Men Wore Hats

Men Wore Hats

  Brian S. Wheeler

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2014 by Brian S. Wheeler

  Contents

  Men Wore Hats

  A Kind Request

  Help Spread the Story Across the Flatland

  About the Writer

  Other Stories at Flatland Fiction

  Men Wore Hats

  (…to Dad, who could always hit them better than anyone)

  Harmon’s cell phone buzzed. The early morning fog that settled between the granite bluffs which hemmed the aging town of Monteray limited the view outside the windshield. The fog tempted Harmon’s vision to peer into the mists where some fifty miles would take him into the bustle of city streets to the law offices of his firm. Regardless, the green marker did its best to mark the turn-off of the interstate and slow the forward momentum of the sedan buzzing in cell reception. Harmon followed the sign and took a detour that wound him along the cracking pavement and boarded windows of Monteray’s business district to an old baseball diamond nestled within the trees of the park. Those trees appeared the healthiest emblems of the small town despite their brown leaves of October. Harmon contemplated allowing the cell phone’s buzz to die without answer, self-assured that the detour was a momentary one, that the interstate would have patience to wait for him just outside of town.

  “Yeah, talk to me.” A flaw must have been present in Harmon’s assurance. He fumbled with a styrofoam coffee cup as he clutched at his white, plastic cell phone.

  Harmon’s dark sedan approached the aging ball diamond in the early hours of Saturday morning. The orange, autumnal trees blocked the view of the diamond scheduled for demolition at the month’s end. Harmon gained only occasional peeks at it through the umber canopy as his sedan rolled to a stop in the parking lot. The ball diamond would conceal itself until travelers took to their feet and engaged in the contemplation that comes naturally with walking.

  Now only used for weekly little league games and home legion competitions, the field was condemned to death by a city council interested in turning the budget red to black. It was a sacrifice that would not have been accepted in the past. Yet the modern day lacked the grass-roots players to defend the diamond from desires of the new. The demolition brought Harmon to the field. Harmon suggested the proposal to move future games onto the high school diamond, thus saving money that could insure each league participant a professional quality cap, with licensed, major league emblems finely sewn onto the front. The aldermen had been impressed with the letters received from beaming parents hopeful to receive photographs of their tikes in such headgear, and so the board nominated Harmon to remove the last roadblock in the demolition process, that of informing the man who had spent the last thirty years coaching within the diamond’s foul lines that his raking of the infield and mowing of the outfield would no longer be needed.

  Harmon rolled his eyes and finished his call before exiting the sedan. “I’ll again assure you, Mr. Sterling, your transactions are clear. I’ll call from my office later.” Harmon pocketed his cell phone, and for the first time since turning off the interstate, the phone stopped its frantic vibration and turned still.

  Harmon noticed the fog beginning to burn off as he began his trek through the trees to the diamond. A crack of wood echoed off the bluffs that loomed over the trees still refusing to give a peek at the field. He remembered his son commenting on how the dark bluffs created the perfect hitting backdrop to strike a starch white ball. All Harmon knew was how the bluffs had created a town when they were still full of ore and gave industry life. He failed to make other connections. Now, the bluffs went largely unnoticed despite the interstate that roared past the bluffs.

  Harmon cleared the last patch of trees before he finally viewed the large frame of Coach Boyle though the links of a fence. Boyle swung away at white blurs launched toward him from a rusting, green machine precociously placed atop the pitcher’s mound. Line drives screamed off the bat of the gray-haired batter to clang against the hollow insides of the mechanical hurler. Harmon grabbed a seat on the old, dull green bleachers to wait for the man to finish his swings. As he waited for the mechanical monster on the mound to run out of ammo, Harmon fumbled with the combo breakfast wrapped in paper he had purchased just before turning onto the freeway. The coffee spilled as Harmon involuntarily jerked from the clash of a foul ball against the fence that separated him from the field. He grimaced from the sting of the coffee’s heat and winced as he noticed the red blotch forming on his pale and smooth hands.

  Coach Boyle showed no indication that he had noticed Harmon’s arrival. He merely continued swinging toward the bluffs in concentration. Harmon’s attention was drawn to the coach’s knuckles that choked the handle of the bat. The man from the suburbs who had grimaced from the pain of coffee noticed that Boyle’s hands were dark, rugged, calloused, the result of years in the mine, of years swinging against the grain of wood. Harmon doubted that coffee could faze a man with such hands. As he thought on the hands, Boyle continued to rocket balls toward the bluffs, without greeting, without regard, for the field’s visitor.

  Harmon noticed the light of the pitching machine switch to red, an indication that the machine’s bowels were near empty. He prepared mentally to deliver the news to Coach Boyle concerning the future of the diamond. Harmon learned about Jas Boyle from an elderly man at the convenient store positioned just off the interstate. Boyle was born and raised in Monteray, the town in the shadow of the bluffs. Boyle had become a baseball legend when the game was revered, a third baseman noted for supernatural hand-eye coordination, cat-like reflexes, and a lack of running speed that seemed so strange given the man’s other, uncanny athletic skills. Boyle had swung away in the minors, and he returned to Monteray a minor deity. Such status awarded him a job at the local mine until the coal ran dry some thirty years lost. Since then, Boyle had been employed by the recreation department to keep the grounds, occasionally offering instruction in the art of hitting a baseball to little leaguers brave enough to face the older man’s course language.

  The pitching machine finally silenced upon the mound.

  “Coach Boyle, we need to talk.”

  Boyle nodded his head. Taking a bucket from behind the backstop, he began retrieving baseballs in the vicinity of home plate. Looking at his watch, Harmon felt impatient. Clients and cases waited for him at the interstate’s end. All he had to do was tell Coach Boyle that he would no longer have to spend his waning years teaching youngsters how to bunt. The old man would likely be relieved to have such responsibility taken away. It should take no more than a few moments. It should be easy to take the field, but somehow the way Boyle swung the wooden bat called such an assumption into question.

  Finally, Coach Boyle opened the gate behind home plate and took a seat next to Harmon. Boyle opened a large bag of sunflower seeds from his pocket and dumped a handful of seeds into his mouth. Harmon cleared his throat to speak, and Boyle turned to face him.
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  “Mr. Harmon, know who the Babe pitched for?”

  Harmon lost his mental rhythm and had to pause before answering. “Clueless, Mr. Boyle.”

  “Call me Jas or Coach.” Boyle spit out the first bunch of empty shells from his swollen cheeks. “People need to know that. The man went on to save the very game, and now people can’t even remember if he was right of left handed?”

  “Was it the White Sox?”

  “I think I’ll try to mention it to the little leaguers later this afternoon.”

  “Which side he swung from?” Harmon could see the seeds shuffling around the insides of Boyle’s mouth before another bunch came flying out.

  “If you can’t remember,” Boyle began again, “how can you go forward? The lack of grandeur, of nostalgia, of simple wonder amazes me these days.”

  Harmon noticed that Boyle still gripped the bat, turning its emblem forwards and backwards, studying something that appeared written in the simple logo.

  “Know what’s missing, besides Brooklyn Stadium of Ebbet’s Field?”

  “Ruth pitched for the Red Sox, right. I though I knew that one.”

  “The simplicity of it all.”

  Harmon pulled his plastic phone from his pocket and peeked at the time, noting by the digitized graphics that it was the middle of the night in China. Boyle wiped his brow with a cap taken from his back pocket, sweating from the vigor in which he attacked the sunflower seeds.

  “Mr. Boyle, we really must talk.”

  Boyle stood again, leaning against the fence while pointing the bat at Harmon. “They say Cobb could hit all day, even when he was an old man. His swing was so short, so sweet, so simple. I guess there’s just too much movement in my swing.”

  “I’m sure you realize, Mr. Boyle, that the village recreational board’s been looking for ways to cut spending.”

  “I’ve already helped them out there.” Boyle took a crumbled list from his pocket and set the bat upright against the fence. “I can tell you everything this old field doesn’t need.”

  Harmon thought it was all getting to be rather much. He grew tired of the old man’s ramblings. He would go as far to admit that the tanned coach knew when to steal second, or which cut-off man the situation called to hit. He could speak of old, dead hitters all he wanted. All that was great, but it simply failed to have merit compared to the changing demands of the current economic and social environment. He was not going to let an old man with a taped bat by his side tell him anything different regarding the decision Harmon knew had to be made.

  “It doesn’t need ball uniforms.” Again taking a seat beside Harmon, as if making sure his next words were not lost in the space between them, Boyle spit out the largest clump of empty shells yet in preparation to state his theories. “It doesn’t need concessions. Hell, even the Babe didn’t eat hot dogs while he was playing.”

  Harmon shook his head as he looked at the crumpled piece of paper. “Those concessions were this baseball diamond’s main revenue source this summer.”

  “A field doesn’t need bleachers, team pictures, annual purchases of aluminum bats and oversized gloves. No scoreboards. No flagposts. No...”

  Harmon peeked at the bat that rested a few feet from Boyle’s large hands. “The field itself if what we have to talk about, Mr. Boyle.”

  Boyle sprang to his feet yet again. He paced along the fence to the dugout located at the end of the bleachers.

  “I can’t tell you how much this field used to mean to all of us. Over around the corner of the left field line, Larry used to have a diner. He used to watch us boys while he stirred his unchanging soup of the week. I’m amazed to this day that he never once got any of those ashes from those cigars he would smoke in the pot. The post office stood a few more blocks down the road. There was nothing wrong about it doubling as a courthouse then, nor was their anything wrong with the gymnasium doubling as roller rink on the weekends. I can still hear the paperboy on the post office steps saying that Williams was again dropping the bat to go to war. Things were different then. Maybe for the better. Maybe not. Men wore hats. And this diamond was the center of it all.”

  Boyle stood on the dugout steps, the point in his pacing which moved him furthest from Harmon.

  “Things were simple. We were close.” Boyle concluded.

  That was the word Harmon was ready to hear. Simple. He had already allotted fifteen minutes of his time, and he still hadn’t moved what was supposed to be the easiest obstacle clear of the demolition process. All the papers were signed and cleared. Contractors were scheduled to arrive within the week. One last roadblock remained. Grabbing the taped bat beside him, Harmon felt strong enough to speak as he smelled the pine tar rubbed deep into the wood’s grain.

  “Your boy play ball?”

  “What’s that?” Harmon shifted his weight.

  “Third?” Boyle pointed to the position.

  “Oh, yeah.” Harmon thought the bat heavier than expected.

  “Good hands. Good arm. He has some real potential for the kind of power the corners need to produce in the lineup. If he could just learn to shorten his swing and level it.” Boyle walked back to Harmon and imitated the son’s swing without the bat. “You see. If we could have more of this motion.” Boyle kept his front shoulder closed. “We could have a real player on our hands in just a few more years.”

  Harmon felt himself gripping hard on the bat. “You think so?”

  “By the time that he gets to this diamond...”

  With the bat firmly in hand, Harmon stood to deliver the words. “They’re going to level the field, Mr. Boyle.”

  It had to be said. All the talk was driving Harmon mad. Imagine Boyle bringing his son into the equation. Surely, smashing down the field wasn’t going to make the least difference in his boy’s future. The new fast food franchises that were bound to grow atop the infield grass such a short trip off the interstate would probably offer his boy a needed job to save for college. Learning how the modern world worked, learning how to serve a customer, meant far more than learning how to swing a bat on an old, dusty baseball diamond.

  “About time.”

  “What?” Harmon nearly dropped the bat in his shock.

  “This old field’s been collecting water behind first for the last twenty years.” Boyle pointed to the white bag with his cap. “Level it out, and bring in some good dirt for a change.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Boyle, but you don’t understand.” Harmon rubbed the bat with his grip. The task dragged him down. Harmon had to force himself to speak, fearing he would lose his stomach if he waited. It may have been bad coffee.

  “They’re going to demolish the entire field, Mr. Boyle. Tear it completely down. Let other things grow from the dirt. I have a copy of the papers with me.”

  Boyle’s first thought was to grab the bat from Harmon’s hands. Instead, he walked slowly back through the fence that lead to the field. Head down, steps guided by a familiarity with the dirt born from thirty years of maintenance, Boyle climbed the mound and began to refill the empty machine. Boyle grabbed a new bat waiting near the plate and once more took his position in the box to await the machine’s delivery. The coach grunted as he swung too hard and missed the first few pitches. But then he regained some of his composure through the simple swing bound forever in his muscle memory. Line drives whistled once more from his bat. Harmon watched, dazzled, as a number of majestic arcs flew over the distant, left-field wall, arcs flying from a man’s frame whose power was supposed to be a thing of the long past, power that was supposed to be nothing more than memory.

  Boyle allowed one white sphere to pass over home plate as he paused to address Harmon.

  “At least you can’t knock down the bluffs.”

  A crack of the bat followed the syllables of the words.

  Harmon was winded. He had cleared the last roadblock. Bulldozers and tractors could now dig without delay. No ol
d man would be swinging wooden bats to keep them away. Boyle could ask questions concerning dead hitters for as long as he desired. Harmon no longer felt obligated to reply. Harmon picked up the remainder of breakfast and stood to walk back through the park and to his car.

  “Tell me one more thing.” A line drive screeched past second base, the crack of the bat again making Harmon pause. “What did you kid hit last summer?”

  Harmon notice the coffee stain on his pants as he stood. “I can’t recall, Mr. Boyle.”

  Boyle again swung too hard and nearly fell from the exertion. “He hit the same as Mantle’s rookie year.”

  “What was that?” Harmon’s cell phone again buzzed.

  The machine spit one down the middle of the plate. Boyle sent it flying over the centerfield wall toward the bluffs. Even in that monstrous connection made by an aging man, Boyle failed to reach the dark rocks.

  “Goes to show you can’t know one without the other.”

  “Farewell, Mr. Boyle.”

  The walk through the park took longer than Harmon recalled. Arriving back at his car, he again stared into the display of his buzzing phone. Mr. Sterling waited on the other end, still worried about the legality of his business. Harmon tried soothing him.

  “Yeah, I can meet you in the afternoon.” Harmon drove once more through the battered downtown of Monteray. “My whole afternoon is free.” Harmon’s thumb played along the steering wheel as he turned back onto the interstate. “Sure, I’d be glad to take in a game at the stadium. Well, if I were a betting man, I would pick the visiting clubs. Those home bums can’t hit.”