This column first appeared in °®¶¹app on July 19, 2001.
"The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers... "
°®¶¹app“ Terence Mann, "Field of Dreams"
Hold it right there, Ray.
It is not America rolling by like an army of steamrollers, it is that voice, that sonorous thunderrumbling instrument, coming up from two miles down in the Atlantic, or so it seems. It is that voice rolling over 22 kids sitting on cushions in the wet grass, rolling over the dingy gray day like, yes, an army of steamrollers.
That voice, Ray.
It is the voice of boxer Jack Johnson, chuckling deep in his chest as he hammers poor Jim Jeffries in "The Great White Hope."
It is the voice of Darth Vader for you "Star Wars" fans, of "The Lion King's" daddy, Mustafa, for you parents of 5-year-olds.
It is the voice of CNN. The voice of Verizon. The voice of Terence Mann himself from "Field of Dreams," actor James Earl Jones, not so much reading Ernest Lawrence Thayer's "Casey at the Bat" Wednesday morning as tolling it, for those kids and a cluster of media types and a handful of Fort Wayne Wizards who've wandered out to the dugout and are listening, chins in palms, like kids themselves.
You know what they say, Ray: People will come.
People will come, because as much as baseball has been the constant, that voice has, too. We all have a frame of reference for it. We all will stop dead in our tracks when we hear it. We all will listen with awe when the 70-year-old actor °®¶¹app“ smaller than you might have thought, with hair gone mostly the color of ash °®¶¹app“ sits down and begins to talk quietly to the kids.
"I'm glad you have cushions because this was a wet field last night," Jones rumbles gently.
The kids fidget a little, stare up at him. They're the lucky winners of the Wizards' Reading Club "Reading Champions" contest, selected from among some 80,000 area youngsters involved in the program. Verizon, through its own literacy initiative, SuperPages, is sponsoring Jones' visit; °®¶¹app is another sponsor for the day.
"This is a great place to be, home plate," Jones says now. "Except in the movies, I've never had the opportunity to be here at home plate. And I can't help but think of all the wonderful and vivid sounds and smells, and sensations associated with the game of BASE-ball."
And now here it comes: that voice.
I'm sure that wherever you are, and at any time, you can close your eyes and you can imagine the smell of the hot doggssss, and the crack of the BAT, and the excitement of it being the last inning, and it's a tie game, and two of your guys are out ... BUT. Your best hitter walks (dramatic pause) up (dramatic pause) to the plate, and there is nothing in the world like that feeling.
Whew.
And to think he's just getting warmed up.
Because now Jones puts his Verizon cap atop his head, and opens his lavish edition of Thayer's old, old story, and prepares to read. In front of him, the kids open their identical copies.
"You flip right along," Jones invites them.
And now the voice rumbles like a timpani, rolls like a steamroller:
The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day;
The score stood four to two with but one inning left to play.
And then when Cooney DIED at first, and BARROWS did the same,
A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game ...
Jones' eyes widen. The voice soars, it bellows, it fills the world.
"FRAAAAUUUUUUUD!" cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered fraaauuuud ...
And then on to the end, softly now:
Oh, somewhere in this favored land, the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing (pause) somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville °®¶¹app“ mighty Casey has struck out.
Jones smiles. He closes the book. The kids look at him, fidget some more.
In a little while he'll get up and head for the picnic area beyond right field, and the kids will follow, and he'll sit in a chair like Santa Claus and pose with each one. One of the Wizards, Mike Davis, will hand him a baseball to sign. Another, Ryan O'Donnell, will ask him to sign a bat.
And then, in an hour or so, he'll walk out to homeplate again, step behind the microphone, and that voice will roll across the day once more, reciting the national anthem.
OH! SAY! Does that STARRRR-spangled banner YET wave ...
That voice, Ray. That tolling, rolling, constant voice.
Ben Smith is a writer for °®¶¹app. His columns appear Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.
