roaming the streets like paper boys
so, i was living in london, working on the how to series, not--not!--able to see more than a game of the '03 playoffs (which was acceptable, as it was largely painful enough without actually watching it). i took a break from the last part of the series and wrote this in about an hour. mainly i just wanted to talk about the shot heard round the etc, and thus created a convenient framework within which to do so.
also apparent is my continuing desire to write extensively about the streak, which gets touched upon here and then fully realized in the chavez/munson dealie. anyway, just dialogue is so easy, yo. i didn't even break a sweat.
oh, as for the title, it's like in that simpsons episode where homer's in the barbershop quartet version of the beatles, and they're looking for a name that's clever the first time you say it, and progressively more annoying each time thereafter. and it's really fucking long to type out, too.
Title: The Amazing Adventures Of Astro-Boy And His Trusty Sidekick Chowder-head
Author: Candle Beck
Email: meansdynamite@yahoo.com
Category: MLB, Oakland A’s
Pairing: Zito/Mulder
Rating: PG
Feedback: Sure.
Disclaimer: The conversation might never have happened, but all the homeruns sure did. The boys also quote Russ Hodges a little bit, I don’t know if that’s copyrighted or what. Russ, give me a call, let me know! Hell, I think Russ Hodges is dead. Ignore the previous shout-out to the late great Mr. Hodges. In fact, ignore most all of this disclaimer, as it is just rambling and monkeyshines.
Summary: The majority of this is actually the physical logistics of two grown men in bed together. No, not *those* logistics. Mind out of the gutter, people! Also includes discussion of the hand of God, irresistibility, and the price of a toothbrush.
Written while I was taking a break from the How To series, when the only thing I wanted was for the A’s to win the division series, and all I could think about was miracles.
The Amazing Adventures of Astro-Boy And His Trusty Sidekick Chowder-head
By Candle Beck
“You remember when Bobby Thomson hit that home run off Ralph Branca?”
“Well, no, Zito, seeing as how it happened twenty-five years before I was born.”
“I’m saying, you remember the old video, the radio call?”
“Sure. Russ Hodges. ‘The Giants win the pennant, the Giants win the pennant.’”
“Yeah.”
“Everybody remembers that homer, man. They call it the Shot Heard ‘Round the World.”
“Wasn’t that a Revolutionary War thing?”
“Yeah, originally. I guess they, what do you call it, co-opted the phrase.”
“That was a good home run.”
“Zito, you hate the Giants.”
“I hated the Giants. Past-tense.”
“You grew up hating the Giants, that stuff doesn’t just go away.”
“No, yeah, it does. It can. I mean, you gotta hate the Giants if you live in southern California.”
“Not as much as you gotta hate the Dodgers if you live in San Francisco.”
“Yeah, they’re nuts about that, huh.”
“It’s a rivalry that crossed a continent. What, ninety years now, those two teams? The Dodgers win the pennant, it’s ‘cause the Giants didn’t. San Francisco finishes first, that means Los Angeles finishes second. Been happening like that since John McGraw.”
“But, I mean, like, I don’t live in southern California anymore. So I don’t have to hate them anymore.”
“You never *had* to hate them, Zito.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Why’re you talking about Thomson and Branca, anyway?”
“I don’t know. Just thinking about it. Wish I coulda been a part of something like that.”
“Who says you can’t? I mean, who says you won’t? Maybe we win the World Series this year on a walk-off, you never know.”
“Knock on wood if you’re gonna say that, dude.”
“Okay.”
“My head is not wood, Mulder. And ow.”
“Heh. Sorry. That’s what we used to do, if we had to knock on wood and there was, like, no wood around, like if we were in a car or something. Clonk on somebody’s skull.”
“Hilarious.”
“Well, it’s more amusing if you’re not the one getting knocked.”
“I would think.”
“You’ve been part of some pretty good games, you know. The twentieth game-”
“Oh, Jeez, the twentieth game.”
“You’d forgotten?”
“Can’t forget something like that. I’ll be a hundred years old, and instead of boring the grandkids with war stories, I’ll be telling them about the twentieth game. The streak.”
“You know I got a letter from this girl who says that game made her believe in God?”
“What? Mulder, you getting letters from crazy people again?”
“Yeah, I know. I didn’t tell you about this?”
“No, I’m pretty sure something like that would have stuck with me.”
“Okay, so this girl, right, she’s like seventeen, she’s falling in love with baseball, I mean like falling-off-a-cliff in love with it, she’s watching SportsCenter five, six times a day, she’s memorizing statistics, it’s her whole life.”
“She tells you all this in the letter?”
“No, Zito, I’m just hazarding guesses. Yeah, she told me all this. She’s all kind of, I don’t know, what, fractured. Keeps ducking in and out, tangents, right, she’s talking about her family and being away at school and being kind of lost, maybe, and then she’s talking about Pac Bell Park and Sandy Koufax and how the Diamondbacks-Yankees Series was the first time major league ball was played in November.”
“Yeah, that was unsettling, huh.”
“Yeah. Anyway, she goes off on the streak, the weird magical sense around it, like people getting out of their cars in the middle of traffic and hugging strangers on the street when we’d win, and how people were naming kids after you and Tejada.”
“Just middle names, though, there’s no, like, Zito Smith out there somewhere.”
“Although if there is, I wanna meet that guy. And, you know, sympathize with
him.”
“Hey, shut up. Just ‘cause no one wants to name their kid ‘Mulder,’ no need to be jealous.”
“Hey, Zito, guess what? Bite me.”
“Gladly. Weren’t you telling a story?”
“Yes, goddamn it, I was. Stupid distracting hippie . . . anyway, so the twentieth
game, how she’s sure it was a miracle, right. Like she saw the hand of God or something.”
“Jeez.”
“I know. She says how coming into the bottom of the ninth, all tied up, we had lost that game, we had lost it dead, you blow an eleven-run lead like we did that night, you deserve to lose, that game is over, the momentum was all with the Royals, the streak was gonna end there, we were gonna have to settle for nineteen in a row.”
“Nineteen in a row woulda still been pretty good.”
“Nineteen in a row woulda still been fuckin’ incredible, but it wouldn’t have been the same, you know?”
“Yeah. Twenty. Nice round number. Good stuff happens when the number twenty is involved.”
“You got any other examples besides the streak?”
“Um. Twenty years old was a pretty good age.”
“Good as twenty-one? Good as twenty-four?”
“Well, no.”
“There you go. So, she’s talking about how this game is over, there’s no way we pull it out, but that . . . hell, what was it. That we . . . we did right by the game. Like, the way we played, we played baseball the way it was supposed to be played, and we were a bunch of young guys who just loved the game, like you could tell we were just having such a good time, we just . . . we were out there for all the best reasons. We did the game justice. God, He, I guess He saw that, is how she figures. He knows that baseball is something good, something right, and here we are playing the game for the sake of the game, the love of the game, and He knows there’s something special about twenty, so, even though we shoulda lost, even though there was no reason for us to win, God reaches down, and there’s . . . there’s this miracle.”
“A baseball miracle.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Hatteberg poles one, outta nowhere, right, just parks the thing, and then the crowd-”
“Oh, the crowd. Jeez. Didn’t think my ears would ever stop ringing.”
“And this girl, she says, that moment, all of us out on the field, jumping around and hugging each other and all crazy laughing, that was a moment of joy like nothing she’d ever known. That was something perfect. Something worth believing in.”
“You write her back?”
“Didn’t know how. It was . . . it was such a cool letter. Like, I never got anything like that before. Talk about baseball as a religion. Talk about faith.”
“It’s all faith, though. You ever met a group of guys more superstitious than a buncha ballplayers?”
“You’re the one who doesn’t wash his jersey after a win.”
“And you’re the one who wears the same pair of boxers to bed the night before you pitch.”
“Dude, those boxers are really comfortable.”
“All boxers are comfortable, Mulder. They’re boxers.”
“Anyway. The hell was I talking about?”
“Like I can follow along when you go off.”
“Thomson. Branca. Right. I was saying, you have been part of something like that.”
“I just, I don’t know, it’s like, I got these things on loop in my head, right? Like Russ Hodges yelling out ‘the Giants win the pennant,’ over and over again like he’s never gonna stop. And Kirk Gibson pumping his arm, limping around the bases.”
“Dude, Gibson hit that home run off the Eck, that was how the A’s lost Game 1, I don’t think you’re allowed to, what do you call it, glorify that moment.”
“What, that’s in my contract?”
“It could be. Not like you read the thing.”
“I had my dad take a look at it.”
“Oh. Well, that’s just adorable.”
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re about to start pinching my cheeks or something.”
“Not the cheeks on your face.”
“Oh, charming. What are you, twelve?”
“If I am, that makes you a pedophile.”
“Dude, if you’re twelve, you are monstrously tall for your age.”
“I’m pretty tall for any age.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that about you. Good thing you’re well-proportioned.”
“Well-proportioned? What am I, a TV dinner?”
“TV dinner? What am I, someone who grew up in the 1950s?”
“You’re a riot, Zito. You should take that act on the road.”
“We are on the road, Mulder. We’re in Boston.”
“That’s right. That’s why it’s so damn cold.”
“You don’t get to complain. At least you had winter growing up, you’re prepared for it.”
“Ah, yes, poor sheltered southern California boy. Oh, it’s sixty degrees, it’s a blizzard! Ma, get my parka!”
“Yuk yuk yuk.”
“Hey, you gonna play at that thing when we get back?”
“The open mike thing?”
“Yeah.”
“I dunno. Maybe. I’ve been kinda writing a song, sorta.”
“You’ve been kinda, sorta writing a song? Have you been doing it while asleep?”
“No, I’ve just . . . I wish I could write a song that would make people feel the way I feel when I think about Thomson’s home run. Or Gibson’s. Or Larsen’s perfect game.”
“You’re writing a song about baseball?”
“No, not *about* baseball, it’s like . . . sometimes the game, it’s just so . . . so amazing. Moments, like Hatty’s home run in the twentieth game, they’re just, it’s like my heart fills up with air or something. I don’t know. Hard to explain.”
“Hey, who’re you talking to? Don’t need to tell me about it.”
“Anyway, I wanna write a song like that. Not about baseball, but that makes you feel the way the game makes you feel. Beautiful, like the game. Like a miracle, like that girl said. I wanna write a song that feels like a miracle.”
“Zito.”
“What?”
“You’re a miracle.”
“Shut up, dude, I’m serious.”
“So’m I.”
“Mulder-”
“No, yeah, I know, we don’t say stuff like that, it’s weird and all, like sappy and sentimental. Like, what do you call it, trite. But, I don’t know. It’s true, maybe.”
“True, maybe?”
“Look, I can’t describe how the game makes me feel, either, there aren’t really words, you know, maybe the right words haven’t been invented yet, I don’t know. And it’s kinda like how I feel about you. So I say something like you’re a miracle, when that’s not really it, that’s not really what I want to say, because what I really want to say is bigger than words, maybe. Bigger than anything.”
“I know.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, man.”
“Hmm. Okay. Good. Um. I feel kinda dumb now.”
“Don’t.”
“Well, I do, so.”
“I’m saying, you don’t need to. It was good. You said it good.”
“That’s . . . that’s all right, then.”
“I think so.”
“So, Thomson. Gibson.”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“Yeah, I know. Play along, will ya?”
“Okay.”
“What about . . . Bucky Dent?”
“Jeez, Mulder, you can’t say that name in this town, you’re gonna get us beat up.”
“Bucky Dent gets no respect. The guy hits a homer to put his team ahead in a playoff game, was the critical factor in them winning the pennant, and he’s some horrible villain ‘cause he did it for the Yankees against the Red Sox.”
“Seriously, you trying to get us killed?”
“We’re alone in a hotel room, dude.”
“The walls have ears, man. You say ‘Bucky Dent,’ you say ‘Bill Buckner,’ you say ‘Roger Clemens,’ they hear it all the way across town, they got like super-senses when it comes to that sort of stuff.”
“Dude, even I didn’t say ‘Bill Buckner.’ Talk about asking for trouble.”
“Whatever, you started it.”
“Yeah, and you finished it.”
“Tell you something, *I’m* about finished. Let’s go to bed.”
“We are in bed, Zito. We’ve been in bed for the past two hours.”
“Let’s, you know, get under the covers, and curl up, and become unconscious. Let’s go to *sleep*. C’mon, go brush your teeth.”
“Okay, Mom. Can I borrow your toothbrush?”
“Mulder, I swear to God, they sell toothbrushes in this country. They sell them *everywhere*. They’re not like, freakishly hard to come by. I’ll *give* you the buck and a half.”
“Can I use your toothbrush or not?”
“Oh, sure, go nuts. For your birthday, though, I was gonna maybe get you some cool shades, maybe a couple of CDs, but now it’s Oral-B all the way, baby.”
“Did you just call me baby?”
“Heh. Yeah.”
“Well, warn me next time, I nearly made toothpaste come out my nose.”
“Ew.”
“You’re telling me.”
“You wanna take a little longer in there, dude? I’m getting older over here. And sleepier.”
“It’s like, one in the morning. You’re such a lightweight.”
“When did we start living lives where one in the morning was considered early?”
“When our day job doesn’t start until three in the afternoon.”
“Ah.”
“All right, here I am, minty fresh.”
“Mmm. Tasty.”
“Sweet talker. You want the window side of the bed or the bathroom side?”
“I want whatever side has the softest floor.”
“*One* time, Zito, I knocked you out of bed *one* time, on *accident*, and only ‘cause you were taking up like *half* the damn world, you wanna let it go, maybe?”
“Why, no. No, I don’t.”
“You ever get hit in the face with a pillow thrown by a pitcher who hits high nineties?”
“No, but I have gotten hit in the face with a baseball thrown by one, so.”
“When the hell did you-”
“Oh, me and Billy were messing around one day last season, there was this car backfire, I looked away from the ball, got my bell rung a bit.”
“Billy Koch?”
“No, Billy Beane. Yes, Billy Koch, ya numbskull.”
“Numbskull? What is this, a Three Stooges movie?”
“Mulder, you chowder-head.”
“I think, in honor of our current home away from home, you should say ‘chowdah-head’.”
“Okay. Mulder, you chowdah-head.”
“And, by the way, Curly, you never answered my question.”
“Which side of the bed?”
“Bathroom or window?”
“What kind of moon is it tonight?”
“Well, I don’t know, Astro-Boy, how ‘bout you take a look out the window?”
“Hmm. Crescent moon.”
“Is this really your criteria for deciding?”
“It’s part of it.”
“I swear, Zito, I don’t know why I keep you around.”
“It’s ‘cause I’m irresistible.”
“Ah, yes. Now I remember.”
“It’s a pretty good moon. I’ll sleep on this side.”
“Good to get that out of the way without too much hassle.”
“Was that sarcasm, Mulder?”
“Of course not.”
“Good. ‘Cause, you know, it’s not like I don’t have access to both you and a pillow with which to smother you while you sleep.”
“Aw, you would never do that.”
“You think not?”
“Nah. On accounta I’m irresistible, too.”
“Oh, that’s right. Hmm. Good thing we got each other, we can be irresistible together.”
“Yeah, I don’t think anyone else would be able to stand either of us.”
“That really doesn’t sound so much like irresistible.”
“Well, we’re irresistible to each other.”
“Right. Cool, then.”
“Hey, you wanna trade pillows?”
“What? No. Why?”
“Mine feels all squooshy.”
“First of all, ‘squooshy’ is in no way a word. Second of all, it’s a freakin’ pillow,
Mulder, it’s not supposed to have, like, the consistency of a boulder.”
“Fine. Keep the good pillow. See if I care.”
“You know you’re just gonna end up using me as a pillow anyway, I don’t
know why you make such a big deal out of it every night.”
“Not every night. Just when they give me a squooshy pillow.”
“Still not a word, dude.”
“Whatever.”
“Hey, Squirmy Joe, you wanna settle down?”
“Excuse me for trying to get comfortable.”
“It’s like sleeping with an epileptic, I swear.”
“When did you ever sleep with an epileptic?”
“I’m speaking, you know, metaphorically. Just, c’mere, get all hunkered
down, here.”
“Hunkered down?”
“You want me to help or you want to keep making fun of me?”
“I can’t do both?”
“No. Mulder, where is your arm right now?”
“Which arm?”
“The one you make your living with.”
“Um. Sorta . . . pinned between us. And half under me.”
“You can’t sleep like that. You’ll cut off circulation, your hand’ll turn all blue, Rick Peterson’ll have my ass.”
“Oh, you’d tell Peterson how this unfortunate injury occurred? Besides, your ass is mine.”
“Seriously, Mulder, sleeping on your arm is bad news.”
“Yeah, well, thanks for that little pearl of wisdom. Scoot over, Zito, will ya?”
“Here?”
“Yeah.”
“’Kay, and you put your hand here. No, not *there*. Jeez, I gotta pitch tomorrow, no getting me worked up.”
“Aw, you’re no fun.”
“I am tons of fun, Mulder. I am a truckload of fun. Just not the night before I gotta pitch.”
“Here, this better?”
“Well, no, but only ‘cause I can’t breathe. Not that that’s gonna be a problem or anything.”
“Bitch, bitch, bitch.”
“Here, gimme your arm. There. Good?”
“Yeah. You’re like a hot-water bottle, you know that?”
“Um. Okay.”
“It’s a compliment, dude.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“So easy to please.”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, Zito?”
“What?”
“‘The Giants win the pennant, the Giants win the pennant.’”
“‘And they’re going crazy.’”
“‘They’re going crazy.’”
“‘I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it, I *do not* believe it.’”
“‘Bobby Thomson hit a line drive into the lower deck of the left-field stands and the place is going crazy.’”
“‘The Giants won it. By a score of five to four. And they’re picking Bobby Thomson up. And carrying him off the field.’”
“You know that pretty well, Zito.”
“You too, man.”
“It was a pretty good home run, wasn’t it. Like, what do you call it, iconic.”
“Immortal.”
“Yeah. Like us, someday.”
“Like us, now. Maybe.”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, Mulder?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. Remembering Russ Hodges like that. Saying that stuff earlier.”
“Anytime, my friend.”
“You all right back there? Your arm’s not falling asleep or nothing?”
“I’m perfect, dude. Never gonna move again, maybe. You’re gonna have to pry me off you with a crowbar tomorrow.”
“Nah, never moving again sounds okay to me.”
“Good.”
“Night, Mulder.”
“Night, Zito.”
THE END
(awwwww. okay, I have to go write something really depressing now, that was just too damn cute.)
Endnotes: On 3 October 1951, there was a one game playoff at the Polo Grounds between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers to decide the National League pennant, the culmination of the Giants’ spectacular August-September comeback from 13 and a half games back. The Dodgers were up 4 to 2 in the bottom of ninth, and Ralph Branca came in to pitch to Bobby Thomson with two on. I think you can see where this is going. It was the most incredible home run in the history of the game. The Giants won the pennant. The Dodgers went home.
In August and early September of 2002, the Oakland Athletics went on a stunning, unparalleled run, winning 20 games in a row. The last three games of the streak were all won in the last at-bat. In the twentieth game, against the Kansas City Royals, the A’s blew the eleven-run lead that they’d had early, going into the bottom of the ninth with the score tied and the streak on the line. I bet you can see where this one is going, too. Scotty Hatteberg blasted one to deep right-center, and before the ball even stopped moving, the fans at the Oakland Coliseum had unfurled a huge banner with nothing on it but the number 20 in green letters as tall as an entire section of seats. And that’s what I believe in.