‘Look at them,’ Dave says, still smiling. Something in that smile suggests he may be reading my mind. ‘Take a good look.’ I do. There are perhaps half a dozen of them on the bench, still laughing and telling junior high school war stories. One of them breaks out of the discussion long enough to ask Matt Kinney to throw the curve, and Matt does – one with a particularly nasty break. The boys on the bench all laugh and cheer.
‘Look at those two guys,’ Dave says, pointing. ‘One of them comes from a good home. The other one, not so good.’ He tosses some sunflower seeds into his mouth and then indicates another boy. ‘Or that one. He was born in one of the worst sections of Boston. Do you think he’d know a kid like Matt Kinney or Kevin Rochefort, if it wasn’t for Little League? They won’t be in the same classes at junior high, wouldn’t talk to each other in the halls, wouldn’t have the slightest idea the other one was alive.’ Matt throws another curve; this one so nasty J.J. can’t handle it. It rolls all the way to the backstop, and as J.J. gets up and trots after it the boys on the bench cheer again.
‘But this changes all that,’ Dave says. ‘These boys have played together and won their district together. Some come from families that are well-to-do, and there’s a couple from families as poor as used dishwater, but when they put on the uniform and cross the chalk they leave all that on the other side. Your school grades can’t help you between the chalk, or what your parents do, or what they don’t do. Between the chalk, what happens is the kids’ business. They tend it, too, as well as they can. All the rest…’ Dave makes a shooing gesture with one hand. ‘All left behind. And they know it, too. Just look at them if you don’t believe me, because the proof is right there.’ I look across the field and see my own kid and one of the boys Dave has mentioned sitting side-by-side, heads together, talking something over seriously. They look at each other in amazement, then break out laughing.
‘They played together,’ Dave repeats. ‘They practiced together, day after day, and that’s probably even more important than the games. Now they’re going into the State Tournament.
They’ve even got a chance to win it. I don’t think they will, but that doesn’t matter. They’re going to be there, and that’s enough. Even if Lewiston knocks them out in the first round, that’s enough.
Because it’s something they did together between those chalk lines. They’re going to remember that. They’re going to remember how that felt.’
‘Between the chalk,’ I say, and all at once I get it – the penny drops. Dave Mansfield believes this old chestnut. Not only that, he can afford to believe it. Such cliches may be hollow in the big leagues, where some player or other tests positive for drugs every week or two and the free agent is God, but this is not the big leagues. This is where Anita Bryant sings the national anthem over battered PA speakers that have been wired to the chain-link behind the dugouts. This is where, instead of paying admission, to watch the game, you put something in the hat when it comes around. If you want to, of course. None of these kids are going to spend the off-season playing fantasy baseball in Florida with overweight businessmen, or signing expensive baseball cards at memorabilia shows, or touring the chicken circuit at two thousand bucks a night. When it’s all free, Dave’s smile suggests, they have to give the cliches back and let you own them again, fair and square. You are once more allowed to believe in Red Barber, John Tunis, and the Kid from Tomkinsville. Dave Mansfield believes what he is saying about how the boys are equal between the chalk, and he has a right to believe, because he and Neil and Saint have patiently led these kids to a point where they believe it. They do believe it; I can see it on their faces as they sit in the dugout on the far side of the diamond. It could be why Dave Mansfield and all the other Dave Mansfields across the country keep on doing this, year after year. It’s a free pass. Not back into childhood – it doesn’t work that way – but back into the dream.
Dave falls silent for a moment, thinking, bouncing a few sunflower seeds up and down in the palm of his hand.
‘It’s not about winning or losing,’ he says finally. ‘That comes later. It’s about how they’ll pass each other in the corridor this year, or even down the road in high school, and look at each other, and remember. In a way, they’re going to be on the team that won the district in 1989 for a long time.’ Dave glances across into the shadowy first-base dugout, where Fred Moore is now laughing about something with Mike Arnold. Owen King glances from one to the other, grinning. ‘It’s about knowing who your teammates are. The people you had to depend on, whether you wanted to or not.’
He watches the boys as they laugh and joke four days before their tournament is scheduled to begin, then raises his voice and tells Matt to throw four or five more and knock off. Not all coaches who win the coin toss – as Dave Mansfield does on August 5, for the sixth time in nine postseason games – elect to be the home team. Some of them (the coach from Brewer, for instance) believe the so-called home-team advantage is a complete fiction, especially in a tournament game, where neither team is actually playing on its home field. The argument for being the visitors in a jackpot game runs like this: At the start of such a game, the kids on both teams are nervous. The way to take advantage of those nerves, the reasoning goes, is to bat first and let the defending team commit enough walks, balks, and errors to put you in the driver’s seat.
If you bat first and score four runs, these theorists conclude, you own the game before it’s barely begun. QED. It’s a theory Dave Mansfield has never subscribed to. ‘I want my lasties,’ he says, and for him that’s the end of it.
Except today is a little different. It is not only a tournament game, it is a championship tournament game – a televised championship game, in fact. And as Roger Fisher winds and fires his first pitch past everything for ball one, Dave Mansfield’s face is that of a man who is fervently hoping he hasn’t made a mistake.
Roger knows that he is a spot starter – that Mike Pelkey would be out here in his place if Pelkey weren’t currently shaking hands with Goofy down in Disney World – but he manages his first-inning jitters as well as one could expect, maybe a little better. He backs off the mound following each return from the catcher, Joe Wilcox, studies the batter, fiddles with his shirtsleeves, and takes all the time he needs. Most important of all, he understands how necessary it is to keep the ball in the lowest quarter of the strike zone. The York lineup is packed with power from top to bottom. If Roger makes a mistake and gets one up in the batter’s eyes – especially a batter like Tarbox, who hits as powerfully as he throws – it’s going to get lost in a hurry.
He loses the first York batter nevertheless. Bouchard trots down to first, accompanied by the hysterical cheers of the York rooting section. The next batter is Philbrick, the shortstop. He bangs the first pitch back to Fisher. In one of those plays that sometimes decide ball games, Roger elects to go to second and try to force the lead runner. In most Little League games, this turns out to be a bad idea. Either the pitcher throws wild into center field, allowing the lead runner to get to third, or he discovers that his short-stop has not moved over to cover second and the bag is undefended. Today, however, it works. St. Pierre has drilled these boys well on their defensive positions. Matt Kinney, today’s shortstop, is right where he’s supposed to be. So is Roger’s throw. Philbrick reaches first on a fielder’s choice, but Bouchard is out. This time, it is the Bangor West fans who roar out their approval.