Dream Fields

So we toddled down to Ferndale Saturday to see Jeff DeMark's, "Hard as a Diamond, Soft as the Dirt," the only one of his shows I haven't seen before. Thanks in part to the presence of his backing band (Tim Randles on keyboards, Ross Rowley on bass, and his twin brother Paul--who even got a few speaking lines--on drums) and some visual aids, he made good use of that big Ferndale Rep stage.

There's sadness and strife in the show but on the whole it seems sunnier than the others, probably because it's got a lot of baseball in it. Baseball is a secular religion in this country, and as Jeff notes, especially for his generation (and mine) it is a prime source of memory. Memories associated with playing baseball, and with watching baseball, particularly big league baseball. (Also listening to it on the radio.)

He mentions that ours was the last (or one of the last) generations in the old USA for whom baseball was so central. We played it spring to fall, every day. We collected baseball cards, played games with them, kept stats of big leaguers and scored games with the particular code of that activity, watched baseball on TV and listened to games on the radio--those voices now unforgettable. I was so into it that in the winter I watched broadcasts of Cuban baseball (so this was pre-Castro, if anyone still able to see the screen can fathom that)--one camera high above home plate. I still remember names of the teams, though I can't spell them.

There's a special kick for me in Jeff's childhood memories growing up in Racine Wisconsin, following the Milwaukee Braves. Though he doesn't mention it in the show, one of the chief rivals for the Braves in the late 1950s were the Pittsburgh Pirates, the team that played some 30 miles away from where I grew up. At least Pirate fans knew that to get the National League pennant, a team had to be able to beat the Braves and their fearsome pitching duo, Warren Spahn and Lew Burdette, and their great hitters and fielders, Hall of Famers now, like Eddie Matthews and of course, Hank Aaron.

Pittsburgh had great teams in those years, also loaded with Hall of Famers and guys that should be: regular 20 game winning pitchers like Bob Friend and Vern Law, one of the best relief pitchers ever--the fork ball specialist Roy Face; the great left-hander Harvey Haddix, who pitched 12 perfect innings in one game and still lost; clutch scratch hitters like Dick Groat, home run hitter Dick Stuart, hit anything hitters like Smoky Burgess; left fielder Bob Skinner,a hitter with one of the sweetest swings ever who had only one breakout year (he hit .321), one of the best fielding second basemen ever in Bill Mazeroski, the fiery Don Hoak at third, the fleet Bill Virdon in center, and in right field, the Great One: Roberto Clemente.

When the Pirates started to make their move in 1958, they finished just behind the Braves. They slipped back in 1959 but 1960 was their year. Still, it wasn't until a series with the Braves near the end of the season that they had the pennant won. (And then in the 90s, the Atlanta Braves were their nemesis, and...I don't want to talk about it.) So next to the Pirates, I probably knew more about the Braves than any other National League team.

So there were probably some Braves-Pirates games in the late 50s that Jeff and I were both intensely involved in as kids, with opposite emotional responses to what happened in them.

Jeff's encounters with actual big league icons seem to be more numerous and meaningful than mine. Later on, as a reporter, I met many of the players of the 1979 World Champion Pirates team, including Willie Stargell and Dave Parker, who threatened me with bodily harm. But that's another story. As a kid, I did shake hands with Roberto Clemente, on one of those afternoons at that great ballpark, Forbes Field, where kids were allowed down on the field to meet the players. Clemente didn't even glance at me, so I was very surprised when Bill Virdon looked me right in the eye as he shook my hand and called me, "son."

And Jeff is right to emphasize father and sons, because baseball was often a nexus for that relationship, perhaps in its complexities. I don't have a lot of fond memories of my father connected with playing baseball. He did take me to some games at Forbes Field, including a night game I still remember--it went to the tenth inning, somebody got on base and Roberto Clemente went up to the plate. Everybody there knew that Clemente never hits the first pitch--either he takes it, or he swings wildly at it, often so hard that he falls down, and his two hats--his batting helmet on top of his cap--fly off. So I don't think I was alone in leaning back, taking a breath and gathering myself during that first pitch.

The next thing I knew there was a loud crack and smoke in right field. Clemente had hit that first pitch so hard that it hit the fence in right field so fast that I didn't see it, and it hit the chalk line on the right field fence--the border of fair and foul-- so hard that it sent chalk dust up into the air illuminated by the lights--it was like a cannon had been fired in the outfield. And just like that, the ball game was over. Everybody was standing up to leave.

Then around that time I more or less took my father to a World Series game--I sent for the tickets, and won the lottery to buy them. Unfortunately, it was for the 6th game of the 1960 series, which the Yankees won by 14-0 or worse. When Mazeroski hit the shot heard round the world the next day, I was back in school. (I also missed seeing the big spontaneous demonstrations in Pittsburgh, especially in the Oakland section where Forbes Field was, but August Wilson told me about it.)

But related to playing baseball, it was another story for my father and me. The state of that might be revealed by one thing I remember, when I made the Pony League team, even though my father didn't come by the field. He didn't take much of an interest, but fatherly influence had a lot to do with who made that team, and fatherly attention was about the only actual coaching we got--in my case, it was attention and tips from other guys' fathers, including one who would later become the grandfather of one of my niece's (her father was my shortstop.)

But my father did come to the first game I pitched. Being left-handed there were only a few positions I could play, and kids weren't used to seeing left-handed pitchers. I probably came into that game in relief, as I often did (still had a 3-0 record though, a stat that nobody but me kept and certainly nobody else remembers). As I finished my warm-up pitches, I saw my father go stand behind the backstop, directly behind the catcher and umpire, and in my line of sight. I threw my first pitch as hard as I could and unintentionally, over everybody's head, and as it rattled off the backstop my father jumped back. I settled down after that and had a good game, and a pretty good season.

This past summer I rented the video of Field of Dreams, the anniversary edition with all the extras. I remember seeing it when it came out and being a little mystified by it. It was only when I saw it alone at home on video in Pittsburgh that the scene of the father and son playing catch really got to me. In the DVD extras, I learned that this scene is universally remembered as the most powerful in the movie. It's a tear-jerker for guys. Probably for lots of reasons--from either the memory of experiencing it or not experiencing it, or not valuing it at the time--one of those Our Town moments. Now apparently the field in Iowa where the movie was shot has become not only a tourist attraction, but a therapeutic nexus: people go there to heal their families, to heal themselves.

There's a character in Field of Dreams who played in one big league game but never got to bat, but he does on that Iowa field. It seems that a lot of guys measure how close they came, including the guy who coached the actors in batting for that movie (he played only a few games before a career-ending injury) and Jeff's father in the beginning of "Hard as a Diamond." So that's another dream, another yearning, another phantom fulfillment, that baseball measures, and conjures.

Anyway, it's a mostly funny show, with real feeling, and well worth seeing. Now I'm looking forward to seeing it and Jeff's other shows again--I know there's stuff I missed, or will experience in a different way.