A Trilogy:
The Father, Son & Brother's Ghost

Catching a Dream
©1993 by John Wayne Samples

It may be the most absurd thing I have ever done; it may be the most normal. I still don't know.

Sixteen hours of a forty-eight hour weekend on the road. Nine hundred miles in a pickup truck and two nights in motel rooms with a man more than twenty years my senior. Our cargo consists of two sets of golf clubs, two cases of cassettes of all our favorite stuff that we want the other one to hear, two overnight bags, two pockets full of money, two hearts still on the mend, two expectations that will never be met, too many things that we don't know how to talk about, and two baseball mitts -- one with my initials and the other with those of my son. I don't remember my dad ever having his own glove, but there was always one for him to use, usually that overstuffed flat one like the kinds worn by guys named Ty and Babe and Honus and Shoeless and Moonlight back before artificial turf, free agency, and night games at Wrigley Field. Way before the night games!

We also have one baseball, but Dad doesn't know about that, or about the gloves for that matter. They are going to be surprises when we get there.

This is Dad's Father's Day gift. One of those We'll have a good time then ideas that we actually followed-through on. One of those father/son bonding things that usually requires some kind of life-changing trauma that makes you spend more time with the people that you should have been spending more time with anyway. One of those things you do after burying your parents' other son and realizing you've become an only child for the first time. Just one of those things.

This is a pilgrimage. It's a purging. It is a fantasy flight to a foreign feast of unfathomable fun. It's a long ways away.

It's laughing at the Steven Wright tape when he interrupts his own story from four years ago with, "no, that was yesterday!"

It's crying when the country singer sings about all he would have done differently if he'd only known "that it was the last time."

It's dancing with our theology as we try to come to terms with a suddenly snuffed-out point of light.

It's flirting with every waitress, no matter what her age or aesthetic value, because that's just what guys do when they're just guys.

We are just guys. It's one of the few times we've been just guys since Dad taught me to lure a Tennessee rock bass out of its hiding place in the pond on Dale Heran's 2-BZ-2 Farm twenty-five years ago.

We leave my house in Indianapolis after work on Friday hoping to make it to a "Vacancy" sign in Peoria. No problem. After letting Dad win the fight over who gets to pay for the room, we proceed to the next-door eatery for some midnight ribs, nachos, chicken wings, and miscellaneous other delicacies better left to a different time of day. Just because that's what guys do. The waitress doesn't return our flirts so we dock her tip.

That feels manly.

Before heading out the next morning we check the weather channel on the hotel cable TV. They're predicting a beautiful day where we're headed so we allow our expectations to rise.

An incredible lightning show welcomes us to the land of the Hawkeyes and ushers in the promise of a wet fulfillment to our trek. We are soon engulfed in one of those perpetual, soaking rains that you think may never end.

As we pull into our destination -- Dyersville, Iowa -- we can't help but wonder how in the world the movie producers found this middle-of-nowhere little burg of four thousand fortunates. The brochure says Dyersville is world famous for farm toys and for a basilica.

We've seen farm toys.

Not sure what makes a church a basilica, we go there -- mostly because it represents dryness on a rainy day. But, were it not for what was to come, this could have been the highlight of the trip.

There's a wedding taking place in this worshipful wonder and we become architectural tourists caught in an exchange of nuptials. We are part of the moment as two lives begin sharing one road. Our tears surprise us both. I tell Dad that it's the little unexpected things that make trips like this great. He agrees.

I'm not sure how we know that since we've never taken a trip like this.

As we leave, it's still raining. We decide to go ahead and drive by our final destination to see if it's even open. If it looks worthwhile, we'll come back to town, kill some time, then go back after the rain stops. The map says it's about three miles out a series of ninety degree turns in the road. That's how I remember the final shot of the movie with all the cars.

As we crest the last hill and The Field rises up before us, I'm expecting some great flood of emotion to overtake me. There's the top of the lights, then the familiar white house with the red barns. The backstop is right where it's suppose to be and the bleachers are intact. Everything is as expected, except there's no emotional overflow.

Then I notice the souvenir stands; I should have expected that. The house looks a lot closer to The Field than it did in the movie. The drowned corn is not high enough to fade into.

Why am I here?

As we pull into the farm yard to park we have to jockey around to give a couple of other cars room to leave. Why are they here? Why are those guys out on The Field in the mud and the rain?

There are more people than I noticed from the road. A quick count finds forty seven souls; three on the diamond, ten huddled under the souvenir stand, a dozen or so just meandering around, several women sitting in cars wondering why they are here, and the rest just standing and watching and taking pictures of the action on The Field. Dad and I decide to go for it.

I pull out the surprise gloves and ball and utter the predictable, "Dad, wanna have a catch?" This is it. The emotional flood. The memory we'll never forget. The Kodak moment. Or not.

"Oh," he understates, "you brought the gloves. Good."

We saunter out to right field. Another Dad is pitching to another son while the brother shags the hits in left field. There is no catcher. We position ourselves so we can both see the batter in case he hits our way. He doesn't. I think we're starting to have a pretty good time as we toss and talk and talk and toss.

In the rain.

I'd forgotten how strong Dad's arm was. Just as I start to comment on it, he winces with pain as his curveball wannabe pops my glove. He says nothing, but he starts throwing the ball with a fancy underhand motion. A line comes to mind from the 1968 Bobby Russell song about the neighborhood's favorite dad and hero: The old major leaguer had to quit 'cause he said he threw his arm away.

My next throw is wide and right and glances off the top of his glove. I start to apologize when I get smacked by a flashback. "Never, never, never apologize for a bad throw." Dad rarely acted like he was upset with having to chase my errant intentions, but he hated my apologies. "That just makes it easier for you to accept it yourself when you say 'I'm sorry.' Don't be sorry, be on target." I was never sure I understood that, but I was always impressed with the thought process.

By the time he gets back with the ball, I've had enough. He doesn't argue and we head back toward the truck. I realize we need some pictures and tell him to wait by the backstop.

As I'm digging around behind the seat for the camera, I find it. Not the camera, the flood. The emotions. The overflow. It's raining hard enough that people outside can't see in the truck, so I just stand there, bent at the waist with the half of me outside getting rained on, the half of me inside raining on the upholstery. A cleansing sob. A few seconds. Maybe a minute.

Oh yeah, the camera. Dad. He's getting rained on all over. I tuck the moment-maker under my wet golf shirt and head for the backstop.

A few more dreamers are now shagging flies.

The father is still pitching. He laughingly complains that his All-Conference Batting Champion son should swing more so he wouldn't have to retrieve so many balls. I tell Dad to watch the camera as I settle into the catcher's squat behind the plate.

A couple of other guys are putting on their gloves and sloshing out to their favorite positions. The kid in the box starts hitting balls all over The Field. One splashes into the corn, then melts into the mud as it rolls out of view. Everybody cheers. Nobody chases that ball.

Out of the corner of my eye I notice Dad trying to figure out my camera, so I concentrate on striking the best catcher's stance I can, just in case he's successful. Ten or twelve pitches later my knees remember why Johnny Bench retired so early. I call for time so I can get a picture of Dad with the farm house in the background.

As we walk off The Field, a new arrival jumps out of a van almost before it stops. I recognize him from the wedding at the basilica in town. The old brown glove he's wearing doesn't match his tuxedo, but that seems to be the last thing on his mind. He takes my spot behind the plate; one tux tail lays in the mud, the other floats in a puddle. When I see him a few minutes later at the souvenir stand I have to chuckle at how his tuxedo fits with that wet look, and how sad his patent leathers look trimmed in mud. But his whole image is quickly preempted by his smile which radiates an importance he seems to think he has just been a part of.

Several of us standing there begin to wish we were wearing good clothes that could be ruined like his.

It suddenly strikes me that this is really nuts. As Dad and I marvel at the almost constant flow of cars in and out of the farm lot, we ask each other what it is that we share with all these people that makes us risk pneumonia to play an imagined inning of a kid's game on a fantasy field built by Hollywood dream makers? Dad says it has to do with hope and being a kid again. I suggest that it has to do with wanting another chance to do it right.

Terrance Mann says it's because baseball has been the only constant throughout our history.

Little Karen Kinsella says we don't have any idea why we came. But we all did. She said we would.

A magnet, a coffee mug, a jersey, a Moonlight Graham baseball card, and it's time to go. Should we come back after the weather clears? We agree the mission is complete. The rain has somehow made it more memorable, more worthwhile, more bonding with all the other wet heads who didn't have sense to wait for the sun. If it had been a beautiful day, our expectations of the people and the playing and the being may have all been met, but this was better.

The drive home starts about thirty-three minutes after we arrive. We had planned for a lot more time, but we didn't want to wear out The Field.

Or the Dreams.

Five minutes down the road the rain completely stops. Thirty miles later the sky is blue and the air is filled with that crisp scent of success. It feels absurdly normal.

But then, as every player who's won on the road will tell you, the sun always shines on the way home when you've had a good game.

JSam

The Father, Son & Brother's Ghost Trilogy: