Fiction / Sandra Marchetti

 

:: It’s Time for Dodger Baseball ::

            At the top of the cement steps, Rita froze. She rec­og­nized him from the poster out­side the sta­di­um. It was the man with the voice.

            “What’s wrong, Mam­ma?” Max asked.

            Rita stood with mouth agape watch­ing the man flash a smile as he hus­tled along. He was the first “offi­cial” Dodger she saw that day—after all, Rita and Max had arrived right when the gates opened. He gave a few kids’ hair a quick ruf­fle as he walked—it seemed as if his arms were per­pet­u­al­ly wav­ing. But as he was about to shoot off down the con­course, Rita locked eyes with him. She rose out of her seat, point­ing and even­tu­al­ly screech­ing. She heard her­self and real­ized she sound­ed as if she had seen a phan­tom. He looked down at her shirt and back at her eyes—it was the yel­low she and Max were wear­ing. As soon he laid eyes on them, she knew they had made a huge mis­take. Two bum­ble bees in a sea of blue. She crossed her arms over her chest. He acknowl­edged her with what seemed like an uncom­fort­able nod then picked up his already hur­ried pace, head­ing in the oppo­site direc­tion toward a secu­ri­ty guard and a con­crete col­umn back by the con­ces­sion stands—he was head­ing up to the booth.

 

*

 

            The first time she heard that voice Rita was work­ing the dial in her old ’55 Mer­cury just look­ing for a sooth­ing tune. Clean­ing rooms at the Inter­Con­ti­nen­tal was tough work and she was spent—the com­mute only added to it. It was amaz­ing how peo­ple treat­ed the suites like their own per­son­al garbage can, dumps she had to flip in under an hour for the next “four star” guest. Maybe she could find out what the weath­er would be like on Monday—her reg­u­lar day off—but instead a dull crin­kling came from the speak­ers. Rita stayed with the sta­tion as she crawled to a red light. When the coupe ahead of her stopped short, near­ly ram­ming the lead car’s bumper, she snapped alert and heard a voice say slow­ly, “Now up for the Dodgers…” It was the first Eng­lish sen­tence she real­ly under­stood all day. At the hotel, every­one talked so fast she couldn’t process it all. Rita had picked up on some words that sound­ed sim­i­lar in Ital­ian and Eng­lish, like “city,” “accept­able,” and the dread­ed “traf­fic,” but sen­tences were hard. This voice spoke so slow­ly she could almost keep pace, and best of all, only one per­son was talking.

            Rita knew about the Dodgers. Her six-year-old loved base­ball ever since com­ing to the States a year and a half ago, and he want­ed to be on the Dodger grounds crew. When he went out to help his uncle with the yard­work, he trailed the rake behind him, pre­tend­ing to redis­trib­ute dirt on the infield.

            “You’re not old enough to get a job at the sta­di­um,” she teased.

            I will be soon!” Max said. “I’m going to water green­est grass in Los Angeles.”

            Max had been to one ball­game with Uncle Ray, and after that he was a goner. The TV didn’t always work, but Max checked the box scores every morn­ing, sneak­ing in under Ray’s legs, scrap­ing his long lash­es against the paper. The neigh­bor­hood sand­lot group had adopt­ed him and some of the big­ger kids gave Max an old yel­low Pirates’ jer­sey to wear. It wasn’t exact­ly Dodger blue, but it was bet­ter than nothing.

            When the TV wasn’t on the fritz, he’d yell into the kitchen, “Mam­ma! I gio­ca­tori stan­no gio­can­do a base­ball! Drys­dale is pitch­ing!” and gig­gle. She mar­veled at his abil­i­ty to trans­late seam­less­ly between the two languages—the advan­tage of learn­ing the words as a child. 

            Rita tried repeat­ing what the man on the radio said: “Now bat­ting for the Dodgers.” Now…bat-ting for the Dodge-rrs…” It didn’t come out quite right—that “r” was hard to say—but she was able to stam­mer through it before he con­tin­ued. She couldn’t make out all the names he rat­tled off after that, though one sound­ed like her boss’, Mr. Davis. She repeat­ed it. Rita under­stood when the voice said, “Out at first!” Davis had to walk back to the bench. She loved that. 

            Rita would turn the dial toward the sta­tion to find the voice day after day. “It’s time for Dodger base­ball!” She felt a rush just hear­ing the phrase. He seemed to have a grand way of speak­ing. She liked the silences too—more time to repeat words aloud as she drove the car. She tried, “two outs in the inning,” “the sky is a beau­ti­ful deep shade of blue,” and “recov­er­ing from an arm injury.”  It was a long dri­ve on the sky-high free­way, and his voice calmed her as she gripped the wheel.

            When Rita got home, Max would ask her about the game. “I lis­tened up to the bot­tom of the fourth inning,” she would tell him. The look on his face! Rita had to laugh. Koufax had a “knee-buck­ling curve­ball” Rita report­ed. She tried to repeat the words the man had said, slow and clear, though her tongue rolled over “knee-buck­ling” a cou­ple of times.

            “You passed my test!” Max said, and laughed pulling Uncle Ray’s tran­sis­tor out from behind his back. He had been lis­ten­ing too.

In bed that night, star­ing up at the ceil­ing, she rehearsed “knee-buck­ling” and vowed to use it at work.

            The next day, Davis laughed right in Rita’s face when she remarked that the Pres­i­den­tial Suite was so dirty it was “knee-buck­ling.” He shook his head as she pushed her cart past him. Even­tu­al­ly Rita would dis­cov­er the mys­tery narrator’s name. It was an odd one. Vin. Vin Scul­ly. Like Vin­cent? She said the name out loud. Was he Catholic too? As she was sound­ing it out, a man in the next car caught her eye. He gave her a con­fused look, and Rita imme­di­ate­ly cast her eyes down­ward. She pressed the gas to inch ahead and con­tin­ued, “I’m Vin Scully…”

            His name didn’t sound like any oth­er Angeli­no, and his voice didn’t match what peo­ple from LA sound­ed like. His words were so slow, and some of the words came out dif­fer­ent­ly than how Max or Mr. Davis pro­nounced them, but she want­ed to lis­ten. Even when the game seemed to speed up, Vin was clear and direct with his sen­tences, rais­ing his tone and quick­en­ing his pace just a bit for the occa­sion. She learned “out at the plate!” was a big deal. Rita was pleased with her­self, know­ing that lis­ten­ing to base­ball was bring­ing her clos­er to Max too. 

            Rita had want­ed to be the one to take Max to his next game. Maybe if they went togeth­er, she could play the part of Mr. Scul­ly, and nar­rate the game with Max’s “col­or com­men­tary.” She need­ed to work on her Eng­lish to move up at the hotel and despite Davis’ cru­el­ty, lis­ten­ing to the games was help­ing. She flashed back to the time, sev­er­al months ago, when some cowork­ers threw her clothes out of her lock­er and stacked phone books inside, telling her to mem­o­rize them. No more. Rita’s new phras­es includ­ed: “crowd­ed park­ing lots” and “it nev­er rains here.” She used these to great effect when com­ment­ing on the weath­er and traf­fic jams near her work. Davis even noticed, say­ing “you’ve picked up a few new lines.” The night­time front desk clerk told Rita she was going to be leav­ing soon—about to get married—and Rita fig­ured that if she could start string­ing sen­tences togeth­er she might be able to inter­view for the job.

            Ray had lucked into the tick­ets for the game he brought Max to—a gift from one of his land­scap­ing cus­tomers who wasn’t going to use them. When Rita asked her broth­er how to buy a pair, he raised his eye­brows and chuck­led, “I’ve nev­er bought tick­ets before and with your Eng­lish? Good luck.” They were lucky to stay with Ray after Joe died, and she didn’t want to press him. She asked one of the bell­men at work where she need­ed to go and he told her “The box office, of course!” Rita heard about the box office on broad­casts. It was at the ballpark—1000 Elysian Park Avenue. She knew the exit for Dodger Sta­di­um, but she had nev­er got­ten off the free­way there. 

            The fol­low­ing Mon­day, she creaked the Merc off the exit ramp and parked in a lot so big she couldn’t see the end of the asphalt. After fol­low­ing a series of con­fus­ing signs, she found where tick­ets were sold. The sta­di­um looked aban­doned so ear­ly in the day. She walked up to the con­crete fortress and saw a pic­ture of a red­head­ed man with a micro­phone next to him plas­tered on one of the gigan­tic walls. Under the micro­phone was a cap­tion, “Vin Scul­ly, Dodger Broad­cast­er.” She couldn’t believe it. See­ing the red hair and blue suit—he was not as she expect­ed. His huge white teeth and grin­ning smile must have been a foot tall! Rita kept walk­ing toward the sign that said “Box Office.” The first five win­dow shades were pulled down, but the last one was half open, a slash against the mid­day sun. She gird­ed her­self to speak and with a smile announced to no one in par­tic­u­lar, “Two Dodgers tick­ets please!” and began to release the ten­sion in her shoul­ders. A hunched man in the booth pushed his head into view and looked at her quizzi­cal­ly. Rita repeat­ed, “Two Dodger tick­ets, per favore!”

            “What game, lady?” the man asked, his eyes squinting.

            She knew this feeling—she’d had enough of these con­ver­sa­tions, end­ing in total con­fu­sion and defeat. Rita looked at her Keds on the hot cement. She stum­bled and said, “I…I don’t…” He turned away, but then reap­peared and slid a lit­tle fold­ed paper under the win­dow. It had a checker­board of games list­ed on it. She looked for a game on a Mon­day, but there were bare­ly any. Going month by month, she kept look­ing and final­ly found one. She point­ed to the date on the sched­ule, and the man peered down. He pulled the tail end of the paper clos­er to his glass­es. He said “You’re gonna have to tell me—I can’t read that!” Rita balled her left fist around her purse strap and told her­self —just say it! She had heard Vin say “upcom­ing games for the Dodgers…on Tues­day the 17^th the Dodgers start a series with the Giants here at Dodger Sta­di­um at 7:15 p.m.” In his voice, it sound­ed so nat­ur­al and easy.

            Slow­ly she said, “Reds. August fif­teen. Two tickets.”

            The man laughed, “Plen­ty of good seats for that one! Where do you want to sit?”

            She hand­ed over a five-dol­lar bill, hop­ing to avoid fur­ther conversation.

            “The best that will buy you is two down the left field line,” the clerk said.

            Rita replied, “Ok,” and he reached down into his drawer.

            She slid the tick­ets in her purse and with a nod swift­ly walked away. 

 

*

 

            After Vin dis­ap­peared around the cor­ner, Rita sat back down. She couldn’t help replay­ing the encounter in her head. She had fan­ta­sized about meet­ing Mr. Scul­ly and her laugh­ing at one of his sig­na­ture lines, an exchange she could impress Davis with lat­er. That was nev­er going to hap­pen now. She tried to lis­ten to the music fill­ing the seat­ing bowl. It sound­ed like a fun­ny sort of piano. Max called it an “organ,” but she wasn’t sure if that was the right word. She knew organs were inside your body—a kid­ney, liv­er. Still, she appre­ci­at­ed the dis­trac­tion. By the end of one of the songs she could make out the cho­rus “It’s a beau­ti­ful day for a ballgame…”—and it was. Warm and breezy in the shade. She sang along under her breath. Max gig­gled while rac­ing the chalk cart that paint­ed the foul line all the way to the out­field wall. He yelled, “Jim­my! Ron! Don­ny!” when his favorites came out to take ground balls or stretch, and made sure to point each one out to Rita so she knew who was who. It was as if the sounds she had been lis­ten­ing to for weeks stirred and took on color—the bright green of the field, and the white, blue, and red of the uni­forms were crisper than Vista Vision. All the sounds had shapes teth­ered to them now. Despite tens of thou­sands of peo­ple in the seats, this place felt serene. She turned around in her seat and saw a man falling asleep, his wife fill­ing out a score­card next to him. 

            The lull end­ed when she heard some­one roar, “Does any­one here speak Ital­ian?!” The secu­ri­ty guard she saw ear­li­er was scream­ing the phrase as he charged down the third base line toward her. Huff­ing and wip­ing his brow, he kept it up: “Ital­iano? Any­one here speak Ital­ian?” Rita’s moth­er told her sto­ries about Ital­ians being tar­get­ed dur­ing the war. She got scared and sunk into her seat. Despite her best efforts to wrap up Max’s hands and keep him qui­et, he squirmed in his seat and wig­gled his arms, “Si! Si!!!” Rita squeezed her eyes shut.

            Max got the guard’s atten­tion and he start­ed climb­ing up the aisle. The guard looked at Rita and asked, “You! Do you speak Ital­ian?” He might as well have had a flash­light and a pistol.

            Rita stam­mered, “…Si… yes.”

            The lum­ber­ing man said, “Come with me! The name’s Jack—I work secu­ri­ty here at Dodger Stadium.”

            Max ran out ahead as Rita began to stand. Her brain screamed at her to sit back down.

            Jack looked at Max’s Pirate jer­sey and said, “Too bad you’re not a Dodger fan. You could be a real hero today!”

            Max piped up, “Oh we are!”

            “The boys…it was a gift…the neighborhood?”—Rita stam­mered in Jack’s direction.

            “Yeah, this is my only jer­sey, but I love Sandy, Mousey, all of ’em!” Max cried.

            Why was he look­ing for Ital­ians? Why did Max raise his hand? The best-case sce­nario was that she’d be the butt of a joke, bal­anc­ing a meat­ball on her nose. Still, the guard looked des­per­ate and grate­ful, so she con­tin­ued behind him until they approached the elevator.

            Jack asked her, “Do you know who Vin Scul­ly is?”

            Rita said, “Yes, I lis­ten to Dodger games on KFI,” repeat­ing a phrase she had heard Vin him­self say one hun­dred times and at each sta­tion break.

            “Good, good!” Jack said. “Look, Vin is stuck in there.” He point­ed at the elevator.

            “It was repaired ear­li­er today and some­thing went wrong. He’s got to broad­cast the game…” he looked down at his watch, “in less than 45 minutes!”

            She looked at him puz­zled. Jack’s words ran togeth­er like pas­sen­gers jammed into a bus, but Max saw Jack’s pan­icked expression.

            Max translated—“è bloc­ca­to nel­l’as­cen­sore e ha bisog­no del nos­tro aiu­to! Vin needs our help!”

            “Vin is trapped?” She couldn’t imag­ine the game with­out him.

            Jack spurt­ed, “If Jer­ry has to do play-by-play…the fans won’t even know who’s up to bat!”

            “But we can’t repair it…?” Rita stat­ed with a befud­dled look on her face.

            She turned around and looked back at her seat. This was total­ly bat­ty! Work on her Eng­lish, she thought. Get a pro­mo­tion, she thought. Help a stuck broad­cast­er out of an elevator?

            Jack said to Rita and Max, “He already tried pry­ing it open with his hands. And he called the shop—all the repair crews are out and won’t be able to come for hours. ‘Fino a stan­otte,’ they said. We think the kid answer­ing the emer­gency phone only speaks Italiano.”

            Jack mimed a tele­phone receiv­er when he said, “Ital­iano” and looked direct­ly at Rita.

            Max said, “L’as­sis­tente par­la solo ital­iano!” Rita got it, and nod­ded slow­ly. Vin need­ed a trans­la­tor. Maybe Max could help, she thought.

            Jack banged on the ele­va­tor door: “Vin, I got a cou­ple I‑talians out here. Ring up the ele­va­tor com­pa­ny again. Just tell them what you want to say and they’ll trans­late for the kid!” 

            “I don’t think that’s gonna work, Jack…” Vin used that same tone when he described the Dodgers ground­ing into a dou­ble play, but his voice was only a faint echo sur­round­ed by the white noise of the stadium. 

            “Just call them, Vin!” the guard pleaded.

            “Okay, fine.”

            After a peri­od of silence, Rita heard Vin on the phone. He was try­ing hard to sound patient. It was tough to make out what was hap­pen­ing, hear­ing only one gar­bled end of the con­ver­sa­tion in a lan­guage she bare­ly under­stood. Streams of peo­ple con­tin­ued to enter the park and the crowd noise thickened.

            They pressed their ears against the ele­va­tor doors. The cold met­al was actu­al­ly pleas­ant on the warm day.

            “I am Vin. Your name?” There was a silence as Vin lis­tened to the boy on the oth­er end. Then he spoke again, “Gio. OK, Gio, look. I’ve got a cou­ple of folks here who speak Italiano.”

            “You ready?” Jack asked her. She nod­ded but her flip­ping stom­ach disagreed.

            “Jack, this plan is ridicu­lous!” Vin griped from the ele­va­tor. Rita sti­fled her sigh as Jack motioned him on, even though Vin couldn’t see. They waited.

            “ I am going to speak to you in Ital­ian, Gio,” Rita heard Vin say. “Je par­le Ital­ian. I am stuck. Hold on.” he said.

            Rita thought—French? What’s he doing? Then she thought about the “Ital­ish” that got her through the first few months at the hotel. Maybe he knew some French from school or some­thing. Why not? she decided. 

            “Jack, ask them how to say ‘how do…open…doors?’” Rita heard faintly.

            “I can’t hear you Vin! Can you say that again?” Jack said.

            Vin pound­ed on the met­al and yelled, “TRANSLATE: how do I open the ele­va­tor doors?” This time, they jumped back from their lis­ten­ing perches.

            “Can you tell him how to say that?” Jack asked Rita.

            Max was sup­posed to do this, but he was look­ing off at the field instead. A long bat­ting prac­tice home run cracked in the dis­tance. So, in a soft, stac­ca­to rhythm Rita began.

            “Aiutami—ad—aprire—l’ascensore?” she said, and looked over to Jack. 

            Once Max heard her voice, he nod­ded his approval. Jack bel­lowed the line up to Vin best he could, lock­ing eyes with Rita the entire time. They heard the broad­cast­er repeat parts of the ques­tion over the phone. Jack looked on, mouth gaped in antic­i­pa­tion. Rita’s face tightened. 

            Silence for anoth­er minute. Rita thought about what she was doing there. Couldn’t Jack just call his boss? Maybe the fire depart­ment could get him out. Where was the shop’s fore­man? Her spi­ral was halt­ed by the worst sound­ing sen­tence she had ever heard Vin Scul­ly say. The first phrase sound­ed like mas­sa­cred ver­sion of “Salire sul­la ringhiera?”—the only thing that real­ly made sense. Despite his chop job, she knew its mean­ing. Gio told him that the first step was to climb up on the rail­ing around the edge of the car. 

            Rita knew what Gio want­ed Vin to do, but she need­ed Max to explain it. She called him over, but he was long gone, eyes big as lol­lipops watch­ing Lefeb­vre hit the last pitch of bat­ting prac­tice deep into the left­field bleachers.

            “What did he say?” Jack asked Rita, urgency rush­ing his words.

            “He’s going to have to climb up the rail­ing!” she blurt­ed. “You need to get up to the ceiling!”

            Ears back in posi­tion, they heard a shift in weight above, and sev­er­al groans. Vin had to try but was clear­ly still look­ing for a res­cue. Rita did her best to mim­ic the loud voice she used when call­ing Max in for dinner.

            “You have to move to the top!” She felt a bit like Vin herself—narrating the action for some­one else, paint­ing a pic­ture so they could see. Look­ing at her watch, it was past 6:30. She knew he need­ed to start the broad­cast in just a few minutes—it was now or nev­er. Rita heard an exhaust­ed sound­ing, “Gra­zie, Gio” and a dull ring, pre­sum­ably Vin hang­ing up the phone.

            Vin shout­ed, “I’m going for the rail!” but the sen­tence came out halted—a click­ing sound echoed from his mouth. Rita looked over at Jack, con­fused. He mimed drop­ping some­thing down his throat. “Luden’s Wild Cher­ry. He’s got­ta have them for his voice. Espe­cial­ly with this—today…” ges­tur­ing at the ele­va­tor. They heard Vin push his weight against the front walls of the lift and then pull his feet up with a swing­ing clunk. Rita imag­ined he might be using the crook of the phone box to get up off the floor. He slipped and they heard his weight land square on the base of the car. Rita winced. After 30 sec­onds or so, Vin tried again, and some­thing hit the ground and land­ed with a bounce, ring­ing. The phone receiv­er? That would con­firm her the­o­ry about him using emer­gency box as a step­ping stone.

            Rita thought about the ele­va­tors at the hotel. They had thin met­al handrails all along the sides of the car. She knew it would be tough to bal­ance on that. Her mind cranked on the pos­si­bil­i­ties, but it was going to be a strug­gle for one per­son to do all of this. When this hap­pened on The Dick Van Dyke Show, anoth­er man lift­ed Rob up, and he got on his shoul­ders. As the clanks died down, Rita thought about what Gio had said next. “Rimuo­vere il pan­el­lo del sof­fit­to,” per­haps? Vin had run through the words so fast, repeat­ing them right after Gio, but that seemed log­i­cal to Rita.

            She screamed at the slit between the doors, “Now you’ve got to remove the ceil­ing tile!”

            More grunt­ing from inside. They heard shuf­fling and then anoth­er crash to the floor, but this one seemed lighter.

            Vin yelled out “I knocked it out! There’s dust every­where, but I can see cables! What do I do now?”

            Rita had to tell him. “Mr. Scul­ly?” she asked. “You have to reach up in there, find the lever, and pull it!” Gio’s last instruction.

            All she heard was cough­ing. Anoth­er loud thud on the ground and pant­i­ng fol­lowed. At this point, Rita wor­ried that the cables would begin to fray. “There’s no way I can get any fur­ther!” the echo cried. “Jack, what about that crow­bar, hey?”

            He yelled between labored breaths, “I can’t get all the way up there, Jack. I need some help!” 

            Jack sighed and said, “Is there any­thing in there you can use to push through the ceiling?”

            “I can’t even get to the ceiling!”

            Jack said, “Well, you got the tile down, that’s something!”

            Rita clenched her fists. She thought about how Vin would describe this sce­nario in a game: “He reached out across his body and snagged it on a line…” She braced her­self. Vin could work alone.

            “The only oth­er thing in here is the sign, Jack. But it’s mount­ed on the wall, you know?” If it was any­thing like the one out­side the ele­va­tor on the wall next to her, Rita thought it could maybe be of use. In sig­na­ture blue script on a sin­gle piece of heavy alu­minum, “Dodgers” was engraved and behind that the logo—a base­ball shoot­ing sky­ward with a long trail of red sparks. “Sopra il offit­to tiare la leva! Use it like a bat, Vin!” As soon as the words escaped Rita, she cov­ered her mouth with her hands. She couldn’t believe she was advo­cat­ing the destruc­tion of prop­er­ty! Still, it was an emer­gency and she was asked to help. Jack looked at her and shout­ed up, “Rip it off. Go for it, man!”

            They heard Vin get on his feet and again the car start­ed to swing. Max said, “He’s try­ing to pry off the sign!” This whole thing felt wrong. Vin screamed, “Jack, tell O’Malley I’m gonna pay for this!” Jack said under his breath, “You sure will…” Only Rita heard it. The tug­ging con­tin­ued. They could tell when the met­al tangs released from the wall by the sound of Vin’s impact against the doors and the result­ing: “Ahhh!” Rita could envi­sion Vin career­ing back­ward with a wicked force, clutch­ing the sign. Jack shout­ed, “Is every­thing alright in there?” What a line! All they could hear were a few loud grunts and a thud. With their ears tuned to the doors, Rita and Max’s con­cerned looks focused on gapers who walked by slow­ly, shov­ing ker­nels of pop­corn into their open mouths. Anoth­er guard had showed up to shoo patrons away, but Rita saw he was hav­ing lit­tle suc­cess. She looked back at the sign behind her. It was a two-foot-long “X.” There must have been dozens of them around the new ball­park. They heard Vin’s ver­sion drop to the ground. At this point he need­ed to catch his breath any­way. From the pho­to in front out by the gates, he was approach­ing mid­dle age. Did he have it in him to fin­ish the job?

            “Did he say what side the lever was on?” Vin asked.

            Rita snapped alert. With her hands clasped around her mouth, she shout­ed, “To the right!” before she could even think about it. Is that what Gio said? It had become a game of tele­phone at this point, and she wasn’t sure. Peo­ple were always telling Rita that the key to learn­ing Eng­lish was con­fi­dence. Vin said that about ballplay­ers look­ing to improve their bat­ting aver­age as well. This was the time to try. 

            “OK, I’m going back up!”

            They heard grunt­ing again. At this point, it was ten min­utes until first pitch.

            Jack got on the walkie-talkie and told some­one, “We’re work­ing on get­ting him out. Get Jer­ry ready to go on!”

            Once they heard a bewil­dered “10/4,” Jack pushed the radio back onto his belt. Jack could envi­sion sweaty Jer­ry, pac­ing upstairs.

            Rita whis­pered to Jack while mim­ing, “He should hold the ‘s’ at the end of ‘Dodgers’ like a knob and use the rest to swing with!”

            Jack called up, “Why don’t you try hold­ing the nar­row end of the sign like a bat, Vin? Just swing the hell out of it!”

            The trio could make out a pant­i­ng consent.

            They lis­tened to the famil­iar sounds of Vin start­ing the whole pro­ce­dure over again. Rita could envi­sion Vin hold­ing the Dodger plac­ard in his right hand, its comet trail dan­gling. The scene remind­ed her of a James Bond movie. He yelled “I’m going for it!!” Then came the bashing—the unmis­tak­able sound of a long met­al plate hit­ting any­thing and every­thing above the tiles. They felt the sides of the car knock­ing into the shaft and debris falling.

 

            Vin screamed, “I haven’t hit any­thing yet!” He seemed to be search­ing for his bal­ance. They braced for a thud but it didn’t come.

            Rita encour­aged, “un’al­tra vol­ta!” and then quick­ly the trans­la­tion, hit­ting her­self on the fore­head as she yelled up: “One more go!” She remem­bered her hus­band Joe whis­per­ing that to her right before her final inhale and push at Max’s birth.

            “I’m going in!” Vin shout­ed. Sud­den­ly, they heard that Vin had made contact—the clash of two met­als meet­ing. Max and Rita locked widened eyes and then looked over to Jack. She said a prayer that the sign wouldn’t snap. They heard a grunt through clenched teeth. The alu­minum whizzed off the iron bar and land­ed with a clunk. Did the sign fall into the shaft? Had the lever moved at all? If not, Vin was cooked. Rita thought about her tiny cab­in with Max and Joe on the boat. Stuffy and hot, Vin must have been exhaust­ed in there. Just then they heard a slide and a squeal. Final­ly, “krr-shunk.” The car jerked and began what sound­ed like a slow sink. “It’s hap­pen­ing!” she thought. But the doors didn’t crack imme­di­ate­ly. Was it a false alarm? In her pan­icked hope, she got up from the ground and smoothed her hair and skirt. The doors opened into the set­ting sun. Vin flashed a smile and she smiled right back.

 

 * 

 

            In the shade down the third base line, she felt the breeze in her hair and adjust­ed her well-worn blue cap. It was a long game, but the Dodgers were good this year and she was ready for anoth­er stretch run. Gib­son had just made his Dodger debut and Her­shis­er was hav­ing a sea­son for the ages. Cy Young-wor­thy. She put aside her score­card and looked down on the field for Max. If she wasn’t quick, she’d miss him. The grounds crew was an ever-present abstrac­tion mark­ing time in a base­ball game—appearing at planned inter­vals, trawl­ing their rakes behind, then sud­den­ly gone. She rose out of her seat and waved, but he didn’t see her. Rita turned to Ray and smiled. She hadn’t seen her broth­er since she’d got­ten the posi­tion at the con­sulate, but was glad they were able to cel­e­brate his 50^th togeth­er. As the sev­enth inning began, she raised the radio to her ear. Rita heard the famil­iar voice men­tion St. Joseph’s Day, and her sens­es perked. “Jeff Hamil­ton was born on March 19^th,” Vin said. He went on, “You know, I owe a debt to the Ital­ian peo­ple…” She straight­ened up a bit and thought back to before she got her dream job, before Max grad­u­at­ed from high school, before she even got her pro­mo­tion at the hotel, to when a few yards from here, she had saved the day. Vin con­tin­ued, “Did I tell you about the time…?” She closed her eyes in the fad­ing sun­light to lis­ten to the sto­ry one more time.

From the writer

 

:: Account ::

“It’s Time for Dodger Base­ball” was writ­ten on a dare. As a poet, I had nev­er writ­ten a full-length short sto­ry and an edi­tor asked me to try it. This was such a chal­lenge for me because my full-length col­lec­tions of poet­ry are about the same length as this one sto­ry. I wrote a piece that reflect­ed my family’s immi­grant expe­ri­ence, the expe­ri­ence of the stu­dents I tutored in Eng­lish lan­guage con­ver­sa­tion cir­cles in my day job work­ing at a com­mu­ni­ty col­lege, and the sus­pense­ful Alfred Hitch­cock thrillers I loved. Still, it wasn’t quite right upon my hun­dreds of “read alouds.” I met up with a fic­tion writer I admired, Matthew Thomas Meade, who taught me how to write dia­log and a thing or two about “in medias res” plot chronol­o­gy, which helped the whole thing click into place. Thanks to him for doing a favor for this poet.

San­dra Mar­che­t­ti is the 2023 win­ner of The Twin Bill Book Prize for Best Base­ball Poet­ry Book of the Year. She is the author of three full-length col­lec­tions of poet­ry, DIORAMA, forth­com­ing from Stephen F. Austin State Uni­ver­si­ty Press (2025), Aisle 228 (SFA Press, 2023), and Con­flu­ence (Sun­dress Pub­li­ca­tions, 2015). Sandy is also the author of four chap­books of poet­ry and lyric essays. Her poet­ry and essays appear wide­ly in Mid-Amer­i­can Review, Black­bird, Eco­tone, South­west Review, Sub­trop­ics, and else­where. She is Poet­ry Edi­tor Emeri­ta at Riv­er Styx Mag­a­zine. Sandy earned an MFA in Cre­ative Writing—Poetry from George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty and now serves as the Assis­tant Direc­tor of Aca­d­e­m­ic Sup­port at Harp­er Col­lege in Chicagoland. This is her first pub­lished short story.