Sunday morning, but the sun is already summertime high. Ten more minutes and we’re off for Barnes & Noble–air-conditioning, thousands of books, those delicious blueberry scones. That’s when the phone rings. My wife picks up. It’s James, her son-in-law. Do we want to go to the ball game? James has tickets to the Kane County Cougars.
At last we are directed into a parking spot that leaves us only a half-mile from Elfstrom Stadium. The sign above the ballpark entrance says, NO BEVERAGES PERMITTED IN THE PARK. We have water. My wife actually buys the stuff in little plastic bottles and carries it around with her. “They can’t mean water,” she says, and as usual she’s right; no one questions the water. Just inside the gate a man is stamping the backs of people’s hands to identify them as legal drinkers. Already staggering in the sun, she and I silently agree to skip that. One beer between us and we’ll drop dead in each other’s arms.
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I take a deep breath, try to inhale the essence of small-town America. All those Middletowns and Fremonts and Troys, the rickety bleachers where people sat beneath feeble floodlights listening to the chatter of the players and the whine of the cicadas. I take a deep breath and inhale Wendy’s.
I remember my first major-league game. The Detroit Tigers were playing the White Sox. Hank Greenberg for Detroit. Luke Appling (“Old Aches and Pains”) for the Hose, as the sportswriters liked to call them. An outfielder named Taffy Wright. A catcher named Mike Tresh. Guys so old they’re dead now. I’d never seen a major-league park except in black-and-white movies. My uncle and I came in during batting practice, and even before we saw the field, I heard the crowd, I say, I heard the crowd. That sound had a swell and a power unlike anything I had ever heard, and there were goose bumps on my arms, and this was just the practice part of the game. Then we reached the top of the stairs, and the field, more green grass than I ever imagined could exist on this earth, opened up before my eyes. So what if I rooted for the Tigers? My Michigan uncle was paying for the tickets. Greenberg hit one to the wall and the Sox won anyway. Oh yes, that was almost as good as fishing.
Donkeys aside, baseball was serious. Bill Veeck and his midget hadn’t come along yet. You went to a game, you sat down and watched. You kept score, marking that little card–AB, R, H, E–inning by inning. And when some fleet-footed fellow corked a triple all the way to the wall, you stood on your feet and hollered for all you were worth. The way baseball ought to be.
The kids here are all wearing gloves, boys and girls alike, but the only thing they get to catch with them is water balloons. Between innings the grounds crew fires water balloons into the crowd with a huge slingshot. This really excites people, gets them on their feet. It’s hard to tell what matters most, the between-inning stunts or the game. There’s a mascot, of course, a cougar, and I wonder how hot that guy is inside his silly cougar suit. “Let’s all roar for the cougar,” the announcer yells, and some people actually try, but who the hell knows what kind of sound a cougar makes? The cougar takes a blanket out to second base and lies down. A little girl dashes out onto the field. Her father follows. The players wait patiently. “Come on, buddy, you can do it,” the kid behind me cries.
When we came into the stadium, they gave us free tickets for the “Goose is Loose” race. Mine is shoved in my back pocket, where I forget about it until it comes time to do the laundry. That’s when I learn that I would have won 50 cents off on my next Goose Island Beer if my goose had come in first. Micro beers at the ball game. Goose races. It might be fun if they used real geese, but they don’t. Along about the third inning, I see them suiting up a couple of young women in what look like parachutes, and what turn out to be goose suits, complete with flappy feet that make it nearly impossible to walk, let alone run. Between innings the geese race from third to second and back. Whenever one falls (which is often) someone runs out, lifts her up, and plumps up her costume.
