Between Pitches: A Story

Ahh love how baseball lends itself so well to allegorical societal divisions...

“All happy families are alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” --Tolstoy

Casper appeared to be engaged in some kind of gummy bear appraisal process. He would select a piece from the bag and then would hold it up against the stadium lights. And then after inspecting it, though for what Dolores wasn’t sure, and once the candy passed inspection, he would throw it happily in his mouth. Between innings, Dolores would more carefully observe this ritual, and it wasn’t until the 5th inning that she concluded he was checking the color. It was also around this time that most of the 55,000 fans had come to the conclusion that the Yankees were going to lose the league series against the Red Sox.

“Can I have a red one?” Dolores asked, upon watching the 10-year-old boy examine and then discard a clear one.

Casper shook his head briskly, “Nope. I’m not giving those away.”

“You’re not giving them away? What are they, Rolling Stones tickets?”

“Huh? I’m saving the red ones for luck. And I’m throwing out the clear ones because those are the Yankees.”

Dolores wasn’t quite certain how the clear ones had been dubbed representative of the Yankees. But she was very much familiar with the unrelenting superstition that saturated the minds and hearts of Boston fans. So she didn’t question his motives. Dolores was lucky enough to acquire tickets to Game 7 of the playoff series, through a connection at the Big Sister program at the YMCA. Having just moved to New York after graduating from Amherst, she had no friends in this championship-spoiled Yankee territory, let alone any transplanted Boston fans like herself that she could bring. Except Casper, Dolores’s assigned Little Brother, who oddly subscribed to a fierce devotion of the Sox. Dolores wondered what his friends and parents thought of this. In New York, she thought, this was akin to dropping out of med school to follow Phish or something.

Their seats were in the third to last row of the second to top tier of the stadium, but Dolores could distinguish each player through sheer knowledge of their positions on the field. She squinted her eyes to blur the view, and they became amorphous shapes of white and reddish/grey on a geometrically perfect field.

“Let’s go Red Sox!” Clap, clap, clapclapclap. “Let’s go Red Sox!” From somewhere not too far from where they were sitting, someone had resurrected the go-to chant. Casper looked up at Dolores, and she smiled at him.

“Let’s go Red Sox!” Casper didn’t get up from his seat, but he made his hands into fists and began alternately pounding his thighs back and forth, without discerning the presence of any kind of rhythm to the increasingly loud chants. Dolores was always fascinated by how black people’s palms were pink. She watched his tiny fists, and the tops of them looked like cinnamon buns, swirls of black and peach.

“How do you start yelling something so everyone else does it too?’ Casper asked.

“Umm, I’m not sure. I think someone just decided to do it and then other people join in.”

“Can anyone do it?”

“I’m pretty sure. Want to try?”

Casper made some kind of indignant huff to indicate “Yeah, right.” But he made it with the type of muddled emotion that Dolores took to mean, “Neat idea, but I’m scared to do it, but I still want to look tough and cool about it.”

Which was fine, because Dolores was in such cloudy mindset right then that she didn’t herself even believe she could muster up the tenacity to motivate the ill-received Boston fans. There were patches of red jerseys scattered throughout the stadium, interspersed among the white and navy masses of New York die-hards. The Red Sox were an inning away from beating the Yankees, and nothing made sense to Dolores. She knew she should be spilling outside of herself, that feeling of being so happy that it’s almost like you’re frustrated with your body for physically confining your euphoria. It was like meeting a celebrity on the street, and you know you should be emitting some kind of radioactive glow of exhilaration. But the intangible boundary between “real people” and famous ones has been blurred, and it’s almost as if it is not even happening.

“Can I have a clear one, Casper? I’ll throw it out, I swear, I just want to see it for a sec.”

Casper gave her a look most people reserve to react to “Is it cool if I take the blame for you crashing dad’s Mercedes?” Confusion mixed with surprise, morphing into the “okayyyy-but-it’s-your-funeral” shrug.

Dolores held the clear gummy bear up against the stadium lights. It was a shapeless morsel, the edges melting against equally formless sights of fans on the opposite side of the stadium. Dolores thought about how, to those fans on the right field side, she and Casper and the left field half were the indistinguishable blurs. She gave the clear gummy bear back to Casper to discard, not before briefly musing that against the bright lights, it almost looked like a small ghost.

* * *

It was the first time Helen had ever left a Yankee game before it even ended. The Boston fans elevated their aggressive cheering with each inning, directly proportional to the diminishing hope of New York supporters. The riotous chants had become a cacophonous manifestation of the divided stadium, with cries of “Let’s go Red Sox!” combating cheers of “1918,” the battle cry of Yankees fans, referencing the last Boston World Series victory.

It was like a tug-of-war of screaming, and the pinstripe devotees gradually relinquished their momentum, so that the muddled shouts soon sifted into distinct Red Sox cheers. To lose like this, at home—it was worse than seeing an ex-boyfriend dancing with his new flame to the old flame’s favorite song. She could clearly make out the various groupings on the other side of the stadium, since Yankee fans had one by one gone from up on their feet, optimistic for a rally, to defeatedly slumping in their seats, debating their will to live.

Of course, the obnoxious Boston fans, inflated with adrenaline and hyena-like hunger for the inevitable victory, needed to be bolted to the ground to keep from floating away. It was the saddest thing Helen had ever seen.

Helen kept tugging on the brim of her baseball hat down as she left the stadium, mostly so could keep her head down and cry privately. She was still holding the bag of peanuts she bought, and upon realizing this, she began crying a little harder. Because three hours ago, she was on the brink of a historic night and now, she was walking away from Yankee stadium for the last time until next year. And because she hated how many peanuts were still left. I should have gotten a hot dog, she thought, because those are snacks specifically designed for one.

The eruptions from the game never dwindled, but they became slightly less abrasive the further she walked away. A banner on the stadium boasted “26 World Championships” with every single championship year listed. A century of pre-eminence etched on the wall that boldly separated Helen from the impending defeat. As she neared the subway, Helen glanced again at the imposing structure and what it held inside. And it was like she wasn’t even there at all.