I ask Dave if he can explain a little more fully, but I do so in a gingerly way, half expecting that I am on the verge of hitting a hitherto unsuspected jackpot of cliches: night owls never fly in the daytime; winners never quit and quitters never win; use it, don’t lose it. Maybe even, God save us, a little Hummm, baby.
‘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.