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| Fans from the heart By Eric Neel Page 2 columnist | ||
Editor's Note: From his home on the Northern California coast, Page 2's Eric Neel is keeping a diary of the 2002 pennant races involving the Giants, Dodgers, A's and Angels. This is the 14th installment of Neel's journal.
Monday, Sept. 23 Status: A's are three games up on Angels with six to play; Giants are two games up on Dodgers for National League wild-card slot. My friend Josh has a plastic team cup -- the kind they give away when you buy the big drink -- from 1989. It commemorates American League rookies of the year from 1986-1988 -- Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire and Walt Weiss -- with little green and gold sketches and A's logos. A couple of weeks ago, we got together to watch a game and he brought it to my house and left it here. Josh is a Berkeley kid, born in '67. He knows the A's of old, and he was deep into the late-'80s A's. Dave Stewart's name is sacred to him.
Why do I have his cup? He has held onto this cup for 13 years, moved to Colorado and back with it. He has thought about throwing it away, but he has always thought better of it, always found some place and some reason to keep it. The cup has years of longing stored up in it -- what is it doing on my desk? It's waiting on him, waiting for division and league championship wins, waiting for World Series rings, waiting to hold champagne, or maybe just a cold, righteous beer. The A's are three games up now and things look good, but things are always delicate. They can always crumble and fold under the weight of too much want. Sometimes, the best thing to do is to turn away, leave the radio off, try not to read headlines or hear updates, unplug the set and stay away from the Internet. Josh wants to hold the cup, rub his index finger around the edge of it, get close to it, let all his fan's feelings gather in it as if it were a lightning rod. But the cup and the three-game lead, and the sense that his boys can take the Twins, the Yankees and/or the Angels and which ever team the NL coughs up ... these things are fragile. They are always susceptible to the whims of the gods, always vulnerable to too much anxious desire on the part of players and fans. Josh holds them in his hands like an egg now, knowing in the completely illogical but absolutely true way that fans do, that if he's too eager or too amped, he could crush them, knowing that the best thing to do is take a step back, let them breathe, let them be, let the cup stay at my place for the time being.
My friend Michael, who was killed in a car accident in 1993, was the biggest Giants fan I ever knew. He went to games at Candlestick Park in April. No one went to Candlestick in April. The coldest place I've ever been (and I spent several winters in Iowa) was Candlestick in April. For TV games at Candlestick in April, the Giants used to put cardboard cut-outs of fans in the stands to make the place look populated. I swear, there was nobody there; just thousands of these cut-outs and Michael and, some nights, when he wore me down, begged and pleaded, mocked my cheap, flimsy manhood, promised to buy me a burrito at El Faro on the way to the game and swore he'd keep the hot chocolate coming. Me? I would wear a parka and wrap my legs in a blanket. Michael would wear jeans and a black-and-orange Giants T-shirt. He'd put his leather jacket on in about the seventh inning and as he did, he'd look over at me doing my sorry, San Francisco mummy shiver and laugh out loud. He had a great laugh. It was a kid's laugh. A bright, high bell that jumped out of his throat. Even when he was laughing at me, I loved the sound of it. It was the sound of delight and joy, the sound of not thinking twice, the sound of relish and appetite. It was the laugh I've always wanted. We were at a Giants-Dodgers game in ... I don't know ... like, April 1990, or something. Ramon Martinez was pitching for my Dodgers and he looked about as cold and out-of-sorts as I did. The Giants were killing him with slap singles and balls down the line. I think it was 4-0 after one and 6-0 after two or some such ugliness. Anyway, each hit, each Will Clark or Matt Williams swing, brought a laugh out of Michael. The Giants kept hitting and he kept cracking up, loudly, up into the night sky, right into my face, for the love and fun of it. I was wilting and cursing and generally bemoaning my cold, bitter circumstance, but nasty as it was, I didn't really want to be anywhere else -- his laugh was that good. I thought about him and his wickedly happy sound yesterday when Jeff Kent broke a 1-1 tie in the ninth. I thought about the squealing rush of air that would have come out of him at that crack of the bat. He would have called me, I think. He would have called me just to laugh into the phone. As a lifelong Dodgers fan and a veteran of cold, sad April losses in Candlestick, Kent's home run was hard to take, but I would have been glad to pick up the receiver.
My friend Matt and his dad, Pete, will be at the Angels games this weekend. It won't matter if the Angels are three back, six back, or tied -- they'll be there. They'll be there because they've been there for years, because they've seen some terrible teams, some almost-great teams, some seemingly cursed teams and some utterly forgettable teams over the years. They'll be there because the Angels are what they do. They'll be there because they do some of their best work as father and son there, because words and rhythms and sights and sounds come easy and feel right there. They'll be there because this year has been a kick and the team deserves some love, whether they win the division or not.
I've been following this race day-to-day, game by game, and I've become susceptible to its ebbs and flows. The A's feel hot and the Angels seem to be in a bit of a swoon now, three games off the pace with six to go, and I was thinking when I got up this morning that things are likely decided and that the story might be settled, at least until the playoffs begin. But then I thought about Matt and Pete, and about the hard-earned grins they must be sporting these days, the last few losses be damned. I thought that's where they'll be this weekend, in box seats along the first-base side, comparing this team to the one in '79 and the ones in '86 and '95, talking to each other in the secret-handshake language of two guys who have been through the wars together, sitting quietly alongside each other soaking up the pure, unexpected fun of this season.
I got an e-mail from my sister this morning. She said she'd been reading the baseball diary and asked me if I remembered teaching her the Dodgers lineup when we were younger. I remember. I'd recite names to her, up and down the batting order, from one to nine in the field, through the bullpen, on the bench, and the coaches (I remember when we she was little, she had trouble pronouncing Perranoski and Amalfitano). She'd write them down, read them back to me, then start working off-script, walking around the house saying the players names while we did chores or homework or whatever. After a while, she had it down, and could recite the lineup in her sleep. I'd show her off in front of my friends and ask her to call off the players' names for the teller at the bank or the guy checking groceries at the market. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world at the time. To be a fan was to commit the team to memory, to work over their names and positions in your mind until they'd become a part of what you simply knew. The last time I remember doing it was 1988. Erinn liked the sound of Orel Hershiser's name, I remember, and we both thought it was funny to say "Belcher" over and over again. We did the list because it was the sort of thing you do with pent up fan-love and rooting energy. We did it to feel closer to the team. (Well, she probably did it to be closer to me, now that I think of it. She always has been good to me that way, always been willing to humor my weird enthusiasms.) Anyway, we did the list, and in 1988, it seemed to work -- the Dodgers went on an improbable run and won the Series. So my sister sees them two games behind in the wild-card race and she figures maybe they need a boost and she sends me this e-mail and says, "Remember those lists?" And she didn't say, but I know she meant to, she meant to say, so ... who's on this year's team? I know she's thinking, like I'm thinking, maybe if we start reciting the roster like a mantra, maybe something improbably good will happen. Here you go, E, here's today's likely starting lineup:
C -- Paul Lo Duca ... and today's starting pitcher is Odalis Perez. Say 'em with me now ... Previous entries: Sept. 22 | Sept. 20 | Sept. 19 | Sept. 18 | Sept. 17 | Sept. 16 | Sept. 15 | Sept. 14 | Sept. 13 | Sept. 12 | Sept. 11 | Sept. 9-10 Eric Neel reviews sports culture in his "Critical Mass" column on Page 2. You can e-mail him at eneel@cox.net. |
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