stopping for the fair, they arrived at the ballpark before the gates opened, while the parking lot still had far more open spaces than cars. Billy worried that if he left his bear behind someone would steal it but Connie convinced him that the bear, whom he had already started calling Mr. B, would be safe on his own—although Billy rolled the rear windows down a fraction of an inch each so that Mr. B wouldn’t suffocate.
All around the perimeter of the stadium, vendors sold boxes of popcorn, Cracker Jack, peanuts, as well as pennants, T-shirts and caps. Billy wanted everything: even on top of the ice cream, corn dog and sugar waffle he’d had, he wanted roasted peanuts and a large box of Cracker Jack, as well as a T-shirt and a pennant. Connie told him he could choose one souvenir and that they’d buy him a hot dog in the third inning, if he was hungry then. In the end, he settled on a St. Louis Cardinals T-shirt. “Because Ed played there,” he said. Connie gave Edward Everett’s hand an affectionate squeeze.
Their seats were good: in the third row behind the San Diego dugout, courtesy of Edward Everett’s uncle. As they kept descending the steps, passing row after row, drawing nearer to the playing field, Billy repeated, “Wow. Wow. Wow.”
Even before they reached their seats, however, Edward Everett knew it had been a mistake to come. Perhaps it was how near they were to the field or perhaps he would have felt the same if they were in the nosebleed section, which is where he had sat the only other time he came into a major league ballpark as a spectator. That had been almost twenty years earlier, when his father had taken him to a game in Cleveland to celebrate Edward Everett’s birthday. Then, their seats were high in the upper deck down the left field line, part of their view blocked by an iron post, a third of left field obscured because their angle of vision didn’t allow them to see the near corner; when someone hit a ball there, Edward Everett had no idea whether the fielder caught it or it fell in for a hit, except for the crowd’s response.
Now, near enough to the field that he could see the acne scars on the cheek of one of the Padres’ reserve catchers, near enough that he could hear the clatter of bats as players pulled them from the rack, the full effect of what had happened to him became clear. It was one thing when he settled into this life: putting on his tie, driving through the hills of southeastern Ohio, nodding sympathetically with bakery owners and restaurant GMs about the price of wheat and fuel, telling them about his ballplaying days. Then, the years he’d spent in the game had begun to seem like stories about an interesting person he once met, rather than a life he’d lived. In the new life, he’d never been a ballplayer: his life had always been flour and Connie and Billy and thinking about carpenters’ bids and bathroom fixtures; had always been the chart of sales in the company newsletter and where he and his uncle stood: neck and neck with Jerry Remmer for salesman of the year.
Less than a year ago, however, when he’d been the age he still was, he’d been running in this very outfield, taking his hacks in BP in this very batting cage. Perhaps, he thought, he should have waited fifteen years before going to a game, when he would be old enough that he would have no chance of getting back in, a middle-aged man whose life by then truly would have swallowed up the years he had spent in the game so sufficiently that it would be as if his ballplaying self were his own ancestor.
Out on the field, one of the Padres’ hitters taking batting practice sent a long fly ball to right. Standing halfway between the infield and the wall, a player who was so new that his number wasn’t even in the scorecard Edward Everett had purchased dashed toward the warning track, seemingly almost before the hitter made contact. Lined above the wall, a cluster of fans extended gloves and held baseball caps upside down like small woolen baskets, eager for the souvenir. As he reached the warning track, the fielder slowed, stretching out his bare hand, feeling for the wall. Finding it, pushing his fingers into