Dream

I still very vividly remember the last baseball game I ever attended. It was in the waning years of the Dodgers, after Steve Finley and the back-to-back-to-back home runs that had me amazed over Sunday's dumpling lunch. It was after José Lima and Paul Lo Duca and Shawn Green and Adrián Beltré and the sweaty palms that came with Eric Gagné and those brilliant ninth-inning saves.

My father had gotten the four of us seats right behind the right field foul pole, and I remember spending most of the game straining to see around its bright yellow bulk. It came to be, then, after the hard, bright field lights had come on and the blazing sunset had given way to a cool early-summer chill, that the Dodgers were down by one in the bottom of the ninth. Oh, it was tense. There was one man on first and one out to go. Quiet whispers rustled through the stands as the final batter stepped to the plate. A pinch hitter. Jim Thome.

One foot in the box. One toe digging in. The other foot followed. I thought I could hear the crunching of his cleats over the muted roar of the crowd. He hitched up his right shirtsleeve with his left hand, bat pointed straight down the line, loosening up his wrists, settling in. We thrummed with excitement.

The man on the mound drew back, settled, glove to his mouth as all eyes in the stadium glared daggers at his back. The wind up. The pitch.

And Jim Thome cocked his foot, reared back, and the resounding crack echoed through the field, through the hearts of a thousand breathless dreamers who arched back to follow the streaking white ball as it streaked across the blackness, straight towards the center field wall, and going, and going, and

dropping just short into the glove of the center fielder whose cleats ground the dirt of the warning track.

Jim Thome slowly turned his jog away from second base back to the dugout as the other dreamers beside me gathered their things and stopped dreaming about high fly balls and started worrying about traffic and how congested the 605 would be and wouldn't it be better to take the 5 at this time of the day.

As I trailed behind my family as we oozed up the stairs, I cast one last glimpse over my shoulder at the field, a green patch of mundane wonder, a haven of brightness that kept away the night, and, if only for a moment, allowed a man to dream.