Originally published October 4, 1982, by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe
This is the way it was meant to be with rust colored afternoons and shadows creeping slowly across infields that stand as the last, faint reminder of summer. And, yesterday, as the Birds of Baltimore went at the Brewers from Milwaukee, a game of baseball chipped away at the years, bringing recollections and visions of other afternoons spent in the sun.
The huge crowd spilled out and up from the subway. Brookline venue was a parade of the faithful and all along Jersey street, people pushed each other with a soft patience as they moved through the turnstiles into the tiny ballpark.
Behind third base, up in the grandstand, a small boy sat beside his father. The boy let the excitement of the crowd and the day wash over him while his eyes darted from player to player as they took the field below him.
“Which one is he, Dad?” the boy asked.
“There he is, right there,” the father told him. “Watch him. Then you’ll be able to tell people you saw the greatest player of all time.”
“That’s him?” the boy wanted to know. “Number 5?” “That’s him,” the father said. “That’s Joe DiMaggio.”
There is a game of baseball not played on any field. There is a game that always takes place in the pale light of memory; innings played in earlier, easier times when October afternoons meant everything and nearly everyone came to a halt while two teams faced each other for the championship of the major leagues.
The kitchen radio is turned up loud and Russ Hodges’ voice fills the small room and spills out onto the sidewalks. A man named Bobby Thomson is at the plate facing a pitcher named Ralph Branca as the Giants and the Dodgers face each other for the National League pennant.
With one strike on the batter, Thomson swings and the ball disappears into the haze, into history. Bobby Thomson; one pitch, one swing, and a man becomes part of a miracle that stands forever.
Political campaigns never really got under way until the final out of the World Series. And that one event, that one spectacle of baseball, was a gift.
It gave people a peace of Indian Summer when all concentration centered on each one of Don Larsen’s pitches. Instead of biting your fingernails over the rate of inflation, you bit your lip as Robinson stole home or Mantle knelt in the on deck circle. Whole mornings raced past as conversations centered on Bill Mazeroski’s home run or a catch by Sandy Amaros, events of the afternoon before.
Two to two. Eighth inning, Indians at bat. Runners on first and second with nobody out. Don Liddle is one the mound for the Giants, throwing to the left handed batter, Vic Wertz.
The TV set is a jumble of shadows and blurs that bounce across the tiny screen. Liddle winds and throws and Wertz hits a rocket toward center field.
There is a young man in center field who, when you shut your eyes, is forever young. He is wearing No. 24 and he is galloping across the grass of the Polo Grounds, his back to the plate, his arms stretched out in front of him, his hat just beginning to fall from his head as, amazingly, the ball lands in his glove.
He is Willie Mays. He is all the Octobers of youth summed up in one lunging, impossible catch. There is 1967, Lonborg, Yastrzemski and a season for the ages. There are Carbo and Fisk, and late October 1975.
Yogi Berra and Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax and Dusty Rhodes all march across the edges of summer’s last sun. A pitcher checks the ball, hitches his belt and checks the infielders who wait behind him.
The air crackles with just a hint of frost as innings dance by and the bottom of the order approaches. Darkness paints the grass and spectators become participants as hope rides on every pitch and each swing.
Men become children for the briefest of moments. And as winter pulls closer, you can shut your eyes and there, there on that larger field of imagination is a game that moves differently from all the rest; a game of motion and memory. A game that can be captured in fractions and splices of the mind because, after all, it was only yesterday when the Brewers beat the Orioles in the sunlight. And it was only yesterday when the great DiMaggio played in your dreams.
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