The first baseball game you attended without holding your

father’s hand through the turnstiles was on November 1,

2001, fifty-one meaningless mornings after his murder in

downtown Manhattan. Dad was beginning a new day at the

top of the World, while you were still sleeping, dreaming

about the Little League game he was to watch you play in

that evening. The better part of two months did not exist for

your nine-year-old self that year and, still, the exact

circumstances of living during that period are absent from

your memory, an entire fucked-up decade later, perhaps the

worst ten year span in American history.

To wit: in 2004 alone, you saw the Red Sox win the World

Series for the first time since the decade that the Titanic

sank (1918 & 1912, respectively) and then watched Dick

Cheney George W. Bush promptly engineer a reelection.

Coincidence? Maybe it was, until 2007, when the Sawx

sequeled and a Democratic surge predictably failed to stop

Dubya’s own in Iraq. Consider: Elder George’s slowest son

was born in 1946, the first new year in the apocalyptic

Atomic Age, a mere 136 miles from Boston, during the

summer of a season in which the Red Stockings won 104

games and went to the World Series’ seventh. Beantown’s

American League baseball franchise has won greater than 99

games only three times. The first? 1912, also the year that

America’s first Progressive Party, led by Theodore Roosevelt,

failed to win the White House.

But do you, Willie Cobb, give a shit about any of this, even

ten years later? No, the only part of Autumn oh-one which

mattered to you was that night at the Stadium, where

baseball first flirted with Mr. November and Jeter’s Game 4-

winning catharsis emphatically told a smoldering City that

red-stitched distractions do, in fact, matter. Your father may

have been gone, but Derek said life goes on. And so on it

went, eventually taking you all the way to The Show…

***

The first baseball game when the name ‘Willie Cobb’—your

name--was announced before the Star-Spangled Banner

ended turned out to be your extraordinary moment during

the World Series of 2011. Before the contest, a local beat

writer described your nineteen-year-old game as, “the

collision of grace and furiosity, come to the Pinstripes by way

of Providence in late September, destined to help drive the

Yankees on towards another new glory.” Was it a bit much?

Your teammates kidded you incessantly about that damned

NY Daily News article all morning. Yet, when it was your time

next to bat, all of Gotham stood in ovation for number 64,

the unstoppable Willie Cobb.

Thunder in hand, the spikes below your feet grind deep into

a sacred space. Not the batter’s box, that’s where squared

losers go to make frightened reactions. The on-deck circle is

your temple, where a tactical mind draws final plans for the

imminent engagement. For some, being first in line to bat is

like being the last soldier running across no-mans’ land,

purgatory with nothing for protection but a steel donut and a

32oz. wooden hot dog—fresh from the trench and next to

face a southpaw firing squad. But not for you, Willie--for

you, the on deck circle is where battles are won and fear is

loathed.

So you tap the chalked circle’s center with a lead bat-head

before entering. Walking with nonchalance counter-

clockwise from noon, you step inside, falling instantly into a

world of calm and esoteric understanding. Suddenly, Willie’s

place within this timeless game becomes clear. The contest

is deep into the middle innings, and there is still no score.

The opposing hurler, a nasty son-of-a-bitch with a curve

thrice convicted of breaking the balls of hitters far better

than you, had been slightly off his game, getting outs, until

that point, by way of luck and called strikes due largely to

reputation. From inside the circle, and with the virtue of a

left-handed lead-off man, you could see, today, that the

curve’s bite was actually just a big, fat bark being left out

over the plate for a bigger dog to devour, like a rabid wolf

pack come across a grassy outfield of visiting bunnies.

The third baseman hugs the line--sharp doubles are

forbidden consequences during the Series. The shortstop,

though, is a step too close to second and playing the hole a

foot too shallow. Not that this mattered to the struck-out

hitter sulking back to the dugout. Calmly approaching the

plate, the path of your attack has become clear. Most hitters

will wait on a fastball, either taking the garbage stuff or

leaving it up to Fate, but you know better. Willie, you are a

man that creates his own destiny.

Strike one, a hard dart, snaps into leather, a pitch that even

a dead Tiger coulda’ smacked around in his dirty sleep, but

you want to wait this bastard out…outfox him and then

break his confidence for the next guy watching on deck. Just

as in life, this is a game that can’t be beat, only challenged

occasionally by an individual who is willing to sacrifice

everything at the altar of team success.

The second strike is more of the same and just as the cocky

fuck thinks that you, the foolish rookie, is about ready to

take a shower and start searching the local want ads for a

vocation that might not require quite so much hand-eye

coordination, he drags out that dead, tired curve. It is an oh-

and-two kinda effort, meant as a lazy distraction, designed

to draw out an overeager bat; the loud drunken fisherman

figuring that even he can catch a dumb fish every now and

then. The slow rotation takes a hop but never dives…you

swing a microsecond early…pulling the ball-in-play slightly to

the left…the hard contact reminds you, Willie, that no game

tingles the bone soul quite like this one…

The ball ricochets off the mound, towards third, and now the

hot corner-man has his own shot at heroism. He dives and

comes up with it…first base is so close, you can do it…first

base is too far, you won’t make it…a throw, a lunge, a step,

a snap. “Safe!”

Now, with a man on base, the pitcher has two minds.

Keeping you on base is like trying to keep an angry wasp

trapped inside a ratty old mitt. The next pitch is a bouncer

and you break for second like a backseat teenager wildly

groping at her first tittie. Taking the base wasn’t a steal, but

was it a gift from the Gods? No, Willie Cobb earns his own

rewards. Another bad pitch gets swatted just past your head,

on into the outfield, and all of a sudden a rally has been

sparked. If you played across the country, in San Francisco,

joints would have been sparked, too, in celebration.

Runners at the corners and only one man down. The game is

happening to you—right now. No time to think about grass,

Willie, you’ve gotta get your candied mulatto ass back home,

first.
The infield is in tight, overplaying to prevent a run during a

championship game that is thisclose. You look around…

everyone is tight. The boys in the trench are on the edge of

their benches; the men in the grandstands cheer wildly with

beers in both hands, but you and the secret anguish in all

those faces know that one ground ball may kill this moment

—your moment. Now was the only right time to make your

move in a timeless game. Anticipating anything, but knowing

what is going to happen next, you are as cool as a cucumber

sleeping under the other side of the pillow.

The frustrated pitcher bends to begin his wind-up. The

nervous lefty batter digs in to receive the pitch. The fielders

inch forward on their toes, brains twitching while considering

all the possible outcomes from this one next pitch…here it

comes…

You make your break before the ball crosses mound dirt,

Willie versus the fast ball—first to home may still lose. The

ball is traveling forty over the speed-limit and only has 60

feet, 6 inches to go. You are running at the speed of

adrenaline, but a full ninety is between you and glory. A full

ninety is between you and bitter failure—this is the essence

of our Pastime. Ten feet out, the catcher has the ball and

moves to block the plate. Five feet out, your eyes aren’t

fixed on white rubber—you’re looking for the soft spot

between the catcher’s ribs, the exact intersection of flesh

and pain where uninformed people say baseball isn’t a

contact sport. He brings the mitt down towards the plate,

you bring a shoulder up towards his chest…eyes wide shut,

you can only hear some poor bastard’s bones crackle…then

the air escaping from the Stadium, and finally, the sound of

the ball. Five and a quarter ounces of leather, string and

stitching fall to the Earth in zero gravity time; when the

sphere bounces off the rubber plate, a sound akin to nuclear

echo makes the easy call. The stadium itself was quaking,

rolling and rocking as your inflammable play creates what

would prove to be the game’s only run. “Safe!”

***

Post-game, you, number 64, the night’s unquestioned

superstar, are the only headline. The reporters get on you

before the street clothes do, so it’s just another naked

interview in front of the ‘beat hacks. Female reporters are

your favorite, obviously, but tonight is about honoring your

father, not your showing off victory-willie. Save it for later,

tiger.

“People want to say sports don’t matter,” you begin

answering some inane question on how you feel, “that what

we do is just a distraction from real life. Well, nothing has

ever been more real to me than baseball. When I see those

fans, I see my dad in their smiles. That’s what real is to me.

To see my dad cheering for me all these years later—that

never would have happened without this game. Write that

down. That’s how I feel.”

That night turned out to be your only moment in the

diamond spotlight. For some reason or another, the Gods of

Cooperstown had decided against your future induction, yet

that was never something that burdened the rest of your life.

Playing a child’s game had given you one more chance to

know your father, to feel his embrace, to hear him say, “Son,

you made me proud.” Ten years of thankless toil, continual

failure and swinging through the fabric of time, only to

resurrect a dead man’s faded smile…tonight, Willie Cobb,

you have learned the Zen of Baseball.