Can Bob Come Over To Play?
(“Field of Extremes” fictional screen play)
Opening scene - Middle-aged Mike lays on hammock in back yard of suburban Chicago home. Hands folded over stomach. Eyes closed. Trees sway in slight wind. Birds chirp. Out of nowhere, a whispered disembodied man’s voice is suddenly heard.
Voice: “Build it and he will come.”
Mike: “Oh, not this again. Who now?”
Voice: “Bob.”
Mike: “Bob who?”
Voice: “Bob Costas.”
Mike: “THE Bob Costas?”
Voice: (sarcastic) “No, the Bob Costas who manages a Jiffy Lube in Bollingbrook. Yes, THE Bob Costas.”
Mike: “What would he come here for? I don’t have a cornfield and our yard isn’t big enough for a regulation-sized baseball diamond.”
Voice: (annoyed) “Ever hear of wiffle ball?”
Back to reality.
This post touches on a sports theme, but it’s not really about sports.
It’s about the passage of time…and the willingness to invent ways to seemingly go back in time no matter how foolish it might look to others.
That’s why, on every other Sunday from May until November, people who pass by our Winnetka, Illinois home, see this.
A ballpark.
More specifically, a mini-ballpark built for a hybrid form of baseball played with a plastic bat and ball.
A game for kids?
Kids like my 78 year old brother Jack.
And 76 year old me.
And a bunch of others from old age to middle age to young adult to teenager.
Wiffle ball is a game that can be played with as few as two people, or however many it takes to comfortably fit whatever space is conveniently available - from driveways, to alleys, to school playgrounds, to a northern Illinois front yard, a yard first deemed suitable for play back in 2000 when our son Brendan was about 15.
There were no boys his age in our neighborhood so we set up some cones, a flimsy backstop and made up our own rules.
(Home run into the street to the right of the lamp pole.)
(Or over the bushes.)
Then the tweaking began.
A pitcher’s mound.
A remote controlled scoreboard.
Portable lights.
A better backstop and fencing, the poles fitting into metal tubes sunk below the lawn and driveway surfaces for quick set-up and tear down.
The road in front of our house, Pine Street, is heavily traveled.
Cars slow down, the drivers and occupants smile, point and take photos, perhaps puzzled by the need for a secretive pitcher’s mound strategy session.)
Some have gotten out of their cars and asked if they could join in. The Sunday afternoon roster grew.
Brendan’s friends, my friends, my brother and his son, neighbors. Major league baseball payers, Kirk McCaskill and Lary Sorensen, have played. So has Jack O’Callahan of the 1980 Miracle on Ice hockey team. We’ve had major corporate CEO’s, carpenters, lawyers, school teachers, an FBI agent, a female college softball player, a non-baseball playing cousin from Ireland, and on and on.
Adults drawn to a land-based fountain of youth.
When the games are finished, and the ballpark dismantled, we collect on the front porch for conversation and laughter. That would not happen without the lure of games played in a setting that might appear ridiculous to some.
Build it and THEY will come.
At one point early on, Brendan (who is now 40) suggested sending a video of our stadium to the epically talented broadcaster Bob Costas. I had done stories for Bob’s 1988 Seoul Olympic program and he respected my work.
Perhaps, we thought, Bob would like this display of sporting inventiveness.
Well, he liked it enough to make the journey to our front yard…and play.
A few years later, he showed up again.
And then a third time.
To some it might seem silly, childish, and a massive waste of time but my brother Jack and I started playing wiffle ball 70 years ago.
And we’re still playing!
I think of that line from the movie “Waking Ned Devine.”
“Michael and I grew old together,
but at times, when we laughed,
we grew younger.”
Here is a Today show piece from July of 2002 about the birth of our wiffle ball stadium. For dramatic reasons, I had Brendan narrate my script. You will see Bob Costas in an “uncredited appearance.”
(Runs 3:44)
For paying subscribers, I have posted Bob Costas’s 2011 appearance at “The Pineyards.” His eloquence and humor, even when ad-libbing amongst friends is amazing.
Also, I have included one of my stories from the 1988 Olympics in Seoul - with Bob’s intro and tag.