"My Louisville Slugger is cocked. The count is three and two, the pitch is high in the zone the way I like it, I connect, it’s almost a homerun thwack…"

"What happens next?"

"I run it out. The ball drops in right field. I make it to second. I round the corner, thinking triple and…"

"And…?"

"That’s where it all goes black, doc. I don’t remember anything until I wake up in this hospital bed."

***

Being the owner of the NY Yankees is the coolest job anyone could hope for. We win more than we lose, and I get to wheel and deal from this plush office that overlooks the field and some of the cutest buns in the league. As one of the few female owners I consider this a primo perk.

But, best of all, I get to be part of history. The hallowed halls and walkways of this stadium give me chills. I can almost feel Mays, and Mantle, and Gehrig peering out from the shadows. The rich past makes me tingle and inspires me to steer this team well into the millenium.

My great uncle held the helm into the early 2000’s. I never dreamed he would leave it all to me. Actually, he didn’t, but some tragic, albeit timely, deaths in the Steinbrenner clan dropped the team into my lap. As I’m the only one of all the cousins who knows the difference between Yogi Bear and Yogi Berra I think fate stepped in.

I believe in mystical interventions. First thing I did when I took over was to clear out Uncle George’s bad karma. There were some years that he caused a lot of trouble. That’s not my style. When I’m done with this career I intend to write a book, "Zen in Pinstripes." I hired a cleric, and three aura cleansers, to chase away any demons, and to encourage only friendly spirit visitations. It must have worked, because we are a few days away from the World Series, on the verge of beating the doo-doo out of the Atlanta Braves. Boy, am I psyched!

I’m about to sit down to my Chai Tea Latte, and oat bran muffin, when the door to my office opens and a ferret of a man slides in calling my name with the tone one might reprimand a small child, "Georgina!"

He’s the only one who calls me that. To everyone else I’m Georgie. He is Richard Lackey, my aptly named assistant, looking like the cat that swallowed the canary. I don’t like him, he emits too much negative energy, but I couldn’t do my job without him. He’s been with the organization for over forty years, and has a Dick Clark youthfulness that keeps everyone guessing how old he really is. He is invaluable because he knows where all the bodies are buried, and he is ready and willing to bury more for the good of the team, which means I don’t have to.

Today he announces, "we have a problem."

I’m feeling cocky coming off last night’s sixteen to four victory. I’m not going to let him rattle me. "Yes, Richard, and what would that be?"

"This place is falling apart." He plunks a jagged hunk of metal down on my desk and my blood runs cold. Under other circumstances the euphemistic "this place is falling apart," could mean the books didn’t balance, or we ran out of coffee. Richard’s piece of show and tell confirms this is nothing so trivial. The dire predictions he made at the start of the season are coming true.

Last fall a group of NYC politicians and investors offered to build us a brand new stadium with a retractable dome, a scoreboard with a trillion lights, field boxes with Internet access, and lounges with virtual reality booths. Richard gave the idea a hearty thumbs up. I said, "no way!" It sounded like an amusement park. I love our venerable stadium, sure it’s almost one hundred years old, but it has character. I remember Richard t'sking at me, citing the 1998 incident when a five hundred pound steel joint came tumbling out of the upper level and crashed into some empty seats. He warned me to get us out before the crumbling framework took casualties.

"What’s that?" I ask staring at the hunk of metal.

Richard shrugs, sits down and crosses his legs. "I have a team of structural engineers and architects trying to figure that out right now."

"But it came from…?" I gesture around me. I can’t bring myself to say the words.

Richard makes a colorful gesture of his own. He lifts his arm high above his head and whistles an H-bomb-descending-on-Hiroshima sound as his hand falls, and smacks onto the folder in his lap with a loud crack.

"…right on a fan’s head."

"Is the fan…?"

"Dead?"

I could recite the Declaration of Independence in Richard’s pause. Finally he says, "No, he’s stable."

I breathe a sigh.

"I’m going to the hospital to see the poor guy now."

"Richard, can you make this go away?"

"I can try. I assume I'm authorized to promise him anything, within reason, if he doesn’t sue?"

"Season’s tickets, a team jacket, a seat on a float in the victory parade, whatever it takes."

"A concussion might require more than fan paraphenalia, but we’ll see. Keep your fingers crossed that I’ve managed to hide this from the press, and that the engineers don’t find a fault line running through this place."

I cross every last finger and toe and wait for the report.

When the engineers call the news is good. Not only can’t they find anything wrong, but they can’t even find where the flying piece of building came from. With no important parts missing tomorrow’s game can go on. I practice saying, "space debris, perhaps?" with a straight face to the mirror incase the press gets wind of this.

Richard appears about five p.m.

"Do you want the good news or the bad news." He doesn’t wait for my answer. "The guy has no intention of suing us, in fact he doesn’t remember being in the stands last night."

I wonder if this is the good news because he doesn’t know we’re responsible, or the bad because it means he has amnesia. "What do the doctors say?"

"The physicians say he should recover. There is one problem, however, our patient thinks he's Babe Ruth." Richard says this deadpan, so I temper my impulse to shout "WHAT???" and instead say, "oh?"

"He really was rather convincing, kept me talking for over an hour about how he led the league in homers for twelve seasons. He could name every player the Babe came in contact with, gave the full recap on his pitching the longest complete game victory in World Series history. Then he bragged about how this stadium was built to accommodate all the people that wanted to see him play. He knows his trivia."

"That’s kind of spooky."

"Just another poor schnook who dreams of playing professional ball. He believes he blacked out rounding second."

"What does his family say?"

"No family, no I.D., he should be pretty easy to contain."

I marvel at Richard’s calm. He deals with this as though dead baseball icons turn up everyday. I wish I could be as confident.

"Now, do you want the bad news?"

I’m still reeling from the good news, but I nod.

"He did make one small request. He wants you to name him manager of the Yankees." Richard breaks into laughter, but the hairs on my neck stand on end, because I, too, know my baseball trivia.

I go to the bookcase where there are volumes on the team’s history and pull out 1934-1935. When I find the entry I'm looking for I read it out loud. "In 1934 Ruth asked to manage the Yankees and was chagrined when the owner, Jacob Ruppert, offered him NY’s top farm club instead. He signed with the Braves and had his final moments of glory hitting three homeruns in one game."

Richard looks bored. "Like I said the guy knew his stuff. Anyway, I can keep one crazy fan quiet until the end of the Series. I heard this old place got a clean bill of health, I guess you’re off the hook."

"Richard, you’re sure…" I stop short of asking the ludicrous question my brain keeps trying to form. Obviously Babe Ruth died years ago. This couldn’t be… "Maybe I should go talk to him."

"What on earth for?"

My reasons are not at all earthly, and I can’t begin to explain them to Richard, so I let him handle things.

Two weeks later, I sit at my desk staring at the morning’s headline, "Braves Win Series, Three Homers from Outfield Newcomer Known only as Da Babe." At the very least, I wish I had gotten an autograph.

Copyright ©2000 Amy Coombs.  All Rights Reserved