Ever Closer

The Final Road Trip

March 31, 2017-Things may have been quiet here at the website, but the Hall Ball has been far from idle. Since I last blogged back in October, I took a trip to Burlington, Massachusetts (along with Hall Ball booster Mel Schmittroth and her two little boys) to photograph Carl Yastrzemski. I caught up with Yaz before his signing session, as he was standing outside having a smoke. I was pleased to be able to hand him a copy of the New York Times article as I did my rap. As is commonly the case, he was uncertain as to why I would only want a photo and not an autograph, but he gamely complied, even when I asked him to turn around and shift his position because the sun shining brightly behind him was making the shot impossible.

Tony Milito made another trip for me, driving all the way to Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania, to photograph Bill Mazeroski. I was moving from my long-time home on Staten Island to Brooklyn the day after Mr. Mazeroski was available. Tony continued to come through for the project by making the 320-mile drive from his home in New Brunswick so that I could pack up a decade’s worth of life and put it on a truck.

I then made the final extended road trip for the project, down to the deep South. Over the span of a week, I visited Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama and Mississippi (with a brief stop in Memphis, Tennessee to visit Sun Records and eat a little barbecue). Numerous times on the journey I was struck by the fact that this was the last time I was going to spend hours on the road for the project, watching the miles and miles of America pass me by. Any attempts to express the profound impact seeing this much of the country, in such an intimate way, has had on me would be insufficient. I do okay with words, but there don’t seem to be enough to truly describe the transformative experience the Hall Ball has been.

I was alone for most of the trip, which gave me plenty of time with my thoughts. Those imaginings were filled with a mixture of sadness and elation. The sadness, real and poignant, is because I have been working on this project for so long that I know that once it is complete I am going to feel a little empty. I have been on a mission and once the mission is ended, I will be stuck with the eternal question: What’s next? It’s an hollow feeling when your driving purpose, a thing you have dedicated yourself to for so long, is no longer a part of your life.

The elation was equally powerful. I am close. The closest I have ever been. Yes, it has been epiphanic seeing all of the various nooks and crannies of our complicated, divided, giant nation. But, it’s also been exhausting. So far, with one more trip left to make to photograph one final grave, I have driven 19,243 miles. I have flown 17,933. That is over 37,000 combined miles. For reference, the circumference of the Earth is 25,000. I have traveled enough to circle the planet at the equator one-and-a-half times. Plus, I still have the longest flight of them all left to do, to get that final grave in Hawaii. I am ready to be done and the sense of accomplishment I can feel bubbling inside each time I consider that finish line is like nothing else I have ever experienced.

Anna and our dearest Amelia joined me in New Orleans to take the final picture from that penultimate trip, of Mel Ott, and to enjoy the vibrant excitement of NOLA. I visited Shrine on Airline, formerly known as Zephyr Field, current home of the New Orleans Baby Cakes, the triple-A squad of the Miami Marlins. I ate jambalaya and crawfish. I danced and sang (and had a drink or two) and enjoyed quiet nights in the backyard of our adorable Airbnb. I had the most fun I have had on any Hall Ball trip, and that seemed an appropriate way to wrap up this phase of the project.

I am not done traveling. Thirteen days from now I get on a plane and fly thirteen hours to Oahu, to photograph the final resting place of the first-born member of the Hall of Fame, Alexander Cartwright. I have saved him for last for two reasons. First, he is the lone member of the Hall whose career took place entirely in the pre-professional era. The claims on his plaque in the Hall are dubious, but Cartwright was a founding member of the New York Knickerbockers. He was present when his teammates had the incredible foresight to write down the details of their inter-squad contests, clarifying many of the early rules of the sport for historians for years to come. Completing the portion of the quest dedicated to the deceased players with the first member to ever pick up a bat seemed an appropriate piece of symbolism.

I have also saved him for last because he is the most distant. One does not typically think of Hawaii and baseball in the same breath. It is, admittedly, an unusual setting for me to visit my final grave. But, this is an unusual project. I still do not know if it will be accepted by the Hall of Fame. I may, in the end, simply have spent seven years creating something that will sit in my living room, starting conversations with new friends about this crazy thing I did during my late-30s and early-40s. One thing that cannot be taken away, however, is that I have seen more of this land than I ever would have without the inspiration of this little baseball, so innocently “fished from the small creek that runs next Doubleday Field,” all those years ago.