Home Field Advantage

[roncollins]

Home Field Advantage
Written by Casey Neal
Daily Log of a Fresh-faced College Graduate
May 29, 2013

We get into Annie at about 5:30 a.m. and point her west. Yes, I said a.m. Yes, my brain hurts. Yes, yes, yes, it really, really sucks. But Canton is hosting the Bulldozers at 7:05 p.m. and we want to make sure we get there in time, so 5-flippin'-30 is the only answer. I sleep sprawled out in the passenger seat for part of the first couple hours, and Don-o curls up in the back until noon approaches. The radio crawls over a string if indie college stations, giving the whole morning a sense of strange proportions. At one point I think I hear the line "I got stones in my passway and the roads seem dark at night" about a gazillion times, and it seems to sit on my brain like an old train car on a rusted rail.

We stop for a Quarter Pounder with cheese for lunch. A greasy half-hour later, we're ready to go again. Only then does Don-o talk while he drives. "It's like this, right?" he glances at me to make sure I'm awake. "We know the Dudes will be following us, and after that 'Web Gems' highlight of mine…" He pauses there. "…I said, that 'Web-Gems' highlight of mine..." I smile. "…I think it's likely that they'll catch us in Canton."

"I don't see why you're sounding so chipper about it, but yeah that sounds right."

"Canton's too early, though. We can't be ready in Canton."

"Uh-huh."

"Besides, we don't want to deal with the Bad Dudes. We want Percy."

"Personally, I could do with a lot less of both of all three of them in my life."

Don-o grimaces. "Not the time for humor, dude." I shrug and raise my eyebrow. "So we need to contact Percy," he says. "Tell him we want to deal. That should get the dogs off our tail for at least one more day."

I scratch my jaw. "You want to deal with them in Crystal Lake?"

"Yeah. My brother's a beat cop in Chicago. He can help us make a contact there."

"Don-o, I have to tell you that just hearing you use the word 'cop' in a sentence at this point in my life is making me go all shivery with anticipation. But how, mind you, are we going to call out Percy Norestra? I mean, it's not like either of us have got a freakin' direct-link Batphone connection to his ear."

"Your phone."

"Like I said, dude, no chance. Or do you have Percy's number handy?"

"You go to the web and drop a few properly worded invitations on his fan sites."

This brings me up short. "I see." And I do. "PN's got PR dudes scanning the Net day and night."

Don-o nods. "He's worse than the scientologists when it comes to PR."

I turn on the phone, and grab the web. In a moment, I'm reading about a trillion "Oh-My-God-Let-Me-Be-PN’s-Girl-Tonight" posts and seeing videos of gushy teen girls in the skimpy gold bikinis the models wore in his last vid clip. I'm suddenly struck with this feeling of claustrophobia, of closeness that feels like I could reach into my little phone screen and touch a dude sitting at a keyboard with a pair of headsets on who's reading this crap in real-time and funneling it into some kind of advertisement agency's virtual wood chipper. "So, what do I do?"

"Well," Don-o says. "Try this…"

#

We collaborate for an hour before settling on: "Say hey to glass-jaw Joe-Joe and the Cue Ball. But we'll only talk turkey with the top. Call us." The phone rings thirty minutes later.

#

There is something beautiful about sitting in a ballpark and being pretty sure no one is going to come in to shoot you. It's not a feeling I've had for several days. Truth be told, even though Don-o's clearly relaxed, I don’t have it tonight.

We've arrived just ten minutes before the game, and the park is nearly full despite the Longshoremen being eight games out and just under .500. It's a chilly night, hanging at about 55°, with a steady wind blowing that makes it feel colder. Svab Memorial Stadium is a thoroughly modern stadium with a polygon-shaped outfield fence that looks like maybe it was modeled after a kid's game of pickup sticks. The place holds about 35K but doesn't seem to hold too many baseballs, as it's traditionally thought of as a bit of a launching pad. Indeed, Canton, though in the middle of the pack in most offensive categories, is third in the SL in HRs, led by shortstop Steve Fergus and leftfielder Chris Wright.

Statistically this is about as close to an average PEBA team as you're likely to find. Pick a category, bet that the team is 6th or 7th in the league, and you're going to win a lot of dough. I don't see much different about them this year, though the fans seem to think they have a shot at truly contending. Yuma's in town tonight, so I'm fairly sure the façade of contending won't be broken tonight. The main thing I'm looking forward to is watching Fergus play. He's a guy I've grown to like. He was a deep draft pick in the opening days of the PEBA – more of an afterthought than anything. As a shortstop, he's just okay, nothing great, but he's in the middle of his third-straight solid season with the stick, and some folks are beginning to whisper "All-Star" when they say his name.

"I still have a bad feeling about this," I say when we settle down. I scan the full stands, worried about where the Bad Dudes might be hiding out. Svab has a lot of nooks and crannies.

"It'll be fine."

"How do you know?"

He holds his beer and a brat and looks out over the stadium where the national anthem has just played. The outfield is throwing warm-up tosses, and José Contreras is just now heading to the mound for the Longshoremen. "It's all good," he says.

And that's all it takes. We're fine. Don-o has taken communion with the park. He says we're good, and that's all I need to know. At that very moment, Don-o transcends in my mind from my friend, from a guy I know, into something bigger than I can describe. In that moment, all the crap he's been spouting about believing in the purpose of baseball, and all the malarkey about baseball providing, and every ghost and weird thing that has happened falls into place and I'm suddenly seeing as clearly as if I'm on a psilocybic trip. "Don-o," I think as he settles into his seat and pulls his jacket up over his neck, "is the physical manifestation of baseball."

The idea has me speechless for several minutes, and by the time I'm paying attention, the game has already seen two at bats – the second being a walk to Forrest O'Connor, who Contreras then proceeds to pick off. He can't leave well enough alone, though, and Yuma goes double-single-single. Normally that would only be good for one run, but Yuma's Nick Harris makes a nifty base-running play and takes second on a throw to the plate, so the Dozers get a pair of runs in the inning.

The Longshoremen get one back right away when Frank King deposits a Roy Hopper changeup into the left field fence. "Damnit," Don-o mutters to himself. "The change is your fourth pitch, dude. You can't pitch in the freakin' majors if you're getting beat on your fourth pitch in the first inning."

I smile. Classic Don-o. I think about him. What is Don-o going to do in the future? We've had this time and I've been worried about getting a job, worried about getting shot and all sorts-a weirdness that’s-a been going on. Through it all, I've never really thought about what would happen to Don-o. Now we've got this thing brewing in Crystal Lake, and Don-o is sitting here muttering about a changeup in the first inning while mustard is dripping off the corner of his mouth.

Yuma gets another run in the third, but their joy is short-lived again. Hopper apparently doesn't learn his lesson. King takes him out to the opposite field this time, and it’s even in the third. The game settles down then, as both Contreras and Hopper find their stuff. It's 3-3 after five. John Greene doubles off Hopper in the 6th. Nothing comes of it, but the Yuma hurler is done after an out in the 7th. Canton greets reliever Orlando Ruíz rudely, cashing in on a pair of two-run shots, one by Fergus and the other by Greene. Fergus will add two more in the 8th with a line drive shot that might still be rising. Yuma picks up a scratch run in the 9th. Canton is a 9-4 winner.

Don-o stands up and brushes Cracker Jack crumbs off his jeans. "On to Crystal Lake, eh?" he says.

"Yeah," I reply. "On to Crystal Lake."