Tuesday, June 26, 2007

YOU CAN’T PUT YOUR ARMS AROUND A MEMORY.

We went down to DiFara’s for dinner on Sunday evening. I felt like getting out of the neighborhood and also wanted to give a financial middle finger to the City of New York for its current crusade against the place.

We discuss taking the subway (vetoed), TBF mentions the words BQE (not on a Sunday afternoon), and finally, decide to take the surface streets down.
“We’re going right by where Ebbetts Field used to be, you know,” he says.
Which I realized, but decide to let him drive and I’ll take the camera.
I’ve been there before, but always on the way to or from something that prohibited stopping. Not that there’s much to see anyway, but I am always looking for the remnants and ghosts of old New York. Heading from one relic to another made sense.

So the whole DiFara’s process took about an hour and a half, including eating and paying. (Worth every minute.)
We slowly made our way back up to Greenpoint via Bedford Ave. It was already dark, so no photography was happening, but this was the first time the two of us were in the area together.
“We’re getting close,” TBF says as we pull up at the stoplight at Bedford and Empire Blvd.
“Yep, it’s up there,” I gestured.
“Are you sure? I think it’s going to be on the right.”
Just then, the streetlights hit the EBBETS FIELD letters, flashing silver against the brown brick.
We are silent.
“That’s it, huh.,” TBF says, after a minute.
“I can’t believe they tore it down.”
“It was the 50’s, they didn’t know.” And then, “I can’t believe they left.”
“I think my father would agree with you.”

My father, as previously mentioned in these pages, is one of Those Guys who stopped following baseball once the Dodgers left Brooklyn, and claims he is no longer interested in baseball. That does not stop him, however, from buttonholing TBF every time we are visiting to talk about Willie’s in-game strategy or the Mets’ running game.

I knew he liked TBF when he would take him aside at family functions and start telling him stories about cutting Hebrew School to sneak into Ebbetts Field and watch the Dodgers. Whenever I see those photographs of the kids lying on the sidewalk, watching the game through the gap in the outfield gate, I think of my dad and wonder if he ever did that.

The final seal of approval was given when my dad stops me one day to mention, “You know, in 1968 they had a ‘Dodger Day’ at Shea, trying to drum up support for the Mets. They gave out commemorative hats. I have two. Do you think TBF would like one?”

I think TBF is still speechless over that gesture. The hat has pride of place in the baseball collection.

It is one of my burning goals at the moment to get my father to sit down and talk about the Dodgers and Brooklyn and all of those things. But his time in Brooklyn was not a happy one and obviously the connection is inseparable. Selfishly, I don’t care. I want to hear the ghost stories. I can’t get enough of the oral histories. And there will come the weekend when TBF and I go down to that corner of Bedford and Sullivan and try to put it into perspective, even if there is nothing at all there any more.

My father does not quite comprehend what baseball has become in our house. He does not know about MetsGrrl, does not know that the plan was my idea, does not try to talk to me about the Mets’ running game. I tried all last year to get him to come to a game with us; he finally relented the Friday the Giants were in town, only to have that be the mega thunderstorm night. I finally couched it a few weeks ago as “TBF really, really wants you to come to a game with us.” I suggest a few dates.

My father is a man of many well-chosen words; he is intelligent and street-smart; he is one of the toughest men I know. So when he paused and said, “You know, when the Dodgers left Brooklyn - I was devastated” - I didn’t know what to say. How can I possibly begin to comprehend that? I could spend a lifetime trying and still never truly know.

He’s coming with us on the 24th to see the Pirates. The team doesn’t matter; we just want him talking about baseball. And then someday, I hope I can sit down with a tape recorder and start mining those memories.

I need TBF’s help, of course; because, as we were driving past that block in Flatbush, he started talking about what would have happened if they had stayed, and there would have been no Mets, which team would he be rooting for now?

“Who am I kidding? I would’ve been a Dodgers fan.”