Stuart Dybek's "Death of the Right Fielder": Fiction as Rich as Poetry

Pepper-Pots and Gum-Poppers: Something Will Happen Any Second Now

Meeting my son for a couple of Reds-Cubs games in Cincinnati reminded me of “Death of the Right Fielder,” a Stuart Dybek story in his second book of fiction, The Coast of Chicago (1990).  Last I heard, Dybek was living in Kalamazoo, Michigan but was a native and affectionate Chicagoan, which adds to the whole business of my mental associations, though Cubs fans are briefly disparaged in the story). 

For those who have forgotten or have never known childhood baseball, the worst player was always put in right field. Most batters were right-handed and usually hit to shortstop, center or left. So it was a rare and dreaded occasion when the right fielder had to do anything beyond remembering to come in at the end of his team’s half-inning in the field. (By the way, this changes dramatically as the talent levels in baseball rise—for example, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, Al Kaline, and Roberto Clemente were right fielders).

What right fielder?

In a story that might be labeled magical realism, Dybek, in grimly comic yet probingly philosophical ways, extends the premise of the right fielder’s loneliness and irrelevance. His nameless player is so forgotten that no one notices he has dropped dead at his position. After all, it “was a long walk” to the outfield, and “he always played deep.”  But his mates get curious after “too many balls went out and never came back.” So “we went out to check. . . . Finally we saw him . . . resembling the towel we sometimes threw down for second base.”  (35)

From that bizarre beginning, Dybek weaves a curious tale—actually, a reflection more than a tale—which, in a mere four pages, paints a picture of an individual life span in the late twentieth century. I've always thought Alan Sillitoe’s title Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner promised such a portrait, but for me that novel never delivered it as well as Dybek’s story does:  “The infield is for wisecrackers, pepper-pots, gum-poppers; the outfield is for loners, onlookers, brooders who would rather study clover and swat gnats than holler. People could pretty much be divided between infielders and outfielders.” (35)

Nobody knows what’s killed the right fielder, but theories abound, from heart attack, to sniper, to gangs and random gunfire. In exploring the theories, Dybek offers a couple of gems: “Young deaths are never natural; they’re all violent.” (36)   Nor could it have been leukemia:  "He wasn’t a talented enough athlete for that. He’d have been playing center, not right, if leukemia was going to get him." (36)

Major League Swing

His mates create a shallow grave right there in the outfield and try to smooth it over “so that the next right fielder, whoever he’d be, wouldn’t trip.” (37)   But an elegant, trouble-free grave is not that simple: “. . .  we couldn’t totally disguise it. A fresh grave is stubborn.” (38) And maybe that’s a good thing:  "Perhaps we didn’t want to eradicate it completely—a part of us was resting there. Perhaps we wanted the new right fielder, whoever he’d be, to notice and wonder about who played there before him, realizing he was now the only link between past and future that mattered." (38)

The Catch, The Fall, The Blur

A good while ago, I met Stuart Dybek a couple of times, and I liked him. It seems everyone does. As I’ve said about some other writers, he came across as a perfectly regular guy, not some staggering, swaggering, histrionic exhibitionist (was that redundant? sorry).

But I think and hope that my admiration for “Death of the Right Fielder” goes far beyond knowing the author or feeling casually connected to baseball. The story’s inventiveness, economy, and philosophical depth are intensified by its modesty and its brevity. It refuses to take itself too seriously, though its issues are grave. It is not at all showy, yet it deserves multiple readings, for it is full of gems. And like its author, it’s for regular folks; it gives them their due, grants them the sadness of their mortality, while refusing, for even one minute, to wallow in self-pity or its opposite, self-aggrandizement.

**

"Casey At The Bat," James Earl Jones, Winding Down on Baseball

Isn't this what cities are supposed to look like?



Two visitor comments plus my neighbor mentioned "Casey at the Bat," so I'm posting the link to it as well as a six-minute James Earl Jones reading of it. It's innocent fun, but I'm not ready to call it great or important poetry.

YouTube - Casey At The Bat - James Earl Jones

Casey at the Bat by Ernest Lawrence Thayer : The Poetry Foundation [poem]


































This scrappy teen got down on the concrete to wrestle a foul ball away from other, larger contenders. I was impressed. She's wearing a Curtis Granderson jersey; he was a fan favorite, so we traded him to the Yankees last year.







Keep your eye on the ball!

Robert Frost, "Desert Places," Mental Health, Politics, Baseball

Desert Places by Robert Frost

To follow up just a bit on the subject of mental health in Hirsch’s tribute to Christopher Smart and my challenge concerning John Boehner, here is Robert Frost’s “Desert Places, ” a fairly well-known poem that I like all right but do not love. Desert places of the mind—probably indicating depression or at least gloomy perceptions—seem a fertile subject (ironically?); we’ve all been there, I suspect, at least briefly . However, Frost’s attempt to convey that emptiness feels somewhat blank as a poem.

The imagery is clear enough, and a couple of phrasings are moderately interesting. For example, there’s the odd but effective notion of possession in “The woods around it have it”; the trees OWN the whitening field, and that’s a new, interesting take on a snowy winter field at night. Also, I feel as well as understand the expanse of a night’s white field when it’s compared to “empty spaces / Between stars.” The size and silence of the vacuum increase if we imagine space; both the white field and black sky are vast, quiet, and unwelcoming, if not forbidding.



But the rest of the poem fails to reach out and grab me by the throat; nothing puts me in that haunting field. Because I’ve seen such spaces a hundred times, a poem about them needs to offer something new, while at the same time confirming that the poet and I have shared this experience. Frost offers little or nothing fresh on his subject. Even the title’s “Desert” seems obvious and maybe trite, maybe forced—not to mention its working against the central landscape, which is snowy, not sandy. It’s as if I hear the writer as he thinks, “Let’s see, how many blank things can I think of, besides a snowy field. I know! A desert!”

The poem’s music is noticeable, but not hypnotic or otherwise engaging—the way it is in “Stopping by Woods” or “Acquainted with the Night” or "Nothing Gold Can Stay," to mention only three musical wonders by Frost. And, still concerning music, some of the rhymes feel forced—how about “last” in line 4? Or “unawares” in line 8? Or their overall simplicity and loudness?

Moreover, the rhymes simply aren’t particularly interesting; we readers don’t feel nudged into unexpected word and thought combinations because the poet hasn’t offered them, hasn’t put us in the midst of surprising but apt pairings—he hasn’t demanded that, from time to time, we hear, see, experience things anew.

As a final complaint about language, I notice a variation on “Lonely” is used four times in three lines, while “no” and “nothing” along with “express” and “expression” occur within two lines. All this strikes me as mere repetitiveness, rather than a scary echo in the night field.


Robert Frost has written so much great poetry that he doesn't have to worry about opinions at Banjo52. But more to the point, I’ve said aloud at times that no poet has more than 20 poems we all might label “great.” So I offer “Desert Places” as an occasion to step back and remember that even the icons are human. Quite possibly none of them batted .300, and baseball is considered a game of failure, in which a 30% success rate is noteworthy. I guess the same could be said of politicians; but their personal and public "desert places," their bad days, mistakes and deceptions, can cost way too much for way too many people.

Desert Places by Robert Frost

**

ROBERT MOSKOWITZ, artist, Hard Ball III, 1993

I went to the Detroit Insitute of Arts yesterday, always a pleasant place for lunch and a stroll. But for the third time, one painting, more or less life-sized, has seized me and won't let go.

Is it just me, or is Robert Moskowitz's "Hard Ball III" especially weird and oddly effective? It seems simple, but I don't think it is.

I'm a baseball fan--lukewarm, but a fan. Also, I can fake enough understanding of art to mention Moskowitz's play with depth perception, the smudged background strokes, the hyper drama of this perspective (might it be considered a cheap shot or gimmick?), and I notice that the pitcher might not be in a baseball uniform, which is strange. I can allude dumbly to the impact of red on my cones and rods, or the sentimental and sensory associations of a baseball and childhood--the hundreds of idle tossings of a ball into an oiled leather mitt, never mind the actual playing with buddies or tossing with The Dad or The Son and Daughter and students.

But none of that is adequate to explain why no other work at the D.I.A. (or any museum?), not even the nekkid women, makes my head whirl on its axis the way this one has.

Am I trying to duck from the pitch? If so, how did Moskowitz achieve that much realism in a painting that's so hyper-realistic it transcends realism?

I just learned that Moskowitz, now 75, is a respected though under-recognized hybrid between minimalism and abstract expressionism, and "Hard Ball III" makes sense in that context as well.

Yes, that's all fine and good, but none of it explains the impact this picture has for me. Can anybody help? Some regulars here know their art. Is this picture any good? Is it unusually inventive? Is it outside the box, the way its ball almost is? Does it illustrate the mind and talent of a quasi-obscure genius? Is it a psychological, neurological sneak-attack?

Or does it all amount to just a quirky connection between my brain and those shapes? If so, is that what all artists, poets, musicians, and clog-dancers are after, just some quirky connection, which just might bowl over or decapitate some innocent stroller?

I suppose I shouldn't have to ask. Emily Dickinson said, famously, "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. . . . Is there any other way?"

**

Baseball and Diction: Tigers 4, Indians 2

Is it only a game?

Or a biting reminder


to watch your word choice,




even there at the park at a boisterous time,
the magical boys who can turn on a dime.







If you can't keep your mind
on the game or your diction,















enjoy a good corn dog, a greased benediction.