by Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller
(Read Part 1 and Part 2 of the series)

June 17, 2012: Kivalina, AK — “How do I get to the ballpark?” I asked the host at the Bingo Parlor lunchroom.

“Not easy,” he said.

“Can I catch a cab?”

He laughed and walked away.

It was Opening Day for the Kivalina Bowheads, a minor league club owned by the Yuma Bulldozers, my employers.  Maybe someone at the ballpark had seen Swanfeld.  Maybe someone had heard of Swanfeld.  Oh, who was I fooling?  I didn’t give a whale’s sphincter for Swanfeld.  I just needed to relax, and what better way to escape reality than watching grown-up boys play a game of ball?

The grossly misnamed Kivalina ballpark, Avondale Grounds, does not sit in a wooded dale near the river Avon.  In fact, the Kivalina Bowheads’ ballpark is not actually in Kivalina.  How could it be?  With water on both sides of the town’s one narrow street, there’s no room for a stadium on the narrow island of Kivalina.  Though recently the rising seas and warmer ocean waters that are eroding the narrow spit of land Kivalinans call home has gotten a lot of media attention, the problem is not a new one.  Kivalina has always clung to a narrow perch of land, so when the Planetary Extreme Baseball Alliance decided to locate one of its short-season A teams in Kivalina, they had to find a patch of solid ground larger than anything available in town.  Across the narrow channel separating the town from the mainland you’ll find the stadium rising above the tundra, just a couple miles southeast of Kivalina.

And that’s where I was headed.  I hoofed it to the marina, where I offered a local kid a couple bucks to run me over to the mainland in his boat.  He looked at this alien white woman like I was asking to cross the river Styx, but he consented when I told him I could get him into the ballpark, too.  He said we’d need a cab for the two-mile ride down the coast to the stadium, and he whistled to someone in the wooden shack that served as marina headquarters.

When we tied up at the boat dock on the mainland, a cab was waiting to take us to the ballpark.  “My cousin,” the kid with the boat explained.

“Do the ballplayers ever hire you to ferry them across the bay to Kivalina?” I asked.

He smiled and nodded.

“And your cousin’s cab?”

“Bowhead taxi number one,” the kid said proudly.  From June to September, baseball spurs a thriving transportation business along the Alaskan northern coast.

Just as we were tying up to the mainland dock, I noticed several empty bags bobbing in the water like massive jellyfish.

“What are those?” I asked.

“Sandbags,” was the answer.

When it was apparent I didn’t understand, he added, “From the sea wall.  On the other ocean side of Kivalina.”

This is what had become of the Army Corps of Engineers’ latest effort to save Kivalina from the rising seas: sandbags, empty of sand, floating forlornly in the bay.

I showed my Yuma Bulldozers’ employee ID, but the women behind the ticket counter didn’t recognize it.  “We don’t get many of them things up here,” she said.  I asked her if a tall, thin white man had recently used a similar ID card to get in the stadium.

She just pointed at a handwritten sign leaning against the entrance gate.  “Opening Day,” it said.

“Maybe he arrived before the ballplayers.  In a suit.  Claimed to be an executive for the team.”

She looked at me like I had just escaped from the underworld.  I was beginning to feel as alien as I looked.  Strange white woman in a strange sinking land.  I wrapped my jacket tighter around my shoulders trying to find some comfort against the 47° temperature and the icy stares of the ticket woman.

I bought some popcorn and took my seat.  My young boatman ran off to join a group of kids hanging out near the dugout, hoping for autographs, I assumed.

In the top of the sixth inning of a scoreless game, Colleen and her uncle, my luncheon hosts, quite suddenly joined me.

“How’d you know I’d be here?” I asked.

“We didn’t,” Colleen said.

“So how’d you find me?”

“No one can hide in Kivalina,” her uncle explained.

I watched the young Bowheads pitcher Loren Gibson retire the side in order.

“Okay,” I said as the Angoon Avalanche took the field, “what are you trying to tell me?”

“You’re the educated lady from civilization,” Galen said.  “You tell us.”

I looked at Galen, then at Colleen.  Neither returned my look.  “You think it’s pointless, my searching for Swanfeld.”

“Didja see that?” Galen said as Kivalina shortstop Nick Brown led off the bottom of the sixth with the first professional home run of his career.  Bowheads 1 – Angoon 0.

“Is that what this is about?” I asked.  “You want me to stop searching.”

Neither of them said a word while Angoon took a 3-1 lead in the eighth.  Then they both got up at the same time to leave.

“Enjoy the game,” Colleen said.

“And when it’s over,” Galen added in a whisper, “take a tour of the facilities.  Locker rooms, public bathrooms, press box.  Take it all in.”

“Sure, but why?”

“When you get back to Kivalina,” Colleen said, “walk the length of town.”

“That’ll take you all of two minutes,” Galen chortled.

“I can do that,” I said, affable guest to the end, “but why?”

“You’re smart,” Colleen said as they left.  “You’ll figure it out.”

“Compare and contrast, detective,” Galen added as Colleen climbed down out of the stands.  “Remember that from college?  Compare and contrast.”

I was too distracted to enjoy the rest of the game.  I couldn’t tell you how the Bowheads rallied for three runs in the bottom of the ninth to come from behind, but they did, and as the players were leaving the field, I started down the steps toward the stadium exit when I noticed a tiny old lady several rows below where I was seated.  She was crying.

As I passed by on my way out, I paused to ask, “Excuse me, ma’am, but are you alright?”

“Oh, sure,” she said, making no effort to wipe her tears, “just crying.”

“You’re an Angoon fan?” I guessed.

“No.”

“But Kivalina won.”

“I know,” she said.  “It’s sad.”

“What is?” I asked, baffled.

“Someone always loses.”

“Well… yes,” I said.  But I could think of nothing else to say.

“Baseball is the saddest sport,” the tiny woman went on.  “No tie games.”

“Oh,” I said, as if I understood.

“Someone always loses,” she explained, “and I always weep.”