Weekend Round-Up. Twins at Los Angeles Dodgers.
Friday: Dodgers 6, Twins 5.
Saturday: Twins 5, Dodgers 3.
Sunday: Dodgers 5, Twins 4.

FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 2005

Twilight slowly folded its translucent wings across a warm early summer Friday in the City of Angels. It was the kind of evening when the smog produced an iridescent Southern Lights show, all lavender and periwinkle and soft coral. Chavez Ravine's crown jewel, damp in the wake of the groundskeeper's hose, sparkled and twinkled a brilliant emerald-green. The five-layered wedding cake of mezzanines and loges wrapped tight around the field, its rows of seats slowly filling with happy families, phone-wielding chatterboxes, people wearing dark sunglasses.

Down on the baseball diamond, the evening's pregame ceremonies featured a parade of local heroes. One by one, many with graying hair and fresh dinner jackets, they slowly made their way into the chocolate-bordered quincunx. Each in turn was announced via public address, and each in turn raised their hand to acknowledge the crowd's warm welcome. These were the proud winners of yesterday, the World Champions of the year 1965, the Los Angeles Dodgers.

In the visitors' dugout, the grey-clad guests solemnly observed the happy procession. "Take a good look, boys," grumbled a grumpy Ron Gardenhire, the Minnesota Twins' aging cherub of a manager. "That there's the reason why we're wearing 40th Anniversary American League Champion patches, and not that other kind."

"I hate this patch," heaved Mickey Redmond, the backup catcher, his eyes burning with intensity as he grabbed repeatedly at the sleeve of his uniform. "It's itchy."

"Did you see how Maury Wills looked at me just then?" exclaimed star outfielder Torii Hunter. "Put me back in '65, I'll go 40 yards with that sucka. F'real."

"Hey," fresh-faced Lew Ford chimed in. "You ever wonder about things like that? I mean, like, going back to 1965? You know, maybe change things? Seriously, what would have happened if we'd won that World Series? If Sandy Koufax hadn't pitched that shutout in Game 5, then again in Game 7 with only two days' rest? If only there was a way to go back in time... you know what I mean? Guys?"

Each of the other Twins players and coaches had swung around to stare at their eccentric teammate. A pregnant pause, and then peals of laughter and uproarious bursts of disbelief. "Time travel?" "That's screwy!" "Man, you Internet geeks are weird!"

"There's no such thing," intoned Terry Mulholland, the team's resident 42-year-old salt-and-pepper lefty hurler. "I... er, I mean, um, my uncle, looked into it once. Yeah, my uncle. No such thing. It's all crazy talk."

"Geez, fellas," Lew pouted. "Maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut. Never mind. If you need me, I'll be out back."

He left his seat and slunk back into the clubhouse tunnel. "You crazy, Lew!" Torii shouted after him. "You and your crazy-ass ideas! Time travel. Sheesh."

He walked, slump-shouldered, out beyond the locker room, and soon found himself standing all alone in the VIP parking lot. The warm evening air filled his lungs, powered his heavy heart. It was difficult being Lew Ford sometimes, he thought to himself... no matter how well he hit, how well he fielded his position, he usually felt like he was playing his way into the lineup - the lineup of people who were genuinely understood by others.

His internal soul-searching monologue was interrupted by a shiny silver sports car. It approached slowly, then came to a stop in front of him. The two side doors flipped upwards, revealing a frail, white-haired, liver-spotted man, who clung to the side of the car as he exited. He pulled himself to his feet with trembling hands.

"Oh dear," he mumbled softly, to nobody in particular. "This Los Angeles traffic is such a bother! It was so much easier with Eloise around, she was such a good navigator. Umm... hello? Excuse me, young man? Could you please park this in a nice safe place?"

"Mr. Pohlad," said the ballplayer. "Remember me? It's me, Lew. You sign all my paychecks. I play left field and DH, I don't park cars."

"Right, right, sonny," the old gent replied, offering a faltering yet friendly back-pat as he handed over the valet key. "I need to get to my box. No scratches if you want a tip!"

Lew felt the weight of the key in his hand, closed his fingers around it, let out a deep and sad exhale.

But then, sudden inspiration. He excitedly pulled his Sidekick II from the back pocket of his uniform, expertly flipped through its menus, to the address book labelled "My Connections."

"Hey, guys, it's me, SpaceMarine20," Lew hurriedly rambled into the mouthpiece. "I'm over at Dodger Stadium. I need a big favor, like quick. Big favor. Okay, here's the shopping list. I need a flux capacitor, a suitcase full of dollar bills printed before 1965, a packed iPod, a sports almanac, and a buttload of plutonium. That's right, one metric buttload. That's the one thing I can't afford to run out of. And bring the chopper... late-arriving crowd tonight."

Two hours later, the doddering octogenarian re-entered the parking lot. "Oh my, I've forgotten my meds again," he maundered. "Eloise was always so good at keeping track of that for me. Now where's that nice lot-boy? Hellooo... hell... WHA?"

Great Scott!

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 1965

It was a balmy October morning in Los Angeles, and the city crackled with World Series Fever. So much so that few noticed the smooth silver car that crept along Grand Avenue, the one that looked somehow out of place among the Chevrolets and Fords.

Even fewer noticed that one of their baseball heroes, a tall and shy man who pitched for the Dodgers, one Sandy Koufax, was making his way along that very sidewalk. His hat was pulled down tight to minimize the chance of public recognizance. But the driver of the silver car knew exactly who the pedestrian was, and leaned out to address him.

"Hey Sandy," came the call. "Want a ride to the game?"

"No thank you, sir," the wily southpaw replied, without stopping or raising his head.

"It's a real nice, comfy ride," offered Lew. "Great sound system. You like music? Jazz? The Beatles? I've got Rubber Soul in here, even though it won't be released for another two months. Or are you more into Bob Dylan?"

"That's quite alright. Thank you."

But Lew Ford had not come all this way to fail at his monumental task.

Lew Ford was not about to return home empty-handed. He had not lived under the alias "John Carmack" in a West Hollywood bungalow for four months, become semi-anonymously assimilated into the beatnik subculture, nor had he stowed away that silver vehicle in the La Brea tar pits... just so he could come up short at this most crucial moment.

No, he had planned too carefully for this. He had done his homework about the star pitcher's psychological makeup.

"Mr. Koufax," Lew said. "I know how preoccupied you must be with Game Four, and with preparing for your start tomorrow... But there are a whole bunch of crazed autograph-seekers two blocks up, and all those journalists at the stadium will want to ask you all sorts of stupid questions. You don't want any of that, do you? Come with me, and I'll drive you right to the back entrance. I know a real fast shortcut."

The future Hall Of Fame hurler paused for a moment, weighed the stranger's words, cycled a deep breath. "Okay."

Once the passenger was safely buckled inside the space-age chariot, the driver opened the throttle. "I don't expect you to understand," Lew said. "But all I ask is that you please don't punch me... especially not with your left arm."

FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 2005

Lew emerged again from the car. It was good to be back in the future, he thought, back in good old two zero zero five.

But the first thing he did upon exiting from the vehicle was unleash a violent cough. The evening sky looked like scratched steel, thick with smoke and ash. Sirens screeched in the background, and the ear-shattering wail was sliced through by the periodic reverberation of automatic gunfire.

"This is a very confusing situation," said Sandy Koufax from the passenger seat.

An emaciated and disfigured elderly man, who wore only a torn plastic garbage bag on his body and a thick dirty grey beard on his face, advanced on the Delorean. "Give me your car," came the demand, an markedly unconvincing one.

"Ummm, no," Lew replied, surveying the scene in utter disbelief. "Where did Dodger Stadium go?"

"Base-ball?" the man said. "In L.A.? Look, mister clean-shaven guy with your futuristic space-car, they haven't played base-ball here since the team was contracted in '68. We like to call it the Chavez Ravine Luxury Towers now. That's a sarcastic name, in case you didn't pick that up."

He gestured at the former stadium - the once-proud structure was now blackened, rotted and bombed out, stripped to its most bare-wire structural elements. The bowl was populated by thousands of hunched and yammering lunatic hoboes with their bindles, some in tattered three-piece suits, some taking bites from the pieces of newspaper that swirled in the wind. There were makeshift shelters everywhere, fashioned from rows of stadium seats. Clotheslines zipped along between iron girders. The concrete field was dotted with trash-can fires, around which were massed close-huddled families, bone-thin dogs, and crying naked children.

"Whoa, this is heavy," Lew said breathlessly.

And indeed it was... the shoulder patch on his uniform had gained an enormous amount of heft, by virtue of a huge increase in thread count.

"I wouldn't hang around here too long," the transient whispered, pointing to the red inscription across the chest of Lew's shirt. "There's a lot of resentment around here for your kind. Has been ever since President Humphrey moved the nation's capital to Minneapolis in '75."

But it was too late. "Hey look," one approaching vagabond shouted. "It's someone from Minnesota! Let's show him our appreciation for everything the federal government's done for us!"

"Hey, Twins Boy!" another yelled. "Why don't you go back to Minnesota in your magical automobile and have the Griffiths buy you another world championship?"

"I've got a better idea!" a third shrieked. "Let's tear him up and sell his body parts!"

A small army began to mass, to slowly make their way towards the car, their stained hands and fingers outstretched. "Get the freak!" they chanted in unison. "Get the freak!"

"Aiiiigh!" Lew screamed as he clamored to get back into the Delorean. He mashed the center-console buttons, stepped hard on the gas to unleash every decimal point of the car's one point twenty one-jigawatt capacity. "Maybe messing with the time-space continuum wasn't such a good idea!"

SATURDAY, JUNE 10, 1865

"Oops, too far," Lew gulped. "Gotta double back again."

FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 2005

When the doors of the Delorean flipped open once more, the driver emerged with the most extreme of caution. But his trepidation was unfounded - as he had properly returned his captive to his correct time and place moments before, he had fully undone the metaphysical damage he had exacted.

Yes, everything was back to a relative normal - the Dodger Stadium parking lot was filled with luxury cars and SUV's, and from over the wall the static crackle of an excited baseball crowd could be heard. Our hero sighed deeply in relief, the scene was exactly as he remembered it had been.

Just then, manager Gardenhire emerged from behind the heavy metal door. "So there you are, Ford," he barked hoarsely. "Stewie just used the left-field wall as a revitalizing facial scrub. We need you in there, stat!"

"Sure thing, Gardy," Lew replied, smiling wistfully. "Sure thing."

"You alright?" Gardenhire said, fixing his young charge with a cockeyed look. "You look a little flushed. Is this about earlier? Look, I know the guys can be harsh sometimes, but..."

John Lewis Ford gently touched the patch on his right sleeve, the one that celebrated the 40th Anniversary of the American League Champion Minnesota Twins of 1965. "It's okay, man," he said. "It's more okay than you know."

Posted by kw at June 12, 2005 09:03 PM