One Missing October

One Missing October

By Robert Brewer

For Wendy

He cried for the longest time. Huge, glistening tears half the size of marbles rolled from his sallow eyes. Snot oozed from his nose. He was inconsolable.

His grief was not understood but certainly heard; he bellowed at first then his crying rose to a tremolo, a high-frequency whine screeching the way chalk does on a slick blackboard.

“Don’t worry, we’ll go to Breezy this afternoon,” his mother said. “It’ll be good in the water.” She leaned over the passenger seat consoling her son as I drove the car looking for Italian ice kiosks that populate neighborhoods in Brooklyn where you could pull over, buy a cherry red and placate a four-year-old, although Robby was a nascent teenager at twelve. Even so, parents are the ultimate pragmatists and rarely modify tactics that work.

Traffic on the Belt Parkway looked impassable. Vacationers headed east to the Hamptons and beach points beyond. Cars baked in a line of stalled traffic while travelers heading in the opposite direction, west toward Manhattan, cruised easily along.

“I can’t take the beach today.” He cried again even though a day, an hour on the sand at Breezy Point is a treat for any New Yorker, especially in August. He’d enjoyed lots of days building sand castles with wide embattlements, moats you would need a flotilla to cross, and hunting for crabs that burrowed in the sand when the sea receded and ceased its foamy inundations. “Why are they doing this? Why can’t they play?” he said. He wiped brine from his eyes, took a Kleenex, brushed back his hair and blew his nose until it honked. His face was the lavender color of a contusion.

It occurred to me baseball was the culprit, reason for my son’s anguish, source of his lamentations. Talk of a strike that would threaten the World Series had been in the air for weeks. Nobody paid attention, there’d been walkouts before, stoppages and truncated seasons in 1972 and 1981, but the game and the World Series survived, bailed out by negotiations splashed across America’s newspapers, the most recent morning edition of which it was clear my son had read. The news was deadly. Players Association representatives strode into Park Avenue offices, their lips taut, grimacing and full of purpose, their eyes focused and intense; one player had such a clear-eyed visionary grimness on his face he reminded me of Leon Trotsky.

“They’ll play. They wouldn’t dare cancel the World Series,” I said.

“They won’t do it, will they Dad?”

“Nah, the country won’t let them. They’ll make a deal. They played it in Hitler’s time, they played it in Stalin’s time,” I said.

“Mean guys, right Dad?”

“The worst.” 

I was sure he knew the first name, not so sure about the second, and made a mental note to review world history with him. Margaret turned on the car radio for a news update.

“Looks like the baseball season is over. If there’s no agreement by midnight tonight, it’s canceled, World Series and all. Goodbye major league baseball.”

I knew exactly which of the announcer’s words sent my son into new despondent paroxysms. “Goodbye” had a finality Robby couldn’t comprehend; he hadn’t known a day without baseball. Even the off-season was just that, a period of suspended animation after which the game resuscitated itself like daffodils in Spring. I’m sure he misinterpreted too, thought that not only the season, but baseball as an endeavor was being wiped out. Something he counted on suddenly wouldn’t exist. And it had been a good season. Tony Gwynn was batting a nip below .400, Matt Williams was on track to break Roger Maris’ home run record, and either Albert Belle or Frank Thomas seemed a lock on the Triple Crown.

I glanced in the rearview. Robby had rolled off the back seat and arched his body over the drivetrain hump. Wailing and gasping, he flailed his arms and pounded the carpeting with both fists, creating deep sounds of “whump a thump, whump a thump” on the car floor.

“Let’s get him to a ballpark quick,” Margaret said with the same urgent tone the day we took his brother to the hospital when he dropped a cinderblock on his toe.

“Yankees have an afternoon game,” I said.

“When?”

“Thirty minutes.”

“Good. We’ll be there in twenty. Take the Van Wyck.”

I liked our teamwork, her quick decisions, our pulling together, her understanding of what to me was New York’s trapezoidal road network.

“Maybe the Interboro?”

The Interboro highway began in the parking lot of the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and ended at a Popeye’s Fried Chicken. The $200 cab ride to Yankee Stadium was extra. Still, the highway had an official-sounding name and I’d been suggesting it as an alternate route although for most of Robby’s life, the thing had been closed.

“Squeeze left here, silly,” Margaret said. I nudged the car into the left lane as she turned to the backseat. “You’re going to Yankee Stadium. What do you think of that?” The whump a thumping stopped and Robby rolled up to the seat.

“Really?” he said.

“Sure, and you’ll get good seats.” Two twenty dollar bills from her handbag floated over the steering wheel.

Cars whizzed by, the highway broadened, lanes expanded to twelve as the Van Wyck evolved into the Grand Central Parkway. For a twelve-year-old, the flow of traffic, commerce, trade and life energy—anything that moved—could be brought to a standstill by baseball. Shea Stadium drifted past the landscape of car rooftops and highway exit signs.

“Mets play in Philadelphia tonight.”

“If he’s not over it, you could take the train out of Penn Station.” Two more twenties floated over the steering wheel. At River Avenue and 161st Street, pennants whipped above storefronts. “Call. Let me know.” Her words evaporate in the wind, floating on an airborne kiss.

Inside the stadium, fans were charged. “They should stay,” a few next to us complain. They begin a one-word chant: “Stay,” others pick it up, and soon ten thousand people shout: “Stay, Stay, Stay.” During the game, the crowd renews the mantra, sweeping the stadium like a brush storm. “Stay, Stay, Stay!”

“There’s Brady Anderson. Look at those sideburns. Hey Elvis,” Robby says as Anderson’s image flashes on the Diamond Vision above the crowd.

“Maybe Elvis lives,” I say.

“Elvis lives,” he shouts, cupping his hands over the sides of his mouth. The crowd begins a new chant and my son explains the incantation. “There’s a guy showboating, look.”

A man wearing an Oriole hat and shirt stands on his seat stabbing the air with his middle finger. The crowd is incited and reacts. “Take off the hat, take off the hat!” the crowd screams. Thousands yell in unison and the man obliges but the crowd is not assuaged. “Now the shirt, now the shirt, now the shirt!” the crowd roars, and stripped to the waist, he stabs the air with his middle finger once more. Suddenly, he fumbles with his belt, pulls his pants down and bends over.

“Dad, he’s mooning the crowd!” Bare-bottomed, the man spanks himself, turns around and puts his hands on his hips. “Dad, he’s sunning the crowd, look. Ahhhhh!” Security guards reach him, throw a blanket around him, yank him off his pedestal, and march him out and away from the cheering minions.

I’m amazed my son can explain what he sees. “Don’t tell your mother about this,” is the only advice I can offer.

It’s been an odd game. Jimmy Key, the Yankee ace with 18 wins, is getting plastered. With the din and distractions, I’ve barely noticed Cal Ripken Jr. at the plate. My son and I have collected 822 Ripken baseball cards most of which have appreciated in value because Cal is approaching, and is scheduled to break, Lou Gehrig’s record of consecutive games played. His streak started in 1982, Robby’s first baseball season. If there is a strike, Ripken’s streak will end tonight, 25 games short of the record.

“It’s Cal, Dad.”

A man in back of me is standing and yelling. “Ripken, why don’t you retire?” He sits, and I become privy to his inner demons. “Wish you played for the Yankees,” he mutters.

Cal swings, bringing his hands down and into the ball. It arcs elliptically over the left center field fence.

“OK Cal,” my son says.

The Orioles pour gasoline on an already incendiary situation. They lead 8-0 by the time the Yankees begin a feeble rally that is doused when Danny Tartabull strikes out. Once again, the fan behind me takes it personally. “Put his salary on the scoreboard,” he screams. Danny’s .191 batting average is the lowest on the team while his salary is among the highest. Most American workers with similar productivity statistics would be fired for cause.

“Dad, a fight’s breaking out!” Robby points to a commotion in the upper loge reserved where security guards are in action again. A home run cheer has erupted and play is suspended as a body is pushed backward over a banister and tumbles thirty feet before hitting another railing to the lower reserved seats. An effigy figure lies limp in a baseball uniform, its back propped up against the balustrade, straw popping from its broken back. With this last measure of defiance, fans begin filing out.

“Dad, what are those round numbers in the bullpen?”

“Retired numbers nobody else can use. Number 3, that’s the Babe. They carried his body in when he died, and one guy said ‘Boy it’s hot, I’d give anything for a beer.’ Another guy said ‘So would the Babe.’”

“Ha, but he was dead. The Babe. Dad right? Who’s 4?”

“Lou Gehrig, the Iron Man.”

“Cal’s chasing him. Cal’s the new Iron Man. And 5. Who’s 5?”

“Joe DiMaggio.”

“Ever see him? Ever see DiMaggio?”

“Never saw DiMag.”

“How come? Wasn’t he alive?”

“Sure he was. My dad wasn’t like your dad.”

“7’s Mickey Mantle. I got cards of his, Upper Deck Memorials. Who’s 8, Dad? They got two 8’s.”

“One’s Bill Dickey, the other is Yogi.”

“What did Yogi do?”

“Yogi hit good in the clutch. And Yogi said things. Once he said he was ugly, but so what, you don’t hit a baseball with your face.”

“Imagine if you did that? Hit a baseball with your face? You’d be bashed up.”

“Imagine if Nolan Ryan threw a baseball and you hit it with your face?”

“You’d be dead. Imagine playing baseball with one arm?”

“That’s been done. Pete Gray did it.”

“Imagine not playing baseball at all?”

I can see his confusion, frolic turning to bewilderment then a huge regret he can’t bypass and I grab him by the arm, hustling him down the aisle before the last of the ninth passes into baseball history. We make our way to the D line; it whistles down to 92nd Street, after two more stops we leave the train at 33rd Street. It is a longer walk to the Amtrak, the five o’clock whistle toots and when the train chugs out from the trellis, sheets of rain cascade into the shunting yard. Robby dozes off, his neck resting in the crook between the window and the seat padding, the noise of the train wheels clackety and consistent. Suddenly, he opens his eyes.

“Where we goin’ Dad?”

“Mets play the Phillies tonight.”

“Great.”

We were a road crew and this was our job, tagging along when the teams played, not fans at all, but roadies in the big show. Veterans Stadium opened before us. The rain slackened and deep inside the amphitheater, yellow and red seats gleamed in sections circling the ersatz grass on the playing field. Results of other games were posted on the scoreboard arching over the outfield wall. Playing times for games in the West were a reminder this one-day season we found ourselves in did not have to end. The Oakland A’s played the California Angels tonight. We were in a way station, a constant stream of entertainment, an open competition for the “sports dollar” and as long as your American Express card could stand it (or you had a doting wife like mine) you were set.

“Dad, can I go up to the nosebleed section?”

Spectators took up residence in the cheap seats as flat dark clouds rolled over the horizon. Lights were on; they pierced the growing mist as some of the Mets pitchers, out to prove major leaguers were good guys, lobbed baseballs into the mezzanine section.

“Sure,” I said. “Take money for a hot dog.”

He walked up and over the seats rolling forward, part of the ovoid layout that gave the stadium its saucer shape. Soon he was out of sight.

The game itself was a blend of defense and good pitching by Fernando Valenzuela. Innings passed and players paraded to the plate, their statistics flashing across the Diamond Vision like miniature histories, and I sat awed into reverence by the distance a baseball could be thrown with what seemed like effortless ease. In the middle of one such throw, it may have been a Valenzuela screwball, I realized I missed my son in a way that made me shiver. With him, our adventure was endless, without him, people were as strange and foreign as the millionaire stick men exerting themselves on the field below.

I scrambled out of my seat, took an escalator to the top of the unreserved tier, rushed through the food kiosks, past memorabilia stores, the Philadelphia Eagles trophy room, out the other side, hurrying up a short flight of stairs to the melange of top tier seats. Underneath the stadium overhang, Robby sat with his feet propped on seats in front of him.

“Look at this view. The only thing is you can’t see the players good.” A light drizzle passed through the lights and sprayed the seats below. Robby had found a grand and panoramic sight setting out on his own.

“It’s a long way to the exits when it gets wet. What say we head back down?”

“Let’s go way down. To the box seats.”

Fans scattered as rain began to drench the field. The players looked like phantoms as we watched from seats along the third base line. A tie score slowed the action and cuffed the bats of the hitters.

“What if it gets late, would they keep playing?” Robby said.

“They have to, until someone wins.”

“What if it gets to midnight. Is it over?”

“I don’t know. Don’t know what they’ll do. Quit, I guess.” An improbable thought: the third baseman earning $5 million dollars would leave his position in the middle of a game, protesting what? Unfair labor conditions? The drizzle intensified. Robby leaned over the railing, tucking his arms under his chin. The mist passed through the light banks ringing the stadium. The names of the teams on the scoreboard gleamed like a certainty in the vagueness.

“This’ll be over soon, Dad.”

His East Coast world might be, but I knew about the beyond. I couldn’t explain it to him but I could certainly show him.

“C’mon son, let’s go.”

We stepped gingerly along the slippery stairs grabbing handrails above the cement walls and floated down the escalator until we were at the curbside.

“Taxi,” I yelled. A Green and White materialized from the morass of city traffic, its wipers stuttering across polka dots of rain as the driver approached.

“Where to, Mack?” We hopped inside and Robby leaned back into a canopy of thick upholstered velour. He rolled his head, rubbed his eyes, and slid into a half kip of comfort.

“Airport, please,” I said. Robby sat up immediately as the driver pulled into traffic and the stadium receded like a vanishing saucer into the night galaxy behind us. His face was puffy but his eyes were still and very bright.

“I’m OK, Dad. Let’s go home.”

“There’s a game out in Oakland. A’s play the Angels. We can try for it.”

“It’s all right. It’s just a game. They’ll get along without us.”

“Our last chance before the strike,” I muttered, watching my hands fold themselves into my lap.

“Let ‘em strike. We’ll find something else to do.”

My mind went blank, washed over by a riptide of panic. If the jet overhead streaking for the city airport decided to land on the taxi roof instead, it wouldn’t have seemed as out of the ordinary as an October without the World Series. The thought alone made me weary, yet here we were, in the grip of a labor dispute, one night game away from an incomprehensible void. On any other evening, the Oakland game would be lost in a jangle of sports page statistics at the bottom of the next day’s newspapers but today it loomed like a saving flare, one that would burn itself out four hours from now.

“Driver, we need the train station,” Robby said.

“You got it, Sonny.” He turned the wheel, making dexterous weaves around highway overpasses, depositing us finally at a vacuous building on Broad Street.

On the ramp toward the train trellis, I grew more fatigued and apprehensive. There would be news about the strike for a while, Ernie Anastos would bring his Live at Five crew to Yankee Stadium and film stupefied men wandering aimlessly in front of ticket windows that were shuttered and locked claptrap style. They’d feel a vacancy of purpose, but after a while the coverage would fade, and Fall would simply skip a month, the calendar leaping from September to November; Robby too, going on to other discoveries. He’d grown up today in front of my eyes, acquiring a wisdom that hadn’t been there this morning, while I could feel myself going the other way—backsliding, regressing, slipping toward absentia, the one missing October.

The night air turned cold. My steps on the train had the weightlessness of snow as the locomotive began to roll. My eyes close, the station lights fade, the clickety-clack noise of the wheels cradles the train track, the compartment sways, enveloping us in motion toward New York.

Some long time later, when we shoveled out from the season’s first blizzard that filled Brooklyn streets with chunky blocks of ice that seemed like they would last until Spring, Robby told me I slept like a baby all the way home.

Robert Brewer is the author of the baseball novel The Boy Who Would Not Play Ball (Amazon) and has published other work in The Paris Review, Connecticut Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Proud To Be: Writing By American Warriors, and elsewhere. He has work forthcoming in War, Literature and the Arts.

Sam Williams is a cartoonist, comics publisher and baseball enthusiast based in Bournemouth, UK.

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