball nearly went over,
bounced against the highest ledge,
and fell back to earth.
I am still waiting to catch it.

--Timothy Haut, July 9,  2014