by Bob Mitchell
And the final burst of the Beatles’ riff and the rousing, raucous, brash, clashing, strident, high-pitched, piercing, trumpety climax. And the tornado grinds to a halt. And Seth is deposited gently on the ground. It is no longer 2006.
It is 2004.
Seth knows it is, because he is looking at a big, fancy clock sitting on a glass living-room coffee table. The digital clock is made of silver and dark wood. It says 5:13 P.M. Above the time is the inscription:
To Papa Sol. With Love, Setharoo.
Below the time is the date, spelled out in gorgeous serif letters:
Oct. 19 2004
The date is ringing a bell for Seth, and as soon as his head clears, the bell becomes a gong: This was the last day anyone ever saw Papa Sol, the anyone being Sammy and Elsie and Kate and Seth. Not only that, but it is his thirty-first birthday.
Seth hears laughter. He follows its ripples, which lead him to the roomy kitchen in the Cambridge home of Papa Sol and Grandma Elsie. Celebrating at the kitchen table are seventy-six-year-old Solomon Stein, seventy-five-year-old Elsie Stein, ten-year-old Sammy Stein, twenty-eight-year-old Kate Richman, and thirty-one-year-old Seth Stein.
Seth Stein, the birthday boy.
This time around, for thirty-three-year-old Seth the interloper, the party is every bit as joyous as it was two years ago.
And everyone is singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” and Kate marches in with a birthday cake she baked out of love in the form of a white baseball with red stitches and HAPPY 31ST, SETH! written in script and Seth blows out all thirty-one candles in a single breath and Sammy giggles and there are stories all around told by Sol to Seth and Seth to Sammy and Sol to Sammy and Sammy to Sol and also singing and laughter and Elfie and Kate are bonding and now Sammy’s got icing all over the tip of his nose and everyone cracks up and Seth wipes Sammy’s nose and they look each other right in the eyes and Sammy hugs Seth and says happy birthday Dad I love you and all that crap between Seth and Julie and Sammy melts away into nothingness.
It’s like a snapshot of happiness frozen in time, and older Seth is getting to live it all over again. He smiles at the thought that if Dickens were writing a novel about this moment in time, he’d call it A Tale of One City, and the opening sentence would be:
It was the best of times.
Amid the celebration and the mirth, as Seth watches his younger self and his loved ones having the time of their lives, a disturbing thought occurs to him: This is the eve of the day Papa Sol disappeared and the last time any of us ever saw him. This time around, returning to this evening, looking in from the outside as an objective historian, would he notice any signs, any hints, any harbingers, any inklings that might give him a clue regarding Sol’s disappearance?
During a rare lull in the festivities, birthday boy Seth and Papa Sol find themselves in a corner of the kitchen, chatting, a cup of coffee in each of their right hands. Older Seth listens in.
“So, Papa Sol, you gonna be watching the Big Game tomorrow?” birthday boy asks.
“You crazy? Seventh game of the ALCS? Bosox and Yanks? Winner goes to the Series? I wouldn’t miss it for the world!”
Sol winks that mischievous wink.
“You think the Bosox’ll really do it, beat those damn Yankees?” Seth asks.
“Of course, they will. I mean, ya gotta have faith. That’s what being a Sox fan is all about, just like I taught you. And the odds are with them. No one’s ever come back from three games down to sweep the next four in a playoff series, so it’s about time.”
“Not in baseball, anyway,” well-schooled Seth says. “There were the ’42 Leafs and the ’75 Islanders in hockey. But never in baseball.”
“Right you are, Setharoo!” Papa Sol says proudly. “Not until tomorrow, that is!”
“The New York Times says tomorrow is Mickey Mantle’s birthday and the day after is Whitey Ford’s birthday and that’s a sign that the Yanks can’t lose,” Seth says.
“Well, whaddya expect a New York rag to say, huh? Mark my words, Setharoo, our Sox are gonna do it! And I’ll be right there with ’em, you can bet your sweet bippee.”
Seth the interloper wipes his eyes with a Happy Birthday napkin.
Seth opens his eyes and finds himself sitting next to seventy-six-year-old Papa Sol at yet a fourth historic baseball game. The contest, not yet begun, is the deciding ALCS Game 7 between the beloved Red Sox and the damn Yankees. Seth knows it is, because there are the 2004 Yanks on the field, in their pinstripes, A-Rod and Jeter and Cairo and Clark, then Matsui and Bernie and Sheffield, and Posada behind the plate and Kevin Brown on the mound, and Red Sox Johnny Damon swinging a few bats and getting ready to walk up to the plate.
And here is Seth, beside Papa Sol, sitting down the left-field line in the most hallowed of all baseball parks. Since opening its doors in 1923, the host of thirty-seven World Series matchups. The site of Babe’s sixtieth homer in ’27, Gehrig’s farewell address in ’39 and Ruth’s in ’48, Larsen’s perfecto in ’56, Maris’s sixty-first in ’61, Reggie’s three dingers in a single ’77 Series game. The House that Ruth Built. The asymmetrical horseshoe on East 161st Street and River Avenue in the Bronx, New York.
Yankee Stadium!
As Damon saunters up to the plate, Seth is wondering why Papa Sol didn’t tell anyone at the birthday party yesterday he was going to be here tonight. Maybe he was given only one ticket by a friend and he couldn’t not go and he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings? Yeah, that must be it.
And I’ll be right there with ’em, you can bet your sweet bippee.
The deep, baritone voice of the great Bob Sheppard, the PA announcer since ’51, intones: “Your attention please, ladies and gentlemen. Now batting for the Red Sox, the center fielder, Johnny Damon…number eighteen.”
Seth’s never been here before and, in awe, scans the stadium. There’s the famous white-arched facade in the outfield and the short right-field porch and Death Valley in left-center and the “batter’s eye,” those black-painted seats in dead center.
He looks to his right, at Papa Sol, sees the hope in his eyes because his beloved Red Sox are on the verge of making it back to the Series for the first time since the Buckner Fiasco in ’86. Then he sees the disdain in Sol’s eyes when he surveys the Yanks settling in on defense, these damn Yankees.
The feeling is multiplied by about a trillion as Sol watches the especially odious Bucky Dent, author of Boston misery in the ’78 AL East division playoffs, throw out the first ball. The harbinger of yet another Red Sox postseason disappointment?
The Sox are fortunate to be here. Down 0–3 in the Series, they’ve scratched and clawed their way back, thanks to a David Ortiz walk-off homer in Game 4, an Ortiz walk-off single in Game 5, and a courageous performance by pitcher Curt Schilling that sent his blood-soaked sock right to Cooperstown. In fact, never has a team come back from being behind three games to none to win a baseball pennant series, and there is tension in the brisk October New York air. Oh, how these Yankees fans hate to lose.
Damon strides up to the dish. The spunky center fielder is only 3-for-29 in the Series so far, but he’s hanging in there and strokes a single to left.
Seth looks around him and thinks about what, compared to the others he’s been back to visit, is different at this twenty-first-century ball game. What strikes him is the “technology of spectation”—the ubiquity of BlackBerries and cell phones and iPods and electronic hand warmers. All the beeps and rings and musical riffs that punctuate the pauses in the action. A far cry from the fifties, when the most technological device at the ballpark was a hearing aid. Yet the essence of baseball and the fever of the fan have never changed through, and despite, all these advances: The fascination of the game itself and the passion of rooting are every bit as engaging and energizing as they were in ’51.
Before you can say David Américo Ortiz, the Bosox grab a quick 2–0 lead in the first, courtesy of the Dominican slugger’s two-run blast.
The
Yanks go quietly in the bottom of the first, and before Yankees fans can catch their collective breath, the bases are full of Sox in the top of the second, and Damon, on a roll, smashes reliever Javier Vázquez’s first offering over the short right-field porch for a grand salami, and Boston is now up 6–0.
What goes around comes around, historian Seth Stein thinks, noting that the Yankees themselves were ahead 6–0 after three innings in Game 1.
Seth is also thinking about why he is here, at this game, at this time. Surely not for the excitement, although Papa Sol and the other Boston fans are plenty excited to see the rout taking place. But Seth already knows the outcome—the Bosox will crush the Bombers in a walk, 10–3—and that the game will be as excitingly close as Secretariat’s winning the ’73 Belmont by thirty-one lengths.
The other three games he has visited so far were wildly exciting one-run affairs: 5–4 in ’51, 1–0 in ’62, and 6–5 in ’86. So why is he at this one?
What pops into Seth’s mind is that during the other three games, Papa Sol was involved in a life-altering act that either affected the actual outcome of the game or was a consequence of it. And since the result of this game will never be in doubt, the only answer can be that yesterday was the last day Papa Sol was seen, so maybe something happened here that resulted in his disappearance from the face of the earth. Something that just happened to escape the notice of 56,128 witnesses?
“Papa Sol, please be careful! Don’t let anything happen to you!” Seth pleads out of love and concern.
As expected, the plea goes unrequited.
The rest of the game creeps along slow as a sloth for Seth, who knows the outcome of the contest, but not his grandfather’s fate.
Damon homers again, and again it is on Vázquez’s first pitch (didn’t he learn anything from the first time?), and it’s 8–1, and then it’s 8–3, and then 9–3, then 10–3, and now it’s the bottom of the ninth, and with two outs and Lofton on first and Williams on second, Ruben Sierra, pinch-hitting for Olerud, taps a slow roller on a 1-0 pitch to Pokey Reese at second, who tosses the ball to Doug Mientkiewicz at first, and the beloved Red Sox have done it, they’ve come back from three games to none to knock off those damn Yankees!
Seth is looking at Papa Sol now and remembering all the odd, sad, terrible, fear-inspiring, despairing looks he has seen before in his baseball fanatic grandfather’s eyes, but this time, there is no oddness, no sadness, no despair. No, this time there is unbridled joy and gratefulness and unspeakable satisfaction, Papa Sol’s eyes reveling in the fact that his Red Sox have just defeated the Yankees, beaten them in grand style, and now they’ll be going off to the World Series for the first time in eighteen years, since the Billy B. Affair, and maybe now they’ll win their first World Championship since 1918 and these eyes that have seen so much disappointment have now seen much of that disappointment melt away: the failures of Red Sox past, the coming up short of Teddy Ballgame and Pesky and Doerr and Dom, of Lonborg and Yaz and Rico, of Fisk and Rice and, yes, Billy Buckner.
By now, most of the other fans—exhausted either from joy or sorrow—have staggered to the exits and filed out of the Stadium. Sol and Seth are alone, here in their third-baseline seats, here in the stillness of the aftermath. Seth is so happy that Sol is so happy, but still, he wonders, why is he here? Simply to see the joy in his grandfather’s face?
And the other fans have now all departed, and noble old Yankee Stadium is host not to 56,129, but to two.
No, wait…make that three. Way over there, way down the foul line and making his way toward Papa Sol and his invisible grandson, his faint but piercing whistling filling up the empty ballpark, is a short, distinguished-looking African-American gentleman, in his late sixties perhaps, an employee of the Yankees, and he’s sweeping up the aisles with the care and punctiliousness of a brain surgeon.
His progress toward the two baseball fanatics is methodical, and as Seth watches him sweep up the aisles and wend his way over toward him and his grandfather, he does not notice what Papa Sol is doing.
Papa Sol, an angelic grin still adorning his face, is falling over, falling straight ahead and to his right, his body landing with a dull thud halfway into the aisle, his head thwacking against the concrete, his eyes closed by the impact.
Seth does not notice this turn of events, his attention still riveted on the black gentleman who, to his left, is lovingly cleaning up the detritus left by the untidy fans and who is still wending his way toward the two Steins.
And now Seth looks to his right and sees that Papa Sol is lying there halfway in the aisle and tries to pick him up but of course he can’t and omygod is this the way it all ends? and the joy and the peace and the satisfaction inside of Seth have turned into fear and panic and helplessness.
Sol, still stunned, comes to and struggles to his seat and gazes straight ahead at the playing field, an odd, vacant look on his face and clearly in some sort of daze.
Seth sits there, wide-eyed and terrified, wondering what will happen to Papa Sol now? and is he in any pain? and here comes that gentleman, that neurosurgeon of ballpark sweepers, who is sweeping up a pile of debris a few rows down. Seth notices that under a box of half-eaten popcorn and a paper cup with a few inches of beer still in it, hidden by this debris, is a square brown leather object, and it’s Papa Sol’s wallet, which must’ve fallen down there when Sol fell up here. And the whistling sweeper sweeps the wallet into his bin just like that, oblivious to inaudible Seth’s begging him not to.
The sweeper looks up and sees dazed Solomon Stein, who sits in his state of apparent oblivion, staring vacantly out at the empty playing field, the field that just a brief while ago had been the source of his unbridled and quite lucid happiness.
“Hey, man, you okay?” the sweeper asks.
Nothing.
“Hey, mister, you okay?”
Like Seth, Papa Sol seems to be in a faraway place, one removed from his accustomed present.
The sweeper takes Sol by the shoulder and shakes him. “Hey, mister—”
“Huh?”
“You okay?”
“Oh, I guess so. Who are you?” Sol asks.
“Name’s Walter. Walter Retlaw. But my friends call me Wally.”
“Well, then I’ll call you Wally. How ya doing, Wally?”
“I’m doing just fine. Question is, how you doing?”
“I’m doing pretty good, Wally. I guess…”
Wally the sweeper notices a trickle of blood dripping down Sol’s forehead, dripping from a nasty, swollen little bruise.
“We better take care of this,” Wally says, pointing to Sol’s abrasion. “What’s your name, and where do you live?”
“Um, I’m not sure. Um…”
Uh-oh, something is wrong, Seth thinks, powerless to help out.
“Well, now, do you have a wallet?”
Papa Sol pats down both pants pockets, then his back pockets, then his jacket pockets.
“Nope, guess I don’t have one.”
“Listen, I better take you home and clean up that wound. First-aid station’s closed, but my place isn’t too far from here. Not to worry, everything will straighten itself out in the end, my friend, you’ll see,” Wally says reassuringly.
And Wally the sweeper and still-dazed Papa Sol and invisible Seth walk slowly out of the stadium, out into the quiet, chilly streets of the Bronx…
…and up to Wally Retlaw’s apartment building.
Seth makes a mental note of the address on the Grand Concourse as he follows Papa Sol and his host up the narrow staircase. When they get to the third floor, Wally puts the key in the door of apartment number 303, welcomes his guest, and closes the door just after his uninvited, invisible second guest sneaks in.
Wally’s digs are a lot like him: small, modest, understated, uncomplicated. In fact, a writer desiring to describe its contents would probably have a pretty easy job of it.
In the bedroom, there’s a small bed with a handsome blue plaid comforter and a
n end table, on top of which sit a silver-and-black alarm clock radio and a slender, elegant black desk lamp.
The kitchen sports a simple gas stove and a small, round table flanked by two stylish bridge chairs.
In the living room: a rust-colored mohair sofa, a kidney-shaped glass coffee table punctuated by a vase of fresh red roses, an entertainment center with TV and stereo, and a painted black bookcase holding fifty or so volumes, mostly old tomes about the history of baseball. On the wall above the sofa, Wally’s past and passion are reflected in three handsomely framed photos of old Negro League baseball stars: Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, and Cool Papa Bell.
“Sit yourself down, young man,” Wally Retlaw says, with a kindly wink. “Can I get you anything to drink? Cup of java? Bottled water? Ginger ale? Maybe even a little Canadian Club?”
Sol shakes his head.
“Well then, let’s take a look at that bruise.”
Wally excuses himself for a second and returns with a hand towel, a bottle of peroxide, a tube of Neosporin, and a Band-Aid. He cleans up the dried blood and dabs the bruise on Sol’s forehead and applies the Band-Aid and the antibiotic ointment with precision and caring.
“There, that should do it,” Wally says. “Oh, like I told you, my name is Wally Retlaw. I’m seventy-five. Been living here in this beautiful mansion for ten years now, ever since my darling Louise passed on. So what happened to your head, my friend?”
Sol thinks a moment. “Don’t really know. Think I bumped it. Maybe fell down.”
Seth notes that Papa Sol’s speech is slow and unsure. Something is definitely not kosher.
“Looks like you enjoy baseball,” Wally says. “That’s something we share, for sure. Been a huge part of my own life. Yessir, I’ve followed it, oh, maybe since I was six. Seen ’em all come through the Stadium: Ruth, Gehrig, Lazzeri, Meusel, Dickey, DiMaggio, Rizzuto, Mantle, Berra, Ford, Reggie, Munson, Jeter.”