by Bob Mitchell
Knight scores the winning run from second and Mets fans are raising their arms to heaven, hugging and kissing one another, jumping up and down and sideways, screaming, yelling, hoo-haing, ranting, raving, flipping out, going bonkers and bananas and nuts.
Sox fans are silent as tombs, mouths open, hands scratching heads or wringing themselves or making fists or slapping cheeks. The shock of oh no, not again! has just begun to set in.
Solomon Stein is frozen by his guilt, the sense that maybe, maybe, even quite possibly, he was in part responsible for Buckner’s unforgivable gaffe. The sense of shame, etched on his drawn, wan face, is even stronger than the grief of watching his Bosox blow it big-time. He knows in his gut that this game has two goats.
Seth watches Papa Sol with feelings of pity and fear and love.
Pity, for a man who, to Seth’s knowledge and maybe more often than that, has now three times in his life been the major participant in a fall from ecstasy to despair: the Giants’ pennant victory followed by the Ball Fiasco, the hope of a Giants’ World Series victory followed by the Taunt that Backfired, and now this, the Red Sox being one strike away from a World Series triumph, followed by the Disaster of the Open Wickets.
Fear, for a man who, on top of all his prior disappointments and God knows what other ones and now this, probably still has that .38 pistol stashed away somewhere.
Love, for a man who, above and beyond the above, has always showered unconditional love on Seth, come rain or come shine.
Nathan Detroit and Janet and the other 35,076 Mets fans are hoopin’ and hollerin’ and going wild, while 19,999 of the Red Sox fans are standing in stony silence, still smarting from the force of the ton of bricks that just hit them.
Red Sox fan number 20,000 is sitting in his seat, next to his grandson, tears of grief streaming down his cheeks and vanishing into his beard.
This is the first time Seth has ever seen his grandfather cry.
Seth is numb from the drama, from witnessing Papa Sol’s despair. Although he knows the gesture will go unheeded, he places his right hand on his grandfather’s right bicep, gives it a gentle squeeze.
“It’s okay, Papa Sol. It’s okay…”
“…it’s okay, Papa Sol.”
Seth is standing to the side of Solomon Stein, who, deaf to his grandson’s consoling words, is sitting alone in the living room of his Cambridge house. It is just past midnight. A Boston Globe hangs limply in Papa Sol’s trembling carpenter’s hands. He is looking at a black-and-white blowup of the hapless Bill Buckner, between whose hobbled legs the infamous Mookie Wilson squibber is oozing. A photo that is now appearing in millions of newspapers and magazines across the nation. A photo, Seth speculates, that in time will rank right up there in the annals of Americana along with the snapshots of the Babe bowing out at Yankee Stadium, the devastation at Pearl Harbor, the triumph at Iwo Jima, the spontaneous V-J Day kiss, Ruby shooting Oswald, the brutally cold Viet Cong pistol execution, man’s first exhilarating steps on the moon, and the two towers burning on September 11.
“You got it, Billy boy!” Papa Sol repeats twice, slowly, with profound regret and excruciating sarcasm.
All Seth can think about is the humility that baseball—this game Sol adores and worships and that has given him so much pleasure—has once again burdened his grandfather with.
And where the hell that .38 is stashed.
Instinctively, he puts his right hand on the back of Papa Sol’s neck and squeezes it. Maybe he can somehow massage the pain and the depression away?
Sol is still looking at his paper, shaking his head, oblivious to Seth’s gesture of commiseration. Seth continues, anyway, squeezing the back of Papa Sol’s neck, rubbing it, kneading it, kneading…
In his Cambridge study, Seth is kneading a scuffed baseball with his right hand. He opens his eyes extra wide, shakes off the cobwebs, places the ball back in the green-felt safety of its niche, closes the box.
He is sitting in his La-Z-Boy, and his brain is in fifth gear, a succession of thoughts from this last trip floating out of his head like a string of soap bubbles, then popping, one by one, in the air above him.
He is thinking about a quote he brought up in class the other day, from the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard:
Life must be lived forward, but it can only be understood backward.
About how privileged he is to be experiencing History, to be learning, little by little, about the untold story of his Papa Sol, to be understanding life better by traveling backward in his dual roles of grandson and historian.
He is thinking about another quote, this one from former baseball announcer Hank Greenwald:
Has anyone ever satisfactorily explained why the bad hop is always the last one?
About the wisdom and the irony of this rhetorical question as it relates to Mookie’s grounder that probably ruined the life of Bill Buckner and possibly those of millions of Bosox fans, the grounder that never took its expected last hop, that to Buckner’s surprise somehow hugged the ground and never hopped at all. About bad hops in general and how they are metaphors for bad breaks and misfortune, in sports and in life, and how they can be devastating or recovered from. About History’s slender thread, the fine line that separates winners from losers, the thin sliver of difference that could have allowed Buckner to retire with a Series ring but instead made him and ignominy lifelong partners, the same sliver that made Bobby Thomson, Carlton Fisk, Doug Flutie, Franco Harris, Keith Smart, Christian Laettner, and Lorenzo Charles heroes, and Ralph Branca, Fred Merkle, Mickey Owen, Roberto De Vicenzo, Chris Webber, Jackie Smith, and Donnie Moore goats.
He is thinking about injustice and how unfair life after baseball was to Branca and Buckner, two of the good guys. About the injustice of things that happened in Papa Sol’s life, things that Seth has now witnessed firsthand: the invalid ball, the taunt that backfired, the Buckner bungle. From the injustice index card file in his brain, Seth plucks a few choice quotations. One from RFK:
Justice delayed is democracy denied.
And then one from Jules Renard:
There is a justice, but we do not always see it. Discreet, smiling, it is there, at one side, a little behind injustice, which makes a big noise.
And a third from Mets journeyman Rod Kanehl:
Baseball is a lot like life. The line drives are caught, the squibbers go for base hits. It’s an unfair game.
About the historical fact that in the Preamble to the Constitution, the seventeenth of the fifty-two words is Justice. And of the six powers of the new government (more perfect Union, Justice, Tranquility, defense, Welfare, Liberty), Justice is the first specific power mentioned. So why does it seem to happen so rarely in America?
He is thinking about the Greek poet Pindar and one of his odes that might as well be describing the remainder of Billy Buck’s ill-fated life:
…the loser’s hateful return, the jeering voices, the furtive back alleys…
He is thinking about Aristotle and his classical definition of Tragedy. Mookie’s squibber, and what it did to Billy Buck’s life, has made him think of this. From an undergrad philosophy course, he recalls, word for word, a number of the aspects of the definition, aspects that, in some strange and disquieting way, define Buckner himself as a tragic figure. Tragedy being an action that is “serious, complete in itself, and of an adequate magnitude.” Tragedy cathartically arousing “the emotions of pity and fear in the audience,” pity being “what we feel at a misfortune that is out of proportion to the faults of a man” and fear being “what we feel when misfortune comes upon one like ourselves.” Tragedy making men “happy or miserable in their actual deeds.” Tragedy imitating incidents that “affect us most powerfully when we are not expecting them.” Tragedy happening not to “a man whose misfortune comes about through vice and depravity” but to “a man who is brought low through some error of judgment or shortcoming.” Tragedy being a change of fortune that is “a fall from happiness to misery.”
Ho
w troubling to consider that the Greek philosopher might just as well have been thinking of Bill Buckner as of Oedipus. Buckner, a good man who led a good life and whose lifetime stats were barely below Hall of Fame levels—twenty-two seasons, over twenty-five hundred games, nearly ten thousand at bats, 1,077 runs, 2,715 hits, a .289 career BA, and a .992 career fielding percentage. And one little bleeder between his legs, and that’s all he’ll ever be remembered for, that and his subsequent self-exile to a little town outside of Boise, Idaho. How troubling, too, for Seth to consider that there might have been something tragic, in this same Aristotelian sense, about the life of his Papa Sol, who must have carried around all that baggage with him, all by himself and for all those years.
He is thinking about the look on Papa Sol’s face as his grandfather stared at the Buckner blowup in the Globe, the same troubled look as the one he saw at the Polo Grounds and the one he saw in the basement pistol scene and the one he saw after the Ralph Terry fiasco, but this one even more intense. What demons had been lurking inside Papa Sol? What forces had been making him hide his secrets from his loved ones? What black clouds had been gathering above his head, waiting to erupt in a potential thunderstorm of self-eradication? Was Papa Sol, this loving and wonderful but flawed human being, living, like his beloved Bosox, under some horrible Curse? Did he have sufficient motive for ending his own life? The ball? The taunt? Buckner’s blunder? A gambling problem? Money woes? The shame and guilt of adultery? Something else even more pernicious? Is Seth closer to deducing any of this, to answering his many questions about what happened to his grandfather? Or did this last visit just raise more questions?
He is thinking about why and how all this is occurring, why and how the baseball is bringing him back to the past to see the unexplored sides of his Papa Sol. Has it all been real, or, despite the prima facie evidence, has it been a dream? Is the discovery of Papa Sol’s secrets worth the complications, the unpleasantness, the sadness? Are the quest for the truth and the true study of History—Whitehead’s “nerves and vitals”—worth all the pain?
Seth looks up, and his eyes focus on something on his desk, a simple object that abruptly terminates his string of thoughts. It is a coffee mug that Kate presented to him on his last birthday. It says:
EVERY
THING
HAPPENS
FOR A REASON
5
BUMP
Kate Richman
Ms. Kate Richman
Kate Stein
Ms. Kate Stein
Mrs. Kate Stein
Kate Ellen Stein
Ms. Kate Ellen Stein
Mrs. Kate Ellen Stein
Kate Richman Stein
Ms. Kate Richman Stein
Mrs. Kate Richman Stein
Kate Richman-Stein
Ms. Kate Richman-Stein
Mrs. Kate Richman-Stein
Kate Ellen Richman Stein
Ms. Kate Ellen Richman Stein
Mrs. Kate Ellen Richman Stein
Kate Ellen Richman-Stein
Ms. Kate Ellen Richman-Stein
Mrs. Kate Ellen Richman-Stein
LOOKS LIKE A GODDAM CHRISTMAS TREE, Kate is thinking.
“Watcha doin’, sweetie pie?” Seth yells from the bedroom.
“Oh, nothing, just doodling, honey,” Kate answers as she crumples up her dreams into a tight little paper wad and tosses them in the garbage pail under the sink.
Seth makes his grand entrance to Kate’s kitchen, freshly showered, barefoot, and wearing a pair of ratty jeans and a crimson T-shirt with a white HARVARD on the front, under which the word VERITAS is printed inside a white crest. His thick hair is disheveled and still moist.
He loves the fact that of the some 616,500 words in the English language, truth (and in Latin, no less) was the one carefully selected as a motto by his university.
“So then, Mum, which of your distinctive wines shall we quaff to prepare our palates for this evening’s victuals?” Seth asks, with his Dickensian accent.
Kate looks at her cherished oenological holdings, which, resting on their backs, recline in an attractive twelve-bottle teak rack in the corner of the counter. There’s a 2005 Orvieto, awaiting the next chicken piccata; a nice Pinot Grigio she uses for reduction sauces; a lovely 2003 Sancerre; four respectable bottles of Penfolds 2002 Koonunga Hill Shiraz Cabernet; a magnificent 2001 Bluegrass Cab from New South Wales; two divine 2003 Santa Ynez Valley Nebbiolos; a delectable 1996 Château Olivier Graves; and a nec plus ultra Cavallotto Barolo she’s been saving for a rainy day.
“I’m feeling a little ‘country’ this evening, so let’s have the Bluegrass,” Kate chortles, rousting the Aussie Cab they’d purchased on a trip to Down Under from its cozy bed and depositing it on the counter for Seth’s approval.
Seth eyes the label, wrings his hands, purses his lips, and scrunches his eyes into narrow slits, crow’s-feet forming at the corners. “Yes, that’ll do us quite nicely, Miss Agnes, quite nicely indeed,” he intones unctuously, attempting his Uriah Heep imitation. “It looks like an umble wine, if you ask me, and being an umble person meself, it’ll do us quite nicely.”
Seth opens the bottle, pours a half inch into his own glass, swirls it, sniffs it, then guzzles it down like a parched caveman, the pinky of his right hand pointing straight up to the firmament.
“Why yes, dear Agnes,” he says, with a mischievous smile, “it’ll do us quite nicely, this most umble of wines.”
Charles Dickens, wine, and cooking are three of Seth and Kate’s shared passions (there’s also tennis, music, acoustic guitar, art history, gardening, animals, poetry, and the Red Sox) that are conspiring to make this evening special.
Kate turns the heat on the stove down to a low flame, stirs the ingredients in the large frying pan with a thick wooden spoon purchased in Concarneau, Brittany, puts on the cover. Tonight’s feast—to be served over squid ink tagliatelle pasta—will be poulet à la flamande, a recipe she picked up during her junior year in Antwerp from a couple she’d befriended, the Dunkelblums on Belgielei. It is a tender, stewy dish, in which chicken parts are dredged in flour, then slowly cooked in an ever-thickening potion of onions, garlic, prunes, bay leaves, seasoning, apple cider vinegar, Dijon mustard spread on wheat bread, and, most essential, two oversize bottles of outrageous Chimay Belgian ale. The ingredients are just beginning their ninety-minute simmering sojourn to perfection.
“Shall we repair to the drawing room, my love?” Kate asks. The two clink glasses, take a swig, exchange adoring looks, and amble to more comfortable quarters.
Kate’s living room is small but tastefully decorated. Prints by Picasso, Blake, Rembrandt, and Ronald Searle. The cooking diplomas and chef’s hat picture. Light green sofa. Teak-and-glass coffee table, on which rests a delicate, goosenecked, yellow-and-gray-striped Kosta Boda vase with three fresh daisies peeking out. Contemporary Swedish rocker.
And her desk, her workplace, so neat and tidy. In-box. Out-box. Neat little pile of typed recipes. Pencils and pens lined up evenly. Maroon Filofax. Tensor lamp. And, wedged between black metal bookends and arranged by title in alphabetical order, a tasty collection of some of the great classical cookbooks: De re coquinaria by Apicius, El Cocinero Puertorriqueño, Larousse Gastronomique, Artusi’s La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene, The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, and, of course, The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digby Kt. Opened. Everything in its rightful, premeditated place.
Kate is Felix to Seth’s Oscar.
In unison, Kate and Seth clink and take a second sip of the Bluegrass as they snuggle on the sofa. Mmmmm.
On cue, Billy Joel is singing “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” the part about bottle of red. Billy is the first cut on their favorite eclectic CD mix, which also includes tunes by Fred Astaire, Gershwin, Randy Newman, Dixie Chicks, the Beatles, the Eagles, Alison Krauss, Indigo Girls, Jackson Browne, Seals & Crofts, Alain Souchon, Joe Cocker, Van Morrison, Francesco De Gregori, Kathy Mattea, Billie Holiday
, Karla Bonoff, Phil Collins, Christine McVie, Gino Paoli, James Taylor, Roberto Vecchioni, Elton John, Georges Brassens, Jacques Brel, and Ella.
“So how was your day, sweetie?” Kate asks.
“Oh, pretty hectic actually,” Seth says. “Beat Gordon in a tight one this morning. Prepared a pretty interesting class for tomorrow, all about passion.”
Kate gives Seth one of those Mae West “Why dontcha come up and see me sometime?” glances. Seth returns it with one of those Jimmy Cagney “Aw, simmer down, sister, or else you’ll get a juicy grapefruit right in the puss” looks.
“And, let’s see, worked on the book a little, then made a date with one of my gorgeous, hot students.”
Kate’s ears become a Doberman’s, perking up at the hint of a suspected prowler.
“Just wanted to see if you were paying attention, sweetie pie.”
Kate is not amused.
“Anyway, it was a damn good day, if I don’t say so myself,” Seth concludes, taking his third sip. “And yours?”
“Oh, me? Thanks for asking, dear,” Kate answers, with playful sarcasm. “It was pretty crappy, truth be told. Frédéric, that new chef de cuisine I told you about? Well, he chose me and Samantha to do a ‘cook-off’ to see whose omelette recipe he’ll be serving on the new menu.”
“So you made the finals. What’s so crappy about that?”
“I’ll tell you what’s so crappy. Frédéric tasted my omelette, smiled sweetly, told me how he adored my cooking. Then he tasted Sam’s omelette, smiled sweetly, cracked some dumb joke, something like, ‘but I only have thyme for you,’ and chose hers.”
“That little bitch!”