ONE FOR THE AGES: LATE SUMMER

We stood there in the early evening, the white summer light above this treeless concrete beside the white stadium. Two friends within earshot at a short distance from the two older brothers, bargaining with the scalper, who stood light brown and tall as they stood just as tall, their wavy brown hair lifting in the cool wind. They quickly bargaining while inspecting the tickets; I heard faintly, “These are good seats, . . . two together,” before they walked back toward us, me with the younger brother standing below the empty concrete ramp. I wondered how we’d all get in? We had just two tickets now. Where would we sit?

“You guys go up to the window and get General Admission tickets,” one of the older brothers said, Dillon, I think.

“Go ahead,” Owen encouraged. “They’re just six bucks.”

I knew this to be true even though I’d been away for most of the past seven years, up in New England, in Vermont and Massachusetts. But I may have felt a bit put off, relegated to Gareth’s company; after all, he was the younger brother. But not really put off, those brothers belonged together, and later I did not mind remaining at a distance from their competitiveness. I was just an old friend, not a family member. Owen and Dillon I’d known since kindergarten, and we had all played Little League baseball in the same years, but they played in “The Majors” and I in “The Minors.” We also played on the same Y League basketball team together in Sixth grade. I even faintly recalled playing with toy soldier gladiators and toy knights in armor when we were all just boys in their house at age six or seven.

But I followed Gareth’s lead, but still wondered as we went through the dull, silver turnstiles, “Where will we sit?”

I followed last behind Gareth, then Owen stepped back and stopped, and quietly said, “You guys stay right with us, OK?”

First Dillon, then Owen confidently showed the usher standing at the back of the first level, their tickets, all of us standing atop the sloping aisle descending to choice seats between home and first base, down below. The evening sky had gone to a deep blue grey, as if steeped in the last light of Indian Summer. I could see the proud air of Owen and Dillon, as Dillon smiled and began to nod and acknowledge the usher’s pointing down toward a row about 15 rows below. I worried the usher would ask to see our tickets too. Gareth and I followed close behind them.

I had never sat in the lower level with my father, and only once for a game with my childhood friend JP, and once before, with our neighbor, Mr. Olmstead, a lawyer, and State Prosecutor, who treated me to a game when we sat in the Field Box seats, and Willie Mays hit one of his last home runs. But those games remained in memory from a decade back. The one game with JP began with a short set by Seals & Crofts singing some of their hits; I was surprised I could still remember that as I thought to myself.

We all slipped into row 16, climbing past Dillon and Owen, who insisted on taking the seats closest to the aisle. I sat next to Owen with Gareth on my left. Then we jostled and switched seats.

As we sat there, Owen and Dillon started laughing and joking with each other, as I remembered they always did, constant rivals and prevaricators, arguing, “If it weren’t for me, we’d all be sitting in the nosebleed section, in the 600-level,” Dillon insisted with a smile.

He was managing a local bicycle shop, its nearly rural, suburban branch, about 10 miles from our old hometown, and his two brothers helped some of the time. I had just started my first full-time teaching position, after two years at Harvard.

The small Quaker school, where I had just begun teaching 9th & 10th grade English, and 7th grade Grammar, rested in a rural, farming area in the county quite south of our own old Quaker hometown, in an area I did not know at all. I drove my dad’s old blue 1976 Chevy Impala; I heard one of my students describe it in the parking lot, while boarding his bus after school, “That car’s a real bomb!”

As we relaxed into the game, Owen leaned over toward me and asked quietly, “So how’ve been Billy? It’s been a while.”

“OK, it’s a little strange being back in the area.”

“I heard from Gareth, who heard from your little brother, Eddie, you were at Harvard for a while.”

“Just three terms, I saw one Red Sox game, then I went back up to Vermont for the end of that summer, and worked on a farm pitching hay, then back to Harvard, before Fall Term began,” I clarified. “The Fall and Spring were quite different from the more relaxed Summer Term.”

“Well, it sounds like you’ve had some experiences; Dillon spent some time in Vermont too. Did you like Fenway? I’ve heard its cool,” Owen said.

“I liked it; the Center Field bleachers are crazy; a lot of drunk guys misbehaving.”

“Sounds like Boston.”

“The Phillies are better,” Dillon insisted as he leaned toward me over Owen. “Did you sit down this low?”

“No, in the cheap bleacher seats, and I had a date; we drank Guinness before the game. When I first walked into Fenway, the old stone and brick work down outside, and below in the old narrow corridors beneath the bleachers reminded me of Connie Mack Stadium; it almost seemed like a Twilight Zone episode.”

“Sounds fun, and a little surreal,” laughed Owen. “I’ll bet there’s a lot of drinking at Fenway.”

“I used to love The Twilight Zone,” Dillon added.

“Me too, that show, and yes, you’re right, there’s a lot of drinking in the bleacher seats.”

As we sat four guys in row, old childhood friends, the mention of Fenway reminded me of the narrow old wood-slat seats with lean armrests, and the sweaty forearm of the man who sat beside me back there. Thankfully it cooled down at night and he left and Ellen, with her light brown ponytail and light blouse, sat beside me.

“Do you miss New England?” Owen asked.

“What I miss the most are the trees changing color in October and the cooler weather and lower humidity,” I added. “In about a month from now, up in the mountains in Vermont first week of October, and a little later along the Charles in Cambridge, the fall colors peak. It’s incredible; the leaves look like orange and red and yellow Chuckles candies.”

“I’ll bet that looks cool,” Owen said.

“It’s beautiful.”

“Well, it’s nice now; September and October have great weather here too,” Dillon added.

“How’s your big brother, Ben, the older one?” asked Owen.

“He’s OK; he’s working in a restaurant not far from home. It’s a hard job. He’s going to college during the day. And Eddie, my little brother’s taller than I am now.”

“You guys watch the game,” Dillon yelled over. “Enough of this socializing; you’re missing the action.”

Both Owen and Gareth turned toward me and smiled and said, “You can ignore him; he’s a fanatic.”

As the game moved into the third inning both a beer vendor, yelling “Cold Beer!” repeatedly and nearly unintelligibly, and a peanut vendor, yelling “Get your peanuts!” crowded the aisles descending on opposites ends of our row. I could hear this strange voice shouting slowly, “Pea – nuts,” with a gravelly cackle.

I could smell the once familiar aromas of hot dogs wafting through the Indian Summer air of mid-September. Some empty seats remained scattered about below in this section, both in front of us, and back behind above us. As the beer man turned to the right down below, we watched the fat green Phillie Phanatic jump from the top of the Phillies’ dugout down into the bottom of the empty aisle far below us. He began waddling up toward us, while stopping every two or three rows, and bowing forward in a comical fashion, while wagging his giant posterior below his too small, pin-striped Phillies jersey.

I thought back and realized how long I had been away from this area, and it had been about 10 years since I attended a game with JP, one of my best friends from grade school and beyond. I also had now forgotten about that strange Boston accent I heard on occasion there: “Pahhk Street,” even though that was just last year. Hear I heard the once familiar “wooder” for water. And those other childhood Phillies’ games I remembered seemed such a long time ago.

To Owen’s right, a wiry, pale peanut vendor lingered in red cap; he seemed strangely familiar, a ghost from the past; he looked like a quiet, thin kid from high school, who always blushed. Carrot orange hair sprouted in thick waves from his cap. We all heard from just to the right of Dillon, the loud caw of “Pea – nuts!”

Dillon seemed to notice him too, and then elbowed his brother, and I heard him say, “He looks familiar.” Then Owen elbowed Dillon and then Dillon smirked and said to the vendor, “I’ll take some.”

“Can we get free Peanuts?” Owen asked. “How about free peanuts?”

The vendor turned, smiled, and while lifting his eyebrows and furrowing his pale, pink forehead said, “Doubtful.”

Dillon asked, “How much?”

“Two dollars,” and then the vendor tossed a small, white paper bag over Dillon’s head to the second brother. The vendor smiled as he stuffed the bills in his pouch; his cheeks reddish-pink in the sun and his forehead with a sheen below his cap.

“Thanks,” Owen said with a smile, elbowing his brother before he handed the bag to Dillon and said, “I gotta take a leak” and stood up and walked up the aisle.

Then the peanut vendor slinked ahead with his chin up and head tilted, further down the aisle, and we heard louder yells of “Get your cold beer!” from the chubby beer vendor. We could smell the familiar aroma of beer and hot dogs mingling and hear the accents of this city.

“Was that Matt, the kid everyone called ‘The Pink Panther’?” Dillon asked Gareth.

“I don’t think so, but it could’ve been.”

As The Phanatic made his way higher up the aisle in the opposite direction from the vendors, it seemed I still remained part of both worlds: half of me still back in New England, the region I’d left behind, and half of me back here now and all along, back in Philadelphia, near where I grew up. . . . I tried to not dwell on these thoughts and enjoy the approaching clowning of The Phillie Phanatic.

Soon he stood tall and fat and green, with his too small, white jersey with red-pinstripes Phillies jersey, right above Dillon’s shoulder; there in the aisle larger-than-life in living technicolor. I could not believe he was so close; I had never seen him except way down on the field clowning around or racing on his scooter across the astroturf and umber earth near the dugout.

“Big as life!” Dillon loudly joked as he turned back toward us with a smile.

Then The Phanatic turned back toward the field far below and waddled and shook his giant butt like a drunk gyrating green bird. Owen walked back down the aisle and stood behind him and delivered a quick kick to his fat wagging butt.

Owen smiled, Dillon smiled in disbelief, and Gareth and I looked down toward the field as if nothing had happened. I am not sure if The Phanatic in his fat suit even felt anything. He kept dancing in the aisle a bit below us, then turned in a slow, awkward pirouette and bowed forward. Owen’s smile morphed into a slight chuckle as The Phanatic turned to face the fans down below.

There was no Jumbotron big screen in those days and a lot of fans focused on the field and game down almost 20 rows below us, but some looked over their shoulders back up the rows to where The Phanatic stood gyrating right before us.

We all tried to keep a straight face as Dillon moved past his brother and down a seat. The Phanatic’s prodigious girth we could still see a few more rows further below. We heard a faint roar from the crowd below as they responded to his antics and he returned to their section behind the Phils’ dugout roof. We heard the announcer say, “The Phanatic is back and on the loose!”

Dillon turned to Owen and said with a smile, “Well done, good kick! That guy needed a good kick in the ass!” We all smiled as we sat back and watched the game as The Phillie Phanatic climbed atop the home dugout once again.

As the game wore on the sky assumed the usual hue of a late summer evening. I thought about the textbook I should have been studying and the papers that needed grading, even this early in the term, and realized, that the harder I worked the students, the harder I had to work. I just made more work for myself, insisting on drafts of essays, and responses to questions about stories we had read.

Owen leaned over toward me and asked, “Did you miss your brothers when you studied up north?”

“Sort of,” I said. “But now little Eddie has gone away to college too, and he’s not so little anymore, but Ben always was the ‘big brother.’”

“Well, you’re home now. Welcome back.”

“Thanks, I guess I’m glad to be back.”

“You guys must’ve had some good times growing up.”

“Well, when I was very young, and small, I was lying on an inflatable raft in a neighbor’s pool and I slipped off; I couldn’t even swim then; I was about five, I remember gurgling below and looking through this green-blue water. Then Ben pulled me above the water. I guess Ben saved me.”

“It sounds like he did,” Gareth said. And Owen nodded seriously.

“That same summer they replayed The Fly on tv, the old black & white version, on the tv at those neighbors when we visited then; I saw that movie on tv the night before; that movie scared me.”

“That’s a good movie,” Owen said, “And that would scare any five-year-old.”

“You should call that story, ‘The Summer of The Fly,’” Dillon suggested.

“That was a long time ago. Once, just a few years later, but before my dad left, we went bike riding in the very early morning on the Boardwalk down The Shore through the cool air; that was fantastic. The Boardwalk wide open and all to ourselves, and our tires made the only sound besides the gulls squawking in the distance over the grey blue Atlantic and the distant, muffled crashing of the waves. It seemed we had nearly the whole Boardwalk to ourselves. After riding for about an hour, Ben bought me a cold, fresh-squeezed orange juice from this boardwalk booth; after riding far up, then back down the boards toward the lighthouse as the gulls swooped off in the distance through the cool early morning light.”

“Well, I guess you really had a big brother then,” Dillon repeated.

“I think you’re right,” I agreed.

“I love bicycling in the cool of the morning,” Owen chimed in.

“Me too,” Gareth said.

“I have a great French road bike, a Motobecane,” Owen offered.

“I remember when I was really young my big brother had some Cub Scout project to sell Sno-Cones and we had to get some sort of permit from the Town Hall, and my brother said he would race my dad downtown, Ben on his new red Columbia bike and our dad in his Scout truck.”

“Who won?” Owen asked.

“I think it turned out to be a tie, but that was fun riding in the truck with my dad and knowing Ben could cut across town.”

Soon, late in the game and moving toward the last few innings, the sky held the same deep blue of all the late summer nights I remembered from my youth, when I was the same age as my students.

“So, are you going to buy a cool sports car with your first paycheck from your first real job?” Gareth asked beside me.

“I wish I could, but I doubt it. This small Quaker school does not pay well.”

“There were some teachers with hot cars when we were kids,” Dillon chimed in.

“I remember Miss Derry, she had an E-Type Jag,” Owen added.

“I remember that,” Dillon agreed.

“I remember one late summer evening after the sky had moved to twilight as I sat along the wall by the church where we used to meet in high school, this guy, maybe one year ahead of us, and new to town, drove up in the summer dusk in his shiny, new green Triumph, a TR-6 I think, with the top down, and Hadley O’Connell sat on the old bus bench with another girl, and he drove right up in front of Hadley and the other girl, and he must’ve of asked Hadley if she wanted to go for a spin.”

“Did she get in?” Owen asked.

“Of course.”

“She was a babe,” Gareth said.

“She was beautiful, totally hot,” Dillon added.

“Well, that’s the car you need,” Gareth suggested.

“They don’t even make those anymore,” Owen added.

“I’m thinking of a VW Beetle anyway.”

“Will you guys pipe down and watch the game,” Dillon insisted. “It’s the bottom of the 9th.”

The sky had gone dark and the lights blared out over the field.

He was right, it was the bottom of the 9th and the game remained tied; the Phils had tied the game in the 8th , when “Jeff Stone came through with a double,” Dillon reminded us. Now, still 2-2, we went to extra innings. The sky had moved long past dusk, and I quietly paid attention as the brothers seemed more attentive, especially since the game remained tied into the 11th inning. The sky seemed even darker than earlier and I wondered how long the game might last.

With the Phillies and Expos still deadlocked at two runs apiece. I heard Dillon say to Owen, “Tim Burke’s pitching now.”

“I don’t know any of the Expos’ players; the only Expo I recall is Rusty Staub,” I said.

“He’s on The Mets now,” Owen said.

“I don’t know all these Phillies’ players now either; I’ve been away.”

“Do you have any more humorous stories of our youth?” Gareth asked.

I started to say to Gareth, so his brother could hear too, “I remember when your giant Newfoundland decked your big brother, Owen out on your back, closed in porch one cold, late fall night.

“Really?” Gareth asked.

“Yeh, I sat in kitchen as Owen said, ‘I’ve got to feed Ollie,’ and I watched him fill a big bowl with dry dog chow. He opened the back door to the dark porch, and closed the back door, and with the porch still unlit, I heard a deep, loud ‘Woof’ and then a crash, then a thud, as I heard many hard pieces of dog chow scatter like pebbles across the wooden floor, and then I heard Owen cry out, ‘Ollie!’”

Owen leaned toward his younger brother Gareth and smiled, and I could see beyond him Dillon laughing. “Then he switched the porch light on.”

“I never heard that one before,” said Gareth.

“Me either,” laughed Dillon.

I looked to our right and we saw Owen smile, then he added, “Ollie could get a little enthusiastic at times.”

Dillon smiled and shook his head.

But soon the Phillies had two men on, and I had forgotten how tired I felt before, and knew we would eventually make our way home after this Tuesday-night game. I worried I would not get all this schoolwork done, but these thoughts disappeared as Mike Schmidt strode to the plate. Five years had passed since the Phillies’ World Series triumph, which occurred in an October when I still studied in Vermont. I recalled walking past a low dorm, in between apple trees, in a dark, hilly grove, over thick grass with apples rotting at my feet, and in the dusk light I heard my friend Hubert say, “The Phillies just won the World Series, Billy.”

It registered with me but did not mean as much as it might have, if I still lived back home then. But as Schmidt dug his cleats into the brown earth of the batter’s box this night, I thought of my old Uncle sitting before the tv in our dining room back home, and how he said, “Mike Schmidt is the best,” as he sat before the television, and drank Schmidt’s Beer from a can, and added, “I saw Babe Ruth play at Connie Mack Stadium when the Philadelphia A’s played there.” Then he continued, “I saw Dempsey vs. Tunney and ‘The Sesquicentennial in Philadelphia. . . . And I saw the Hindenburg crash in Lakehurst, New Jersey too.”

Uncle had died about five years before, a handful of years after he left our house. I wondered whether years after he left us if he had seen the Phillies win The World Series on television? All these memories flowed through me as my eyes grew more weary.

After a few half swings, Schmidt seemed ready; the pitcher, Burke stood on the mound, looking over his shoulder to the runner on first base.

Dillon chimed in, “Burke is their ace reliever.”

The Phils had runners on first and second. This late in the season, with Schmidt five years past his glory days, I didn’t expect anything. The lights high up in the stadium burned, but the overhang above and behind us seemed to make ‘The Vet’ like a dark theatre before the main event commenced. We, in this half-empty, carved out white, concrete bowl sat alert feeling the cold of autumn ahead. Soon the count went to 2-1, the pitch came in, the small white ball moving so quickly we could barely see it, then we heard the crack of the bat, ash wood against cowhide ball and saw the white ball flying toward the distant, deep green, outfield fence, which it soared up and over as cheers erupted from the crowd.

“A game-winning homer!” I heard the brothers say as they stood up to my right; “That’s one for the ages!” Dillon said loudly.

Silently I thought to myself, ‘That’s what truly great players do; they perform in the clutch, when the game is on the line.’ That’s what the great ones do, what brothers do, I thought as we all smiled, then made our way up the aisle, as fans turned down below under the night sky, and a few players still lingered on the near empty field under the lights and late summer, dark sky.