Harbor Park 2044
Harbor Park 2044
By Eben Bracy
Rising tides threaten Harbor Park and the future of Norfolk baseball
By Tack Adkinson
Dec. 8, 2044
Ten years ago, when MLB announced that an AI umpire system would go into full effect at the start of the 2033 season, umpires across the nation went on strike. Harbor Park was encircled by a picket line, and all games were suspended. In that year without baseball, I made my way to the umpire encampment across the Amtrak station. The umps set up a city of tents that filled the parking lot, with pickups stationed around the perimeter. There the umps held signs that read “Down with Trackman” and “Death to robo umps.” When I approached the line, one of the men came forward with a bat, and I nearly doubled back toward the Amtrak station. He asked me why I was there, and I told him, “For baseball.” He poked the bat into my chest, laughed, and said to the others, “This one’s good.” I noticed that his bat had This machine kills machines written on it in black Sharpie.
That was how I met umpire Jasiah Singh. Born in Norfolk, he played for the Tides in 2010 before being called up by the Orioles in 2012. After a brief career with the Orioles, Singh became an ump and had been one for a decade. When I interviewed Singh, I asked him what the future would look like if the strike failed and he told me, “Bleak. Won’t be long before there ain’t no team here.” A few months later the strike was broken. There hasn’t been an ump in a ballpark since. If you were to visit the old parking lot where the umps made their last stand, chances are you’d be knee-deep in greyish water. Floods habitually surge over the eroded concrete, drowning the grasses and trees around the park. High winds off the shore, blow the infield dirt into dust storms that salt and kill what’s left of the vegetation in the area. Nothing grows here. Nothing remains of the umps’ fight.
Despite that, I keep coming to Tides games and visiting the old parking lot hoping to find something there. These days, that part of the park is blocked off by chains and police tape because of the flash floods in the area. Although the words ‘blocked off’ and ‘police tape’ might make my visits seem like trespassing, no one from the park ever stops me from going over there. They don’t even replace the tape when the waves come surging in. Bits and pieces of the slimy yellow strips wash up on the old Amtrak platform, like piles of seaweed that the water has rejected. When I came here all those years ago, it was because baseball was in crisis. This is nothing new. Baseball is, and always has been, in a state of crisis while making more and more money with each season. If anything’s profitable, it’s crisis.
When I first started picketing with the umps, I was a little skeptical of the whole thing. I was ready to hear about how perfect they’d been on and off the field. That every call they made was not only the best anyone could make, but damn near irrefutable. However, most umps were tight-lipped about that sort of thing. It’s not that they would outright deny that mistakes were made, like when I asked Singh if he’d ever made inconsistent calls, he told me, “They’re mistakes in the sport” and he’d leave it at that. Only after I spent more time with the umps, did I learn that MLB sent agents into some of these camps. That part of these agents’ missions tried to confirm stories about messed up calls and admitted inconsistencies in order to justify the eradication of the umpire. Was this true? I don’t know, but either way, MLB got what they wanted in the end.
Perhaps my skepticism was well founded, baseball has survived the rise of the robo ump. Games are still being played at Harbor Park and the Tides are in the middle of a winning season. It might be gratifying to indulge in that skepticism, to point to baseball’s tenacity and laugh at all the sentimental fans who cried about the “death of baseball” all those years ago. I can’t do it without thinking about where Singh might’ve ended up. So often with my kind of work, we end up looking past what’s right in front of us. In the box seats where I’m writing this, I’m supposed to be covering the Tides winning season, focusing especially on pitcher Carson Rice, who plays a great part in that success. Rice is on the mound, throwing a fastball straight down the middle to Buck Burns of the Stripers. Behind the catcher is a monitor encased in a shatterproof glass box, it records the pitch as a strike and clocks its speed at 120 mph. Rice throws another 120-mph pitch, he does this over and over again without the slightest bit of strain. He is damn near impossible to get a hit off of.
Really though, what interests me is what’s going on between pitches, in the gulf of silence that fills the park before the ball leaves Rice’s hand. Behind him, the infielders shield their eyes as the wind blows dust across the field. Outfielders keep a hand on their hats, as the winds near the water rage and pull at the grass beneath them. Only the robo umps are unbothered by the dust storm blowing across the infield. The pitch clock is ticking. Rice waits for the dust to die. The wind keeps blowing, waves slam the back of the stadium, he throws, and the wind turns the ball into a bullet. So, is Carson Rice the next ace pitcher of the century? Well, if I were a different kind of writer I’d lean hard into ‘yes.’ However, the truth is that when pitchers throw at Harbor Park, they all throw well above 105 mph. Batters who manage to hit at Harbor Park almost always hit home runs. Carson Rice (while talented) isn’t unique. To call these things “Norfolk magic” as some like to do, would ignore is the very thing that will lead to the death of the Tides.
As sea levels rise and Norfolk continues to sink, this park will only flood more and more. The winds are only a death knell of what’s to come. When I look around at the garbage all over the stands, I can only think about how when the next flood comes, the waves will bring back more and more of our garbage to us. Unless something is done, this park and this team will be gone just as Singh predicted. When the umps were protesting, we focused on the wrong things. The attention was on the entitlement of owners, managers, fans, and umps. Everything was about who’s been right all along over the years. All we asked ourselves then was who would finally be validated over the way they saw the game. Where is Jasiah Singh now? In the spot where I’d find him, all I see is a monitor in a box.
If I were to ask MLB, they couldn’t tell me. Right now, their greatest concern is expanding their brand on the moon. The MLB Aerospace Commission has sent more missions to space than France, Russia, and Japan combined. The advanced satellites have projected weather patterns with such astonishing accuracy that its data has been used by the US government for its emergency weather system. With their data, the MLB Aerospace Commission has planned the next fifty seasons of baseball to be played on Earth. The game, as it concerns us here on the ground, is over and done with. Their attention now is on the massive moon complex they’ve built complete with two stadiums, luxury hotels, and a state-of-the-art training facility. Here baseball will survive, far from the centuries of mistakes we’ve committed against our planet. As cities like Miami and Houston begin to fold against the weight of nature, their teams are dissolving and heading into the stars. Next year, the Miami Marlins will play their last season and transition into the Miami Meteors. From then on, all their games will be played in the Aerospace Commission complex. Similar moves are already being discussed in Tampa, Boston, and Houston.
How long will it be until the Tides make similar arrangements? The best thing we can do to keep the Tides in Norfolk, at least in the short term, is to build a new stadium. I propose a closed dome stadium to offset the high wind speeds and dust storms affecting play at Harbor Park, along with a seawall to mitigate flooding. Long term, we regrow the trees and grasses around the park, take care of our garbage like we would in our own homes, and prevent the city from giving a part of our history to the moon. If we do nothing, we’ll find ourselves returning to the lot where Harbor Park used to be and asking ourselves, where are the Tides? I keep coming to Tides games and visiting the old parking lot hoping to find something there. Amongst the ghost of the umps, I can hear the crack of a home run.
“Harbor Park 2044” won honorable mention for the Sidd Finch Fiction Prize.
Eben Bracy was born in Flint, Michigan but raised in Virginia. He has attended the Kenyon Review’s Writing Workshop and his work has been published in the Constellate anthology. He’s also the winner of Old Dominion University’s Jerri Dickseski Fiction Prize.
Jason David Córdova lives in Puerto Rico as an illustrator and painter. Some of his art can be seen on Instagram at @jasoni72. You can visit his shop on Red Bubble.
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