THE SALINGER OF THE SOUTHWEST . . .

I’ve been thinking for a couple of weeks now about W. P. Kinsella’s wonderful baseball novel Shoeless Joe, with its subplot involving protagonist Ray Kinsella persuading notoriously reclusive author J. D. Salinger to accompany him on his whimsical journey to, ultimately, northern Minnesota in search of baseball footnote Archibald “Moonlight” Graham. “Are you kidnapping me?” Salinger asks Ray, who has cornered “Jerry” in the driveway of his secluded home in Windsor, Vermont:

“Oh, please, that’s such an awful word. I’m sorry. I planned things so differently. I wanted to convince you to come with me. I never wanted to have to do this . . .”
00“Then you are.”
00“I just want to take you for a drive. I have tickets for a baseball game. A baseball game,” I say again. . . .
00“And if I don’t?” . . .
00What can I possibly say? I am inarticulate as a teenager at the end of a first date, standing in the glare of the porch light, a father hulking behind the curtains.

In Field of Dreams, the disappointingly diluted movie version of the novel, the Salinger figure is replaced by a character named Terence “Terry” Mann, played by James Earl Jones (who in my estimation is always really just playing James Earl Jones—yawn . . .). Lamely-conceived and lamely executed, this substitution was prompted (or so I understand) by the fear—or the threat—that visually representing the intensely private Salinger on the big screen would result in a lawsuit that verbally representing him in the pages of the novel could not.

So . . . did I have in mind that scene, or scenario, from the novel when I headed off to Santa Fe a few weeks ago, having told various people that my purpose in going there was “to stalk Cormac McCarthy”? Well . . .

Well, McCarthy is in the headlines these days thanks to the release, just yesterday, of the movie adaptation of his relentlessly bleak post-apocalyptic novel The Road. And part of the McCarthy story in newspapers and newsmagazines involves his Salinger-like reclusiveness, his retreating to the outskirts of Santa Fe where he hunkers down—or bunkers down in pre-apocalyptic fashion—far from the madd(en)ing crowd of paparazzi, autograph seekers, and other celebrity hounds. Well, it ain’t necessarily so; in fact, last week The Wall Street Journal published a very engaging interview—or extracts from a conversation—with McCarthy and film director John Hillcoat, conducted in San Antonio, thus giving the lie to McCarthy’s reputed utter reclusiveness. Anyway, I haven’t seen the film yet . . .

. . . but I have seen Cormac McCarthy.

I don’t want to give away too many specific details of my “sighting” him because I don’t want to detract from his right to privacy. I’ll just mention that whenever I travel, one of the ways I get my bearings in a new city or town is by mining the Yellow Pages for a list of used bookstores that becomes my connect-the-dots map of wherever I happen to be. In Sante Fe, I managed to get to only two of the stores on my list. In the first one, I had a great visit with the proprietor, Henry: we chatted about everything under the southwest sun . . . including how, as Henry put it, “Cormac will come in here and sit down and talk about anything and everything . . . except about being an author.” And he added: “And he won’t sign books.”

From that bookstore on North Guadalupe Street, I walked about ten minutes up through The Plaza (the heart of Santa Fe) to East Palace Street. Arriving at the bookshop there just before closing time, I had just begun to browse when I heard a voice talking with the proprietor and his assistant about “the Institute” (that is, the Santa Fe Institute, which I knew McCarthy is associated with). Could it be . . . ? I wondered, though I already knew the answer: I had recently re-watched Cormac McCarthy’s interview on Oprah . . . and the voice was unmistakably his. Just to be sure, I double-checked the physical person standing three feet away from me against the author photo in a copy of The Crossing that I pulled off a shelf . . .

So . . . did I pull a Ray Kinsella and try to kidnap him? I just want to take you for a drive . . .

No. I left him alone, though as soon as he left the shop, I confirmed with Nick and Pat, the proprietor and his assistant, that I had indeed had a close encounter with America’s second-most elusive and reclusive author. I returned to the shop the next day to browse some more and Pat told me “you played it just right”—had I “outed” McCarthy, he explained, I would have created a very awkward moment indeed! He also mentioned that McCarthy is not quite as reclusive as everyone believes: because no one expects to see him, he is actually able to “hide in plain sight” . . .

So did I really go to Sante Fe to stalk Cormac McCarthy? Of course not. I went there to scout out possible relocation destinations for the Witness Protection Program, should I ever be (un)lucky enough, on my travels, to bump into fugitive South Boston gangster Whitey Bulger, high on the roster of America’s Most Wanted. I used to see him out walking around Castle Island when I lived in Southie years ago. I think I’d recognize him anywhere . . . though I doubt that I’d find him in a used bookstore . . .

THE THRILL OF THE GRASS

So . . . this afternoon I attended a girls high school fastpitch softball game. It was the final home game for my daughter’s friend Devin, the team’s catcher and senior co-captain, and I had promised her that I would make it to a game before the end of her career. Unfortunately I had to leave after only three innings, but Devin was calling a good game behind the plate and she had gotten on base twice: evidently she has a reputation as a slugger, and the other team pitched to her cautiously and ended up walking her each time. It was nice to see Devin get recognized before the game as one of three graduating seniors on the team, and I had a funny moment during that little ceremony when I asked a woman sitting alone in the stands who she was “at the game for.” She replied: “I’m here for Devin. I’m her grandmother.” That made two of us, anyway.

I have to say that being down close to the ballfield for the first time since the final game of my youngest daughter’s career in youth softball—5 or 6 years ago—brought back many memories related to what preeminent writer of baseball fiction W. P. Kinsella phrased “the thrill of the grass.” (Kinsella first uses this phrase in his wonderful and wonder-filled novel Shoeless Joe and then borrows it from himself to re-use as the title of both a terrific short story and a fine short story collection.) Perhaps my favorite memory is of a game about 8 or 9 years ago when I was head coach of my middle daughter’s team. We were a lousy team and I was a lousy coach and on that particular evening some of the spectators at the game thought I was a lousy parent too. What happened was that my daughter, who I had put in left field to avoid any appearance of nepotism on my part, had been busy twirling her hair or chewing on her glove’s rawhide lace or watching the ice cream truck pull into the parking lot (or all three at once) and had thus allowed a catch-able ball to roll past her for extra bases. I suppose I shouted at her from the bench: “Wake up out there!” When she came in at the half-inning, she used her outfield error as the reason why she should have a turn in the infield. So the next inning I put her in at third base—and of course within a few pitches she got hit on the ankle by a low line drive. And of course I shouted from the bench, “That’ll teach you!” Which of course prompted some gasps and tut-tutting from the other parents (from both teams) gathered behind the backstop. What could I say? Well, what I said—as if it made the matter any better—was: “Hey, she’s my daughter . . .”

And hey, we ended up winning the game in the bottom of the last inning! Trailing by multiple runs to a team that, as one of my assistant coaches observed, looked “like East German Olympians”—for 10-year-old girls, they were built like Amazons—I pulled out all the stops . . . literally: somehow our players were getting on base—mostly on dropped third-strikes, I think—and coaching at third base, I waved player after player to keep running for home, shrewdly calculating that the odds were not very likely for the fielders on the other team of 10-year-olds to execute both an accurate throw and a successful catch on the same play. At the end of the day we truly ran away with the victory—a victory made that much sweeter by the utterly baleful look the opposing coach gave me during the obligatory post-game handshake.

I ended my coaching career as an assistant for my youngest daughter’s team a few years later. But that losing coach from a few years earlier is still involved in the game, leading the girls varsity team at a local private academy. I see her in Starbucks pretty much every week. I can’t imagine that she remembers me. If she did, I’m sure that she would still hate me.