The Daily News
"It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, you rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then, just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops."
-A. Bartlett Giamatti
1 Baseball.
2 I dreamed a dream last night. I dreamed I saw Baseball once again yesterday.
3 Can't really tellya much more, but sometimes, it just rips at my soul. Baseball, that is. It's designed to do that.
4 Perhaps it was in a dream. I saw things in that dream.
5 I saw a lady who reminded me of my mom walking around, holding tickets, and looking like a kid, ready for the season to begin. I wished my mom could have been there yesterday. She can't walk, but she still loves her Giants. So does my dad. I love them with all my heart. In my dream, she became my mom. The lady holding the tickets that is. Quite a dream. I saw lots of things in that dream.
6 I saw a friend of mine, Bill Phillips, from New York, pull me aside after the game and say in his best carny New York accent, "So this lady who comes heah every yeeuh approaches me today, awlmost in teahs. She tells me this was going to be huh lehast Opennuh, that she had cansuh, and that she wasn't gonna be heuh next yeeuh. So seeadd, man. Broke my haht." True story. A touchin' good story. Sad. But real. At least in my dream of yesterday. Broke his heart. Broke my heart. But ya gotta have heart, I imagine.
7 Yeah, it's just plain designed that way.
8 I saw little kids with huge baseball gloves, dazzled by the game I have grown to love. I saw a kid with a glove bigger than his head look up to his dad yesterday and say, "I missed this place." Yep. It does that too.
9 I saw Tom, this sort of Pied-Piper guy from the Great Candlestick Section 24 gang in the final years, who used to help kids sneak in, and who would bring red licorice for everyone, and teach kids how to get foul balls. He wore a San Francisco Seals jersey, authentic, and it just rocked. I knew he was going to sneak a few kids in the park yesterday; you could count on it.
10 I saw a father buy his kid an Opening Day pin, and then take off. When I asked him where he was going, he said his kid had a game, and that he had to leave the Opener. I said, "Whatdya, nuts?" and he replied, "I lost a son two years ago. I still have three other kids. You gotta love 'em when they're here, you know?"
11 Boy, do I know.
12 I saw two teachers, one with a son, and one high school principal, all of whom ditched school and went to the ballgame. In my dream, we all agreed silently that nobody would ever tell. No one ever will.
13 I saw everything I have ever been, coming back and smiling in the form of sunshine bursting through dark clouds and shining down on all of us yesterday.
14 Sometimes it's the little things.
15 I dreamed I got a flat tire right when I was all ready to go up to the ballpark, right after I heard Mike Krukow say on the radio, "Well, if my having a dead battery this morning is the worst thing to happen to me today, then I've had a great day!"
16 I saw in my dream a fellow who works up there, a guy I dreamed was my partner, telling me that HIS wife had a flat tire this morning...
17 She was just returning home from the hospital with her nine-year old boy, a big baseball fan. He had been in the hospital for several days recovering from a life-threatening bout of pneumonia. He is nine, and was doing just fine yesterday morning, when the flat tire hit. His name is Herman. Herman was able to catch the game where his daddy was working on the radio. Herman loves his daddy. His daddy's name is Pete.
18 I dreamed of many memories of amazing and storied times at all the baseball games I ever attended.
19 I dreamed of my only home run ever, coming remarkably just a few years ago, when I won a reunion game with my sandlot buddies by launching a towering home run to win the game, to the cheers of every friend I ever had. I might as well have been Bobby Thompson.
20 I dreamed of all the best moments of my entire life in slow motion. I dreamed of burying pieces of cement in dirt in the lot next to my house when I was a kid, and using them as bases. I dreamed of bubble-gum cards.
21 I dreamed yesterday that I heard a 90 year-old woman say, "This is always the best day of the year."
22 I dreamed of the great years at Candlestick.
23 I dreamed I had my life back once more.
24 I dreamed of lost loves, of broken hearts, of dreams and of miracles, and of how much I love the people I love.
25 And when I returned home, I dreamed of finally having myself back, and all that ever was.
26 Baseball can do all that to a guy.
27 Baseball.
28 Glory days.
29 Peace.
~h~
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