hero

Today I was several feet away from my boyhood hereo, Willie Mays.

I suppose I could have even shouted out a question, a compliment, a hello, a thank you.

Couldn't.

It was like a reverent aura surrounded him.

Yeah, he is, you might say, a mere mortal, a baseball player. One of us.

Then, again.

But such elan!

And it is still there.

"Did you ever know you were my hero?" says the song.

When I was 9 years old or so, I tried to call Willie Mays in San Francisco across the country from me, on our Princess phone. I did not get through.

What would I have said?

enough to make you cry

Willie Mays. He played stickball with neighborhood kids.

No wonder he was my childhood hero.

Who shaped, opened, widened my views on race.

And why I stayed with the Giants even when they moved from New York to San Francisco.

Into the Bright Night, Loudly (part 5)

Before joining the throng streaming out of our well lighted place, I paused at the last "window." Ignoring the prod to move it, move along, I soaked it in: the revelry, the players' jubilation, the crowd, the stadium, lights, the cheers, the emerald grass -- almost looking dew-laden. I paused. This is It. This is why you came, let it be "felt along the blood," to use Wordsworth's phrase. Felt forever, and now: the aftermath of a victorious Game 1 of the 2010 World Series.

Our little underground community continued to exalt but was being dispersed into a diaspora of evangelical true believers.

How to describe the exiting crowd? Raucous, rowdy, manic -- to be sure. But not mean-spirited, not yet. Simply riding a wave of tidal emotions. I made my way past the Juan Marichal statue and then headed toward the Willie Mays statue, icons of history, markers of long-suffering awaiting redemption. Two policemen were standing nearby, watching the crowd, not far from a tented stand where Fox broadcasters were. I blurted out to one officer about how far I had traveled, etc. When you are happy, you just want to tell someone, anyone, everyone. The policeman I was talking to got a nudge from a fellow officer and they had to tend to a commotion. Drunken young lady on the violent side. But no arrests. I apologized to the officer for interrupting his duties, but he was cool.

Then when I get to the Mays statue I see a bunch of activity, some buzzing and yelling. A clutch of young men has climbed and swarmed onto the statue, for some reason chanting "Fuck that shit!" The hostile sound of that remark puzzled me. Was it a rebuke to those who predicted the Giants would fail? A harsh jab at the national media? At the Texas Rangers? I mostly wrote it off to some sort of vulgar hip-hop anthem unknown to me. Next, one of the youths managed to climb atop Willie's shoulders, standing perilously above the cadre of celebrants, if we can still use that word. (I called Craig excitedly on his cell to give a firsthand report on how crazy things were.) Part of me wrote this off to pure excitement; the other part of me characterized it as pure disrespect. But it was "monumental" in the way that fallen statues of toppled dictators make for lasting images; fortunately, this did not end that monumental way.

Voices. Snippets of conversation. An old guy, in his eighties, trudging happily forward with the aid of a walker, accompanied by younger men, some of whom are ostensibly sons. "Oklahoma City," I hear. I counter with Syracuse. Did I hear Vancouver, or imagine it? And is this the type of conversation that is exchanged en route to or from Mecca?

I walked closer to the Fox outdoor broadcast tent, swarmed by chanting fans. One placard said something like: "Shut the Buck up," referring to the Fox master of monotone, Joe Buck. When I got bumped hard and realized it was some drunk falling into me, I knew it was time to go. Who knew how wild this would get? upon departing the premises, I was pleased to see that the Mays statue was no longer crawling with revellers and was not toppled.

I went to the AT&T Park windows that sell Muni tickets. $2. "Excuse me, I need to get to Van Ness. Out near the marina." "Take any one of these trains and get off at the fourth stop." I got conflicting guidance on the street, from cops and local citizens and whoever. "Walk a few blocks to Market." "Take the train." "Take the bus." I was tired, having been standing, I now realized, for who knows, seven hours? Worn out. Upon walking to the train platform, I saw a guy with a "Say Hey" jersey and we chatted. He seemed much more bothered about the statue takeover. I told him about recent books I'd read: "Willie's Boys" and "Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend" by James S. Hirsch.

The train was packed but orderly. I found a much-appreciated seat after one or two stops; talked with a woman who was a partial season ticket holder. Then she got off. When I got to my stop, I was terribly disheartened to find myself by the Walgreen's or whatever it was on Market near Van Ness, the very spot I had walked to on Tuesday after arriving from the airport on the BART. Very disappointing to a tired oldish man. I really thought, naively I guess, that I'd be near Van Ness by my hotel, near the marina. But I was still very much downtown. And it was quiet. A few people waiting for the bus, the same bus I took on Tuesday during rush hour. And quietness in a city is not as welcoming as lots of people, at least for me.

The bus was to arrive in 10 to 12 minutes. I took up conversation with a sane and sober young lady who had watched the proceedings at a party near the ballpark. Works for Salesforce, a marketing diagnostics firm I had had some small interaction with a few years ago. She spoke of hundreds, if not thousands, of employees at the company party. I was so tired. After she indicated she was headed to near my hotel, I suggested we share a cab, if we could. I held my hand out and after not too long, just before the approaching bus arrived, we had a taxi stop for us. Marnie and I shared the cab, I gave her $5, said goodbye, and walked into my spartan hotel room, aching to remove my shoes and lie down. The loud hum of silence.

I "wound down" by savoring Internet accounts of Game 1, trying to fall asleep in advance of a 6:45 a.m. trip to the airport the following morning (which would be the morning of Game 2).

Pleasant dreams indeed.

Twenty Answers

Why stop with verbs? We started with the notion of Twenty Questions. Why not Twenty Answers?

1. 1948
2. 1970
3. three
4. 10,559, give or take
   
5. goatee
6. English, French, Latin
7. grapefruit
8. The Lay of the Land
9. Freedom of Espresso
10. "Between God and me there is no 'between.' "
11. Turner to Cezanne
12. solipsism
13. Soren Kierkegaard
14. Willie Mays
15. Tipperary Hill
16. 17 syllables, but not necessarily
17. approximately six years
18. the silk or satin borders of my childhood blanket, especially the notches formed where the sewing was done
19. Marcel Proust
20. Slovak and Polish

Continental Drift: A Giantific Obsession

So, when I said to my older brother Richard, "Who is your favorite team?" sometime around the winter of 1954-55, and he said, "The Giants," that was it. Little did I know it was fresh after the Catch and the World Series upset sweep of the Cleveland Indians. Little did I know of the nascent obsession this would engender. Little did I foresee the frustration, angst, passion, and excitement. Willie was the key. It wasn't hard to be galvanized by his free-lance style, the basket catch, the cap flying. The elan. The sheer boyish abandon. I put up Willie Mays stickers on my bureau, began a scrapbook. When playing neighborhood baseball, I chose to be number 24 and was taunted. "But he's a nigger," the other kids would say. It stung. (I was already teased for being skinny with buck teeth.) I outwardly brushed it off: "I don't care. So what." I ran from the outfield (a hillock in a housing project) with my shoulders haunched, as if it was slightly painful to run like a gazelle. My arm was good. My outfield Mays fantasy was just that, a fantasy, though Adolphus Hampton once turned to me, a few years later, when we were hitting them out, and paid me a high compliment: "Boy, you got an arm on you." I was in reality more like Charlie Brown, with the ball sailing over my head. I imitated Willie Mays's grip of the bat, the thumb overlapping, his dug-in stance, his almost-one-handed swing. They left after 1957. "Stay, Giants, stay." The clipping in my scrapbook. Was it 11,000 fans at the Polo Grounds against the Pirates? I fought back tears. 1958. They left but I stayed with them. Mostly because of Willie. But where else would I go? as one of the disciples said to Jesus. I ordered brochures from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. I was a virtual San Franciscan when we didn't say "virtual" like that. Three hours' time difference. Frustration. Morning paper. No late scores. Fortunately, the Stamford (Ct.) Advocate was an afternoon paper. WINS 1010 New York carried re-creations of the games. Les Keiter. I listened either on a transistor or at the Bendix that had tubes that had to heat up. Kenny Viola and I would call each other. "Did you bring out the rosary beads?" McCovey. Cepeda. 1962. Cuban missile crisis. Trouble at Ole Miss. Giants in the World Series against the hated Yankees, my other brother's team, my father's team. Watching Sunday afternoon Series games in a sea of AL fans who were open about their disdain of the NL's racial composition. WS rain delays. This after an exhilarating playoff win against the dreaded Dodgers, my friend Michael's team. We all really did argue over Mantle, Mays, and Snider. 1962. Everyone talks about Willie McCovey's line drive to Bobby Richardson, but I remember a catch by Tom Tresh before that as the killer. They carried Ralph Terry off the field. I was speechless. I don't recall my brother Jack taunting me; gallant of him. Many games at Shea. Marichal. Mays hits a homer at my brother Bobby's first Major League game. He tells me years later that he remembers Masanori Murakami's debut. road trips. A game in 1971 in Cincinnati. A trip to Candlestick in 1974. Autographs. I once sent a check for five or six bucks to Giants owner Bob Lurie, to give a seat to a poor kid. I was ashamed of those shamefully small crowds. Under 1,000? Get someone in those stands! A laughably quixotic move. Can you believe they cashed the check? Bud Herseth stops a move to not-so-far Toronto. 1978. Press pass to Pittsburgh. A copy editor playing reporter with a Giants hat on! No wonder Vida Blue, recently returned McCovey, Altobelli, Terry Whitfield, Montefusco were engaging and warm. No pretense of objectivity from me. My son Ethan and I having a catch ("Field of Dreams" got that phrase right near the ending) in the back yard; he misses, glasses flying off, imprint of the stitching on his forehead, ending his athletic career then and there. 2002. All set to write an emotional tribute, long-lost World Series love letter. Publish it somewhere. Finally. Nope. No such luck. 2003. With such a great wire-to-wire year, high hopes. Dashed by Marlins. And then a pilgrimage to 24 Willie Mays Plaza this year. 2009. Something overcame me when I heard that sentimental Tony Bennett song in the late afternoon, the water in the bay sparkling, the crowd filing out, buoyant. The bridge stoic and iconic. Something part arrival, part Mecca, part frustration, part holy. All parts gratitude. A sense of place. Not a stranger among strangers 3,000 miles away. A communal camaraderie. My wife, Beth, and my daughters Adrianna and Evelyn say, "What's wrong?" as I catch up with them, my face red and contorted. "Nothing's wrong. I'm just...It's good. It's all good." Eugenio Velez gives Adrianna an autograph. When I get back, I buy that Tony Bennett song on iTunes. It is said that the author John Updike moved from New York to Boston just to see Ted Williams play. I'd move to San Francisco just to see Tim Lincecum play, whose jersey my daughter wears, free of the taunts I had heard back in the "Father Knows Best" "Ozzie and Harriet" "Amos 'n' Andy" Fifties. 2009. You never know. Still alive. And kickin'. I am there. My DNA floats somewhere along Third & King, or DeHaro Street or Sacramento or Clay or Montgomery or California. Still alive.

Center Field Fantasy

an early birthday present for Willie Mays:

Center Field Fantasy

I could do that
Tap my glove gallop hat’s off
Horizon bound
Basket catch twirl homeward

I could do that
I all but said to the stranger
In the park
All shiny youth
On my sunset stroll

I could do that
If you only knew
In my dreams
Of Technicolor yesterday
Long gone
Rounding third

Going Batty

Fiberglass bat.

In editing a document the other day, I learned not a new word itself but a new (for me) meaning for it, which lexicographers call a new sense. When you think of fiberglass bat, you probably think of a tool of trade for a baseball or softball player. (I prefer the old-fashioned wooden bats, like Willie Mays's Adirondack Slugger, which was made in Dolgeville, New York.) (Did you know Fiberglas is a registered trademark of Owens Corning?) (And did you also know that the catcher's equipment is called the tools of ignorance, unfairly?)

But I learned that fiberglass bat has, for me, the unexpected sense of some type of roof or ceiling insulation.

Which got me to thinking.

Although our language is rich because of new layers of meanings for old words, like sand accumulating on a shore, perhaps we have not sufficiently tapped the humorous possibilities of same. (The Laughorist should never stray too far from his brand.)

We already have words such as invaginate. But why not penilize? As in, oh, I don't know, "stiffen with resolve" or "empower" or "act impetuously and driven by testosterone." (Stop. Calm down. I know I'm taking linguistic liberties [LLs].)

I'll posit (there's a pinkies-out word of Academe for you) a few more, with the full understanding that your Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is rife with these, rife for the picking.

diction -- pickup lines uttered by a male at a bar.

faction -- the act of positing something to be true, which becomes accepted as true in the popular imagination, despite evidence to the contrary.

insipid -- an unintended or subconscious hint of naughtiness or nastiness.

Others welcome.

Elan

He had such elan, joie de vivre, zest, abandon. Fun.

Playing a game, baseball.

His name was Willie Mays. Number 24, of the New York Giants, then the San Francisco Giants, and finally the New York Mets.

He was my boyhood hero.

Why? It's not too complicated. I asked my older brother, Richard, which team he liked. The Giants, he said. I watched. I discovered Mays was a star when the word meant something.

A daring performer, a zen master, a thrill to watch.

Born May 6, 1931, in Westfield, Alabama.

I have written a barely fictional short story about all this. I like the way it turned out. Maybe, like blogger JR, I will surrender my pretenses to propriety and abandon my quest for ill-sought fame and validation, and publish it here, or elsewhere, online.

Not today, though.

What would Willie do?

He'd swing away, dive for the ball, leap against the fence, steal a base, try for third.

Happy birthday [insert the typically forgotten vocative comma here] Willie.

And thanks.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Hiatus

(Fans of the short-story meister Raymond Carver will recognize a spoof of one of his signature stories in the title of this post.)

Here's a random, desultory report of what I did on my blogatory sabbatical (thank you for your patience):

1. I completed a short story (last night), which was my main purpose for taking leave. It's nearly 3,000 words and is titled "The Willie Mays Chronicles." I suppose I'm satisfied with it, but it's hard to tell. The urge to tinker with it is strong. A September 30 deadline for submission (sub-dom?) to Glimmer Train Stories forced at least temporary closure. I was enormously pleased to get a very encouraging review from GT, an accomplished author-friend. (I can't publish the story here yet, because of contest rules.)

2. I continued to read a whole book about "um" and "ah" and other verbal pause fillers. Can you, um, believe it? Er, yes. It's called Um: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean by Michael Erard. (Thank you, Dr. Erard, for the serial comma in the book's title and consistently in the text.)

3. Spent most of this past Saturday cleaning out years' worth of Stuff on the front porch. Threw toys, tapes, and pillows in the trash; recycled cardboard boxes. Said something like this to our neighbor Joe (who appears in my poem "Mowing the Last Lawn," posted a year ago): "Clearing junk out for my son's wedding next week . . . at the zoo." Joe: "As good a place as any." Something like that. We both laughed.

4. Learned Sunday, at church, through a call from my wife, that those would be the last words Joe and I would ever exchange. He was killed Saturday night by a drunk driver.

5. Later on Sunday, I spied a small white spider sliding downward on invisible thread. It landed on the white wood of the back of a chair in the kitchen. I cupped the spider in a tissue and tossed it outside on the back porch, the porch's green paint already worn away to bare wood (distressed wood is the trendy term) after last summer's paint job. The winters are long and harsh in these parts. There was a time I'd have casually crushed the spider, given how fearful of spiders my little one is. Not this day. No, enough death for one day.

6. I was relieved to have the San Francisco Giants get this dreadful season over and done with. (Bye, bye, Barry.) However, as my friend Steve watched his Mets cascade to calamitous collapse at my house, I was spared the burden of any tension and free from the bonds of hope or expectation.

7. I administered the ministrations of "Doctor Sleep" to an insomniac beloved daughter, invoking the sound of rain on the roof as an incantation.

Hamming It Up

Scene: The deli counter at Wegmans, amidst a crowd of ravenous shoppers, Sunday night. Hautboys.

I take my little numbered slip out of the dispenser. It reads "05." My number gets called.

A quarter pound of Wunderbar bologna, please.

The clerk, an elderly woman, maybe in her sixties, with short hair and almost manly features, soon hands me a plastic bag with the contents as ordered.

Anything else? she asks.

Sure, ham-off-the-bone, a third of a pound.

[We interrupt this program to declare: "Ham-off-the-bone" is not a term I will touch with a 10-foot Pole, or a 6-foot Swede. HAAHAHAHAHAHAHA.]

Honeyed? she inquires.

Um, I don't know. No. Regular (even though I don't even know what "regular" is).

A fellow employee walks up to the clerk, asking her to take something; it looks like lemon chicken; he asks her to weigh it and put a price sticker on it.

Do you mind if I do this?

No, I say, quarter truthfully but not expecting any significant delay.

The clerk goes to the opposite end. She is weighing, wrapping, weighing, wrapping, putting containers on the scale to get the tare weight. She is nodding upward to read through her bifocals. This is taking a long time. Numbers 07, 08, 09, and 10 are being called. I start to feel like an idiot and begin to fume. I begin to loathe my personally appointed sales associate serving Mr. Pawlie fecking Kokonuts himself. I consider just walking off. Screw it. Maybe come back later with, say, a lovely new number, maybe 24, Willie Mays's number.

I hold off.

She comes back to be.

Thank you so much for waiting, she says with touching earnestness.

That's all right, I lie, starting to feel like an impatient fool, but grateful I did not storm off.

Many people wouldn't be that patient. I really appreciate it, she declares.

That's okay, I say.

What did you want? she asks, almost maternally

A third of a pound of ham.

It looks as if she's a few slices off. In my impatience, I'm waving her off, as if to say, Don't bother, don't worry about it, I wanted a little more than a third of a pound anyway. But, aha! I begin to realize she is throwing those extra slices in there after everything was weighed as a gift, as a thank you for my perceived "patience."

I thank her, and continue shopping, making a note to blog about this when I get around to blogging again.

Internally, I was not at all patient.

Externally, to her, I was a paragon of patience.

Does it still count?

(It used to be a mortal sin in my conscience, even if I thought the impure thought.)

Incidentally, my knowledge of Latin from back in high school, from my seminary days, tells me patience comes from the Latin word meaning "to suffer," "to endure."

I guess impatience can be a sort of albatross.

Incidentally once again, The Online Etymology Dictionary is a great resource. I recommend it; the site offers opportunities to sponsor words, teasing readers to send someone lust.

Intriguing.

(Disclaimer: No actual meat was consumed in the typing of this post.)

Twilight Transcendence

Transcending the All-Star game itself last night was the ceremony paying tribute to Willie Mays, "The Say Hey Kid." [check out the video link; or just picture via words, the old-fashioned way]

Why and how does this transport us beyond sports and enter the realms of myth? No one else played with such wild abandon, glee, and elan. Willie Mays channeled all the pride and fury of raw youth into the battle of the game. And he made it all look easy.

Although Jackie Robinson became a symbol of racial pride and progress, Willie Mays, for me, was baseball. My adoration of him transformed my own attitudes toward race as I grew up in an integrated public housing project.

So, tears formed in my eyes as I watched him being honored with unabashed sentiment at AT&T Park last night in San Francisco. Willie in centerfield, Willie teasing, Willie tossing balls from a pink Cadillac into the crowd.

Willie.

I could still see the flash of youth in his eyes, and even an echo of his great arm as he lobbed baseballs to adoring fans. Sure, it was a bit corny. But the ceremony also conveyed a reverent dignity. It worked.

What I'm having trouble articulating here is this: watching Willie Mays (for me) transcended wins or losses, success or failure. His performance transcended athletic prowess. Here was someone who exhibited sheer rapture and delight in what he was doing. Period. It was exhilarating and inspiring.

He was the best, and made it look easy. (He later admitted to showboating, sometimes making a catch look harder than it was.)

Thanks for the show, Willie.

What grace.

Is there sadness now in seeing the ravages of age? I suppose so.

But Willie was cool. He truly seemed to be having a great time.

As always.

Would that I brought the same verve to my daily tasks.

Maybe I do sometimes.

(Especially if I wear that T-shirt with number 24 on the back.)

Flagged But Not Flagellated

A zero day. Got up; let the dog out; breakfasted; blogged; revised blog template (not sure even I like it; do you?); went back to bed; stayed in pajamas until a shower at 6, post meridiem.

Relished some reading, too (not the kind of relish that goes with that gross hot-dog-eating contest at Coney Island).

Finished a collection of novellas called "The Woman Lit By Fireflies" by Jim Harrison. The first piece features the eponymous Brown Dog, in what appears to be his debut literary appearance. Brown Dog is one of the most colorful characters in modern American literature, to this reader. I was introduced to Jim Harrison on the recommendation of Cort, a colleague who now calls me Brown Dog in passing at work. The collection's title piece is, well, luminous. A woman ditches her husband and spends a night alone in a cornfield. How's that for stalking one's demons?

Was I depressed today or simply indulging in some hard-earned rest? Probably more the latter. Or maybe not.

The temporarily empty nest gets refilled shortly, with youngest daughter returning (a few days early) after a stay on Block Island and with elder daughter in Berlin back in the, back in the, back in the US of A.

No great American novel (or story or poem or blog) written during this one week's worth of nest vacancy.

None yet.

A passing rumble of amateur fireworks.

My feathers are not ruffled by it, though I admit to a fluttering as the decibels increase.

Listened to the BBC on XM satellite radio a bit today. Good to hear that reporter Alan Johnston is freed from Gaza. Listened to some baseball on XM too. The Giants won today, aided by a grand slam by Fred Lewis, twice now in his rookie year (something never done in the team's San Francisco era). Alas, though, Mr. Lewis is no Willie Mays. He may not even be a Nate Schierholtz.

And now, the sweetest coda to the day and counterpoint to the sporadic neighborhood firecrackers: a lazy summer rain steadily sprinkling on the sidewalk (a pleasure exceeded only by the symphony of raindrops tapping on a car roof).

The Stuff of Loss

So I go to Wegmans [whose eponymous letters of ownership are missing the would-be apostrophe, that impotent and almost-forgotten icon of possession] and in a huff buy stuff for Sunday's supper and the week's lunches, grumbling this chore could have been performed at any one of several days earlier in the preceding week. Fueled by both hunger and anger, I lose focus. I use my debit card. I ask for twenty dollars in cash back, over and above the $30.18 for the groceries. I dutifully pack everything into the Wegmans fabric reusable bag. I get home, unpack in a storm of activity, cook supper in a maelstrom. One lingering problem: one big pebble in the shoe of my evening: where's that twenty-dollar bill? It's not in my pocket. Only the receipt is. Did my cash fall out, mocking my self-righteous indignation and get-things-done pose? I check all my pockets, in my pants, in my pullover San Francisco Giants sweatshirt worn on Willie Mays's birthday. I go back to the car, running my hands along cracks, crevices, corners, cushions, any other C word you want to throw in there. I retrace my steps and search my pockets, fingering the tired lint of obsession. Twice. Thrice. Whatever-the-word-is-for-fourths. I call Wegmans. I drive back there, and leave my name. I retrace my steps again. I check pockets. Again. Everything again. I even mention this to Mom, 90, as if she needs to hear a grown man whine about this. We talk about praying to Saint Anthony. I don't. Or do I? It's a whirr. I am crazed. I look upstairs. I look in places, such as other pants, where the twenty-dollar bill could not possibly be. I grimly tell myself, You cannot find this. Let it go. It will drive you crazy. It's only twenty dollars. I feel accusatory. Who did this to me? On the phone, as I feign breezy self-control, my mother mentions a story of a clerk once shorting her, only to have the clerk ultimately admit to the error. Did my clerk actually hand me the twenty? I'd say, yes, because I believe I also had a five in my pocket from earlier in the day. That's gone too. Somewhere. In the same place where missing socks from the dryer go. Or missing panties (into the pockets of pervs or guys like me and Leopold Bloom). It'll turn up, I figure. Or not. One thing I know, I must give up. I must let it go. I cannot conjure it from its hidden metaphysical or physical place. It will turn up? By magic? My hope is I will turn the page of a book or sort the old newspapers or look under a chair (did that) and find the money some long-lost day. Or not. Give it up, you phony would-be Buddhist. Detachment? You can't even practice this tiny bit of letting go, you sanctimonious, possessed possessor. Let it go. Besides, there's no choice.

The next day, at work, for a brief moment I irrationally think of looking for the missing moulah there, in my desk drawer, for example, and chuckle at the grand absurdity of it. Later that day, at suppertime, with the television news on (I despise having the idiot box on during meals, but what the hey; not much fight left in me), ABC shows footage of the devastation left by the tornado in Greensburg, Kansas. One woman, I'm not sure of her name (Kathy Kelly?), says, "It's just stuff." She says it almost merrily, but not crazily, not post-traumatic-stressedly. She's maybe in her fifties (as if I know how to discern ages). She's sifting through rubble. The remains of her day, and her life, are missing in inaction. The shards of a splintered life surround her: ghosts of old photos, old recipes ("Recipes? I can get recipes, new recipes from someone else," she says, or words to that effect), surrealistic configurations of former furniture, silverware, sweaters, echoes of a life as recent as last week and forever ago. Stuff. The stuff of a life. And yet. And yet she gives ample evidence of being truly grateful, to be alive, whole, presumably surrounded by others just as alive. She does not say these words I've just written. She merely states, "It's just stuff," and declares it calmly, as a statement of Midwestern stubborn fact and acceptance, like acceptance of ordinary daylight.

"It's just stuff," she says

as breezily as a Willie Mays homer

sailing into the sun-drenched bleachers in left-field

at the old Seals Stadium

on a Tuesday afternoon

in May 1958.

Just stuff.

They Might Be Jints

Hope springs eternal -- as in spring training. Or at least temporarily eternal. Or maybe not at all. This unreasonable, illogical, and typically futile springtime hoping began for me sometime between the winter of 1954 and the spring of 1955. I had asked my brother, Richard, whom he rooted for. The New York Giants, was his answer. And it's been my answer from then until now. I kept a scrapbook in those Polo Grounds days; it consisted of pasted-in news clippings and baseball cards, including the card of my beloved Willie Mays and even Johnny Antonelli, who threw left and batted right and had a unibrow, all just like me. (Note the "pasted in"; that means the Willie Mays card is decidedly not worth hundreds of dollars, not that I'm selling any of it.) (Another time I'll write about my Willie Mays hero worship: trying to call him when I was 10 years old; how he influenced my attitudes toward race; how I imagined I was number 24 in the field.) I stuck with the Giants even when they left New York and abandoned me, left to listen to corny (but believable to me) re-creations of games by Les Keiter on WINS 1010, as a tickertape fed his contrived play-by-play backed up by sound effects; stuck with them despite a three-hour time difference owing to San Franciso's distance 3,000 miles away (I sent away to the Chamber of Commerce ask information about this place (they obliged by sending a brochure); remained faithful largely because of The Say Hey Kid, and all the elan and verve and reckless fun and drama he brought to the field and beyond; even remained faithful after my moving back to the NYC metro area, when the Mets were there to watch in person, or on TV, or on radio. I admit to having flirted with fan-adultery then (fantasizing an affair with the Mets), but whenever my boys came into town I could not root against them, especially after meeting Nick Harrigan on the No. 7 train after a game at Shea in 1979 or 1980 (Nick who had seen every Giants game in New York since the 1930s if memory serves); nor could I in 1978 after wearing an SF cap on my head at a game in Pittsburgh where I had a press pass and got to interview the likes of Vida Blue and Willie McCovey and John Montefusco -- with a Giants cap on for heaven's sake.

It would be easier to give it all up. Especially after the nightmare of 2002, which bears no repeating here.

The skin is thicker; the passion has waned; the naive optimism tempered -- for the Giants at least.

I rarely see them in person; it's been years. The Internet has replaced those days of dialing in games from as far away as Pittsburgh, Saint Louis, Cincinnati -- even Chicago or Atlanta on a night with a rare, good skip with little static.

The gods have left Mount Olympus, and all the seams are worn.
The hero's in the grandstands with all his memories torn.
I can hardly find the paper's box score
With all the news of war.

And as for this year's Giants, they've put me in a downright subjunctive mood. (I was indicatively captivated yesterday, browsing at Borders, by Michele Morano's winning essay on the subjunctive mood; I would check her out if I were you, before our language loses the last of this dying breed, the subjunctive.)

Might is the operative word.

Might be pretty good; might be mediocre; might even be awful.

But I most likely won't fret much, no matter which way it all goes.

After all, Willie's on the sidelines -- and he's coaching Mr. Bonds.

(See, can't help it. Just checked. The boys lost today, 10-9. Could, might, would, may be a harbinger of things to come.)


P.S. Sorry, my friend, Michael Christelman. Still can't stand the Dodgers, even though you have a better team this year. Up for a friendly wager?