Look, It's Baseball
A jersey number is the way the crowd will interact with you. Nonfiction by Brian Mihok.
To be a Yankee fan is to be a demon of sorts. I am from a suburban New Jersey town that at the time was considered working class. Your baseball loyalty depended on whether the person who taught you to love baseball was a Yankee or Met fan. My father was a Yankee fan so my fate was sealed. My pleasure is bound to the joy of watching the game and rooting for my local team. It just so happened the local team is a colossus. I root for Rome. I root for the tyrant to continue the heavy thrusting of his iron fist onto the heads of all those who would oppose him. It does not take a betrayal of myself to admit this. I would vote for a salary cap, for instance. But I do remind myself to double-take when I see other demons. Demons of alternate arenas, different subjects, stranger games. Demons who love things I do not understand.
I want so badly to see the Yankees make the playoffs in my lifetime. This is 1994. The last time they made the postseason was 1981, the year I was born. In ’94 they are a good team again, finally. They have not truly contended in my 13 years on this planet.
***
A year before, my family had moved from New Jersey to Florida for reasons only my parents truly knew. During this time my father developed a mysterious illness in his gut and so my parents are now forced to make difficult choices. Our next stop is government housing. It has playgrounds, basketball courts, a field, slow-traffic streets, plenty of kids, drug use, mental illness, burglary, grift, police presence—so many forms of beauty and tragedy all swirled together that the only way to know you are in an unsafe situation is when there is no other explanation for what is unfolding before your eyes. Our monthly rent for the three-bedroom townhouse, for our family of five, is $30.
The ball players go on strike. The owners are refusing to pay the players money from a previous agreement. The rest of the season, along with the playoffs and World Series, are canceled. I feel shriveled. The whole sport, its culture, its history, our history, cast aside over money. My family is broke and we are now wards of the state, and the game that connects me with the rhythms of the universe—the day and night cycle reflected in the pitcher and batter duels, the marathon of the season standing in for the length of life before the long winter, the endless stats and measurements by which all semblance of value is calculated, the trends of history giving way to meaning and meaninglessness, the power of failure paving the way to success, the lesson of fundamental increments as protection against bombastic short term appeal. It’s done. All because some billionaires have refused to pay what they owe to some millionaires. It is poison, all of it.
My cousin tells me over the phone about a band called Guided By Voices. It is as if a lightning bolt struck and we will never be the same. These are the days of Napster, so we type in the band’s name, download whatever song comes up, and go to sleep, excited that the next day the download will be complete. The song titles are a surrealist’s dream: Jar of Cardinals, Bright Paper Werewolves, Crutch Came Slinking, and 158 Years of Beautiful Sex. The lead singer, Robert Pollard, often sounds as if a British child had been ripped from his home and raised in the Midwest, force-fed psychedelic drugs, and made to watch sports non-stop.
The trends of history giving way to meaning and meaninglessness, the power of failure paving the way to success, the lesson of fundamental increments as protection against bombastic short term appeal.
The lady and I used to take the one subway line in Buffalo to see the Bisons play. Minor League Baseball is a real treat. One year we went to a game on May 4th and halfway through the game, Darth Vader and some stormtroopers murdered a few Jedi right there on the field. We didn’t know this would happen. It was an extra treat. After the game, we moved on with life. We attended upwards of eight or ten games that summer. The next year we bought tickets early in the season because we were eager to be done with winter. The frigid wind off Lake Erie is the penance for the cool summer breeze it reverts to in the warmer months. We attended the game and to our surprise, the same imperial scene was played out on the field. We had unknowingly bought tickets for another May 4th. What a coincidence, we thought. After the game, we went on with life. That summer we attended so many games because Minor League baseball is a real treat. After the following long and bitterly cold winter we were excited for the temperatures to rise, for people to mow their lawns, to drag our feet over the cement sidewalks and smile into a cool breeze, and to catch a few games. We bought a pair of tickets a month into the season and our hearts were delighted. We took the subway to the handful of stops and got off at the stadium, a nice AAA Coliseum downtown. We ate garlic fries and watched players play their hearts out hoping to make an impression on people we didn’t know. Around the sixth inning, the PA announcer came on to tell us there would be a special presentation. Then Darth Vader came out with his crew. Lives were lost. We couldn’t believe it. After the game, though, we went on with life, hoping to get to so many more games that summer. Tickets were cheap and Minor League baseball is a real treat.
***
Of the Guided By Voices songs from Napster, one that we got a real laugh out of spoke of a journey backward, a revelation, a night sky of Candlestick Parks, another fine outing, pointing and shouting. It’s called, “Look, It’s Baseball,” and one time I played it in the car while my father was in the passenger seat. He was listening along. Candlestick Parks? he said and made a face. This guy loves baseball, I said.
Our New Jersey town has a well-funded little league. My mother said I am a size 12 in boys. My father and I go to a boy’s house whose father runs the league. The house is nicer than my grandparents’ house, where we live. The countertops look like stone and the carpets are white. The rooms all have a quiet to them. I get in line to pick up my uniform. The yellow-haired boy, popular at school, says Next! and when I step up he says, we have 7, 10, 14, and 21. I look up at my father and he looks back. I remember my mother reminding me of my size. Men and women prioritize details differently it seems to me even then. She would be disappointed if I came home with the wrong size. She would say, but I told you what size to get. My father says nothing in this moment of decision. It seems not to be a detail he was concerned with. Ten or 14, I figure. I pick 14. Yellow-hair hands it to me and we walk back to the car to drive the five minutes home. Why 14? my father asks in the car. Why not 7? Number 7 was Mickey Mantle. The numbers aren’t sizes, they are what is on the back of the jerseys. A jersey number is the way the crowd will interact with you. The way you will be known in shorthand. It is the number that will come to represent your character, whether you earn those traits or not. I blew my chance to have Mickey Mantle’s number. I know he was number 7. Every Yankee fan knows that. I chose 14. At that time number 14 on the Yankees was a nobody, a player we’d all forget about in a year. I don’t admit my confusion in the car. I don’t tell my mother either.
A jersey number is the way the crowd will interact with you. The way you will be known in shorthand. It is the number that will come to represent your character, whether you earn those traits or not.
This is a league of proper uniforms, stirrup socks, Big League Chew, and the corruption that is hierarchical masculinity. I am a pitcher some days. I do not have great control but I can throw harder than most other eleven-year-olds. Still, I get lit up at least once or twice. I try desperately to throw strikes, and as a result, lose velocity and the batters smack those pitches. I can hear the encouragement from my dugout, Coach wandering out to the mound to take the ball. He looks me in the eyes and says, Rough outing but every pitcher has rough outings. You’ll get them next time. It is a platitude for pitchers who just failed, but it means something in that moment and I tuck it away. My pitching career doesn’t last much beyond that year, but even now when I watch a game on television or in the stands when a pitcher gets smacked around, even if he’s pitching against the Yankees, some small part of me feels for him. I want to absorb his disappointment in himself. I may be glad we’re winning, but for a brief moment, I tell him, Rough outing but every pitcher has rough outings. You’ll get them next time. It’s the beauty of the marathon. There will likely be a next time and then everyone will step to the starting line fresh and all bets will be off.
***
You’ve just read 1 / 2 installments of “Look, It’s Baseball” The 2nd installment will be published on April 10th (4/10).
Brian Mihok is a writer and filmmaker. His work has appeared in Fast Company, Cagibi, The Disconnect, Publishing Genius, Vol 1 Brooklyn, and elsewhere. His novel, The Quantum Manual of Style, was released in 2013. He also co-founded Matchbook, an online literary magazine that ran from 2009 to 2022. Find him, his writing, and his films at brianmihok.com
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