How a Little Girl Stopped My Brother From Heckling Barry Bonds
How do I shut my brother up?
Every time I go to a ball game with my brother Michael, I have to sit with the biggest heckler in the stands. It’s hard for me. One of the reasons I like baseball is the lack of braggadocio on the part of the players. You don’t get the kind of chest thumping and strutting you see in basketball or football. It’s what ex-major league pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee calls “premature congratulation.”
Call me naïve, but, to me, baseball is still the gentlemen’s sport. Even when they empty the dugouts or the pitcher throws at the batter, it still seems like some kind of slow, infrared act of chivalry. Fans conduct leisurely conversations as the game unfolds. Dare I say, but with all the sun and green grass, it seems a pastoral setting; as if Adam and Eve hit the ball around the Garden of Eden before the big fall from grace.
I do realize heckling is a tradition. Interjections like “Hey, batter, batter—swing!” are part of fan rhetoric (imagine that on the golf course). “We want a pitcher, not a belly itcher” has got to be one of the great rhyming couplets in English. But carrying on and taunting players from my little bit of real estate in the stands just isn’t my style. Therefore, when I arrived at a Giants-Dodgers game one afternoon during the Barry Bonds era—my brother is a committed Dodgers’ fan; I am a Giants’ fan—I was not looking forward to the grievous slings and arrows he would be directing at Barry Bonds.
Bonds is at 713—one home run away from tying Babe Ruth. But he’s having a bit of trouble getting there. His knees hurt. Pressure is mounting. There is constant babble about steroids. Some fans have taken to carrying placards marked with asterisks. Others dress as syringes. One die-hard has created a costume that looks like the supposed ointment Bonds is said to have used. “The Clear” is like sun block—it’s there, but it’s not, which only adds to the illusion. The illusion is one of the driving forces of the scandal. Some fans have decided something is there, while others have decided something is not.
My brother is resourceful. The week before the game, he called to say he had tickets right behind home plate. Great, I said, come around. I told him I would meet him at the Willie Mays statue where everyone meets up (Mr. Mays was celebrating his 75th birthday that day).
As my brother had two hours of driving to reach the park, I wandered around looking at the boats and kayaks. There were saxophone players, orange and black people looking at blue and white people. Entire families negotiated the price of tickets with scalpers. The great thing about the stadium—whatever they’re calling it these days—is that you don’t really need a way in to have a game experience. You can just show up and walk around. And once in a while, a ball will come over the wall and bounce off of the sidewalk right in front of you into the drink.
Eventually, I found myself at the right field fence where fans are encouraged to look through the grating and watch the game. When I arrived, there was a horde of young children dressed in red shirts lining up to take the field. Their parents were standing to the back, on their tip-toes trying to watch their offspring as teachers herded the youngsters on to the grass. The red shirts were emblazoned with the school name. It dawned on me that they were going to sing the national anthem. All year, the Giants have had school groups sing the anthem before each game—so much for the nervous diva who tries to hit that embarrassing high note at the end.
As the kids were introduced and began singing, my brother called to say he was at the Mays’ statue. I hustled over, met up with him and together we headed into the stadium.
“So,” I asked him. “I suppose you’re going to mouth off the whole game, eh?”
“Only when Barry is at bat,” he said.
We entered the field level tier of the stadium. Any good ticket that is “behind home plate” should be at field level. The usher rechecked the tix and pointed us onward, and onward we went, further and further down the steps.
“Row triple-A,” I said to him. “I’ve never seen that.”
My brother smiled. “Whoa, these are good seats.”
After descending every single step, we found ourselves right at the edge of the field, looking up at home plate, next to the Dodgers’ on-deck circle. Dirt fell on our laps.
“Good job,” I said.
“Yeah.”
From the seats, you could hear the on-deck players swing in rhythm with the pitches. The sound of the doughnut coming off of the bat was louder than the crowd. Baby-faced Jose Cruz, Jr.—an ex-Giant—looked more baby-faced than ever, even with three days growth. Nomar Garciaparra looked eerily straight into my eyes every time he took a practice swing, stopping to cadence his hands through a series of tics that included, among other things, smelling his gloves and doing the sign of the cross. And then there was the Beast, Jeff Kent, right there. I could see his small teeth and even smaller mustache he seems to have derived from some Jeff Stryker movie. Smoke came from his nostrils.
My brother started into his routine with a little vocal support for the Dodgers.
“Oh, you’re a dangerous boy,” I said to him.
“There you go, Dodgers. There you go!”
Sitting next to us was one of the little kids from the national anthem choir, in his red school shirt, sitting with his mom.
“Hey, you did a great job today,” I said to him.
“Tell the man ‘Thank you,’ ” his mother said.
He managed a shy nod to me. I looked at his mother. “That was quite an effort to get them all together out there.”
“Tell me about it,” she said. “There were a hundred and fifty kids.”
“Well, they did wonderfully.”
An inning passed and my brother shouted out the odd slogan here or there, but had yet to break into the full on Barry-bashing I had experienced with him in the past.
The young boy and his mother were visited by a girl about the boy’s age. They greeted one another. From the looks of it, she had come over to sit with them. I took another look at the kid and the girl. Barry Bonds came to the on-deck circle.
“Bar-ryyyyyy!” my brother growled.
I heard the boy call the girl by name. Her name sounded familiar. She said his name. It sounded familiar. Barry looked over at the kids and smiled.
“Bar-ryyyyyy!” my brother said again.
“Hi, Daddy!” the girl waved to Barry Bonds.
I sat for a moment as the scene clicked. Yikes. The girl was Barry Bond’s daughter. The boy was ex-Giants’ manager Dusty Baker’s son, the same kid J.T. Snow had shucked from near catastrophe at home plate during the 2002 World Series. And the woman was likely Dusty Baker’s wife.
I tugged on my brother’s shirt as Barry Bonds approached the plate.
“Hey, Barry!” my brother let out.
“Hey, Mike!” I said to my brother.
“Hey, Barry!” my brother shouted again.
“Hey, Mike!” I grabbed his collar.
“Hey, Barry!” again.
“Miiike!”
“What?” he looked at me.
Above the din of the crowd going away at opposite ends of Bonds’ reputation, I delicately whispered into my brother’s ear. “We’re sitting next to Barry Bonds’ daughter …”
He looked.
“… and, I think, the kid is Dusty Baker’s son.”
He turned. The woman smiled at my brother. My brother smiled and nodded back. Barry Bonds stood at the plate and took a pitch. Ball. My brother sat back in his seat.
“These are great seats,” I said.
“Yeah, they are.”
Between pitches, the announcer told the crowd that the day’s attendance was 42,885—42,884 of whom could not have shut my brother up. Looking over at the little girl sitting next him as she watched her daddy play baseball, my brother warmed himself in the sun, quietly looking at each of the players as they came and went at the plate. I shouted out words of encouragement to each of the Giants. He shouted out words of encouragement to each of the Dodgers.
“These are great seats,” he said.
“Yeah, they are,” I replied, looking at the little girl who shut my brother up.
