A Stitch in Time

And after Yankee Stadium III, the House That Hal Built, vibrated and whirled and rose high in the sky under the tractor pull of an alien spaceship...

Your humble correspondent somehow found himself at the same site, high in the second deck between home and third base, in a ballpark that seemed alike but very different.  

"What—where—" he (me) said with his (my) usual, immediate acuity.

"Yankee Stadium, May 22nd, 1963," an old-timer a couple rows down snapped, looking up from his folded copy of the Herald-Tribune. "Where and whattaya think? Say, how many beautiful, beautiful Ballantine Ales you had, anyway, whippersnapper?"

"Of course." 

The park around him looked older, a little shabbier even—but infinitely grander, like a great cathedral in  a poor French town. 

"Nine-teen sixty-three!"

The old-timer looked up at him again, a little more closely this time.  

"Well, don't knock it. It ain't the worst year of the century by a long shot—and you look old enough to have seen all of it."

"You got that right—almost."

"It's a good time to be alive, more or less. The economy's booming. Nobody's out of work, and America's first in just about everything."

"Is that right?"

"Yep. And sure, the president's a womanizing, pill-popping rich man's son, but what's new? Anyway, that whole nearly blowing up the world thing last fall seems to have sobered him up some."

"No problems besides that?"

"Sure, we got problems! What time in the world don't? But we ain't blown ourselves up yet with the A-bomb or the H-bomb. There's the racism problem, but Dr. King just won a big victory down in Birmingham, and now he's going to be goin' all over the north, fighting for the laws to kill Jim Crow. There's even talk of a big march on Washington."

"You don't say."

"That's right—progress is rattlin' on! Maybe too much. There's talk of 'em tearin' down Pennsylvania Station, can you believe it? But there's at least 40 or 50 architect students protesting it—that'll stop 'em for sure. There was talk of 'em tearin' down the Polo Grounds, too, but now with the Mets over there I can't see it happenin'."

"No."

"Yeah, everything's just about perfect, and what's not is gettin' better. Yeah, there's that kerfuffel in Vietnam, but we'll get out of that soon enough. We're not dumb enough to get wrapped up in another Korea."

"Uh-huh. Small crowd tonight."

Around them there were only a few clusters of fans, scattered throughout the vast stadium. 

"Yeah. I guess they're all worn out from the big parade today."

He glanced at the front page on the Herald-Trib, and the big picture there of a tickertape parade for an astronaut named Cooper.

"Yes."

"Quite a thing. They say we're going to the moon in a few years."

"No doubt."

Down on the field the players changed sides. 

"That's one thing that'll never change, though. Your New York Yankees," the old-timer said, with a hint of pride in his voice. "World champs again, and they look better and younger than ever now, with that Pepitone kid at first, and Tresh in the outfield. And those kids, Bouton and Downing, how they can throw!"

"What's the score?"

"Seven-seven." The old-timer shook his head. "Don't know how that happened. Why, they were up, 7-0, headed into the eighth! But then, would ya know it, Boyer—Clete Boyer, of all people!—made a big error, and so did Kubek."

"There's no predicting baseball."

The old-timer gave him an odd look.

"Anyway, here we are in the eleventh with this bunch of bushers from Kansas City. Why, this game's over three hours long already!"

"That a fact. Nice night for it, though."

On the field, a righty named Fischer was just finishing his warm-ups. A familiar figure was striding to the plate, the number 7 on his broad back. He settled himself into the lefthand batter's box.

"That Mantle's off to a hell of a start again. Oh, he's going to win the MVP again this year, you watch!" the old-timer exclaimed.

The first pitch came in, a big, slow curve, and the man in the batter's box timed it just right, his bat bending as he put the barrel on it. The ball flew upwards at an impossible angle, rising higher and higher toward the facade on top of the second deck in left. The heads of the players on the field all swiveling to watch it, but nobody moving a step.

They jumped to their feet without noticing it. The old-timer crumpling the paper in his hand.

"It's going out! It's going all the way out!"

The ball still rising in the warm May night, in the nearly perfect time.