I fell in love for the first time during the summer of ‘94. It was the summer before my senior year of high school, the same summer Sammy Davis played baseball for the Vermont Expos. He wore Mickey Mantle’s old number seven and manned his old position, center field. The Mick was Dad’s favorite player. Dad grew up west of the Mississippi in the fifties, so he bled Cardinal red. Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, and Enos Slaughter were his Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. If you asked him who his favorite player was, he’d lie and say Stan Musial. His generation worshipped Stan the Man. But in private, Dad always told me, “No one was better than Mickey.” Back then, no one west of the Mississippi rooted for the Yankees. You would be shunned, an outcast. But Dad didn’t root for the Yankees, he rooted for Mickey Mantle because Mickey Mantle was from the heartland. The son of an Oklahoma coal miner who became the King of New York. Was it so wrong to openly admire a guy like that? It must have been because he never told anyone. Except me. It was our little secret. We didn’t have many.

Dodge City, Kansas, will always be home, but I needed to get out of there. Around the late eighties, Dad retired from the DCPD and started drinking like Mickey, too. Always Miller Lite, always the same recliner in front of the TV. It started off harmlessly enough. A lot of cops in small midwestern towns drank beer. Dad was no different. He never drank to excess, never hit Mom or called me nasty names, and never disrespected the badge. A couple of beers after a twelve-hour shift were just part of the routine. But when he turned in his badge and retired, something changed. I’m not sure what, because he never talked about it, but it seemed like Dad felt disappointed in himself. Life had zipped by and he finally had time to wonder whether he could have done things better. Maybe that’s why Mickey drank so much after retiring, too.

Dad didn’t handle retirement well and slowly started drinking the hours away. Beer after beer. Tick-tock. Mom died just before Christmas in ‘93. Cancer came and snatched her away in less than a year. Afterward, Dad let himself go and turned to bourbon. If you didn’t catch him before noon, you weren’t catching him at all. Things got tense. He wasn’t a bad father, but living with a drunk took its toll. Rambling arguments about nothing. Bursts of affection followed by prolonged bouts of sobbing. I didn’t have the stomach to ever invite friends over, not knowing which Dad would be sitting on the couch when they arrived.

Dad never came out and said it, but I knew he wanted to be alone. Knew he was embarrassed at what he had become yet too zapped by grief to change anything. I began to stay out as late as possible and felt like a stranger in my own house. Life became loneliness without end. The weeks turned into months, but every night when I came home, it was the same day. It was always the same day. Dad made us relive it over and over again. A part of me understood the pain he was trying to drink away. I felt it, too. Like the light in the world had suddenly dimmed a bit. We had both lost the only woman we ever loved, the glue that held our house and family together. But rather than unite us, her loss drove us apart. Maybe things would have been better if one of us knew how to put that pain into words. But neither of us found the courage.

Opening Day was the last straw. Even though a lot of things had changed for us, I hoped that we could still watch baseball like everything was all right. We both loved the game. It was our thing. The first thing we shared. And the only thing we really shared after Mom died. Opening Day used to be the only Cardinals’ game the three of us would watch together every year. Mom would cook up a storm while Dad and I listened to Jack Buck introduce the starting lineups. It was our family ritual. Until it wasn’t. That morning, the two of us ate breakfast in silence. Dad shook so badly he kept spilling coffee on the table.

“Do you want to order in from Frank’s for the game?” I asked. Frank was one of Dad’s old cop buddies who found a second calling as a pitmaster in retirement. His pulled pork and slaw weren’t as good as Mom’s, but they were the closest we could find in Dodge City. It felt wrong to eat anything else on Opening Day.

Dad glanced up. The two watery eyes hugging his Cardinal red nose shot me a vague look that plainly said he forgot today was Opening Day. Another first. He caught himself a moment later, his face sagging a bit at the realization.

“Sure,” he sighed.

I guess I should have felt happy, but I didn't. There was no excitement in his voice. No Opening Day optimism or sense that this season, this year, would be better than the last. I headed over to Frank’s an hour before first pitch and returned home to find him three bourbons deep. We listened to the starting lineups in silence. The barbecue went untouched. The Cardinals were down 5-0 when he passed out in the fourth inning. I left the house and we didn’t watch another game together. I knew things were over when baseball wasn’t fun for us anymore.

***

I called my Aunt Cathy the next day and told her what was happening at home. She was Mom’s only sister — no husband, no kids. She grew up in Dodge City but fled to Vermont in the sixties and never looked back. Mom always said she was a little out there. We were never particularly close, but she pulled me aside after the funeral and made me promise to let her know if I needed anything. I’m not sure what I was expecting when I called, but I think she heard the desperation in my voice and invited me to spend the summer in Vermont. A few weeks later, I emptied my bank account, packed my bags, and boarded a Greyhound to Burlington.

I felt this overwhelming sense of nervous energy the morning I left Kansas. I had never traveled so far from home. Everything was new and interesting. I snagged a window seat and watched the visual odyssey unfold. The endless flat prairies began to gently undulate. Vast cornfields gave way to rolling hills and forested mountains. To pass the time, I played this game in my head where I tried to invent a story about every passenger that boarded the bus. But after more than eighteen hours of riding in the back, my attention waned. I stopped caring about anyone else when we hit Ohio. Except for one guy. He boarded alone outside Akron, carrying nothing but a duffel bag slung over his shoulder with two baseball bats sticking out the top. I swear it was like something out of Field of Dreams. The bats caught my eye. They were a deep auburn, redder than any bats I’d ever seen before. Even half asleep, I remembered those bats.

The first thing I learned about Burlington was that the Vermont Expos played there every summer. They were one of a dozen teams in the New England Collegiate Baseball League, an independent wooden bat league. Not quite the majors, but these guys could at least still dream. I had never heard of the Expos before, but the Burlington Free Press published a scouting report on them the day I arrived, which happened to be Opening Day. Most of the team played for D1 colleges. A handful played high D2, including Sammy Davis. As I unfurled the newspaper and read the scouting report, my eyes were immediately drawn to him.

Freshman year - Did not play.

Sophomore year - Did not play.

Junior year - Batted .437 and hit 22 home runs as the starting center fielder for Ashland University in Ohio. Led the Great Midwest Athletic Conference with 38 stolen bases, 7 triples, and 51 runs batted in.

I hadn’t watched a game in months, but Cathy encouraged me to go. She said it felt like fate was giving me a second chance to experience Opening Day. When I first saw the field, I had to catch myself. Vermont was one hell of a nice place to catch a game outside during the summer. Lush green hills surrounded the field. The gentle slopes of the Green Mountains stretched into the distance, their rolling peaks kissing low-hanging clouds and glowing under the soft light of sunset. Towering birch and maple trees lined the outskirts of the ballpark. The air tasted different, too. There was the scent of pine, but also something deeper. Like late spring still shaking off the long shadow of winter. The stadium wasn’t much to talk about, but it didn’t need to be. The fans made the game cozy. Because the place was so simple, they made it their own. Families threw blankets down on the grass just beyond the outfield walls and along the hills behind the first base line. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. Seats had no numbers. Rows had no letters. First come, first served. You could buy hotdogs and popcorn, but almost everyone brought a cooler. Dinner and a game. God, there’s something romantic about Opening Day, isn’t there? A fresh start for everyone. I bought a $2 ticket at the box office. The woman threw in a free program, and I grabbed a seat ten rows up along the third base line.

That’s when I saw her.

Twenty-five feet away sitting alone along the railing. She looked out of place and vaguely familiar in the way that all celebrities and famous people are vaguely familiar. In my world, girls like her only existed on magazine covers. Yet here she was. Porcelain skin dotted with dozens of tiny freckles. 5’11” and all legs, with ruby-red toenails peeking out of faded Birkenstocks. Long strands of rich auburn hair cascaded down freckled shoulders. In a word, flawless. I barely paid attention to the first few innings and kept shooting glances in her direction every five or ten seconds, willing our eyes to meet. But she wasn’t having it. Her gaze barely left the field. She wasn’t here to make eyes at shy guys from Kansas. She was here for the Expos.

In the bottom of the third, Sammy Davis came to bat. Some players had “the look.” Guys who just exuded a swagger that made opposing players tremble. Mickey Mantle had it, Sammy didn’t. He was short, duck-footed, and didn’t really fill out the Expos uniform. His pants were a size too small and his shirt a size too big. Waves of hair curled out from the back of his helmet, a tight brown beard hugging his chin. But I barely noticed all those things. It was the bat that gave him away. I remembered seeing it outside of Akron. Different from all the rest. Deep auburn, redder than any bat I’d ever seen before. I couldn’t believe it. But neither his looks nor the color of his bat mattered the moment he swung. The crack his bat made with the ball sounded different from everyone else. More violent. You almost felt bad for the ball. When it met the wind, the air seemed to cry. I had never seen someone with hands so quick, either. One moment, they were perched above his head, wagging and waiting. Then, before you could blink, BOOM! They were gone and so was he, charging up the first base line like a freight train, his long hair flapping in the breeze. The Expos won 8–6, and Sammy finished 2-for-2 with two singles, two walks, two stolen bases, and two runs scored. He saved a run in the sixth with an outstanding sliding catch in left center field and threw out a greedy runner at third in the ninth. One game down and Sammy Davis was already a star.

***

I returned to Centennial Field the next night. The Opening Day energy wasn’t quite gone, but half the seats were empty and you could tell these were the die-hards who just loved the game. My kind of crowd. I didn’t expect to see her sitting amongst them. Not on a Friday night. But there she was, seated along the first base side eating peanuts. My heart leapt. God, she looked better than I remembered. I snagged an empty seat two rows behind her and tried to watch batting practice. But I couldn’t help myself and kept glancing her way. There was a program sitting in her lap. Pencil in hand. She was keeping score. I had never seen a girl keeping score before. I was desperate to say something to her, but what? I was seventeen and no seventeen-year-old knows a thing about approaching strange girls.

In the bottom of the second, Sammy smacked a hanging curveball into the parking lot behind left field. It was the Expos’ first home run of the season and the stadium exploded. Everyone was on their feet clapping and cheering. Sammy charged around the bases like he couldn’t wait to touch home plate. I pretended to be absorbed in the action but continued to glance at the girl out of the corner of my eye. I noticed her hair was the same deep shade of auburn as Sammy’s bat.

Two innings later, I still hadn’t said a word, and she still hadn’t looked away from the field. While I squirmed nervously in my seat, she sat completely at ease, like the game was being played just for her. Sammy jogged to the plate again and, as if sensing my desperate thoughts, threw me a lifeline. He hacked at a 2-1 changeup and hit a sky-high pop-up into foul territory. There are pop-ups and then there are pop-ups. This was the latter. The ball kept soaring higher and higher into the air, taking on a life of its own. I was transfixed watching it arc through the sky and didn’t realize when it started plummeting back towards Earth right at me. Talk about a deer in the headlights. I stood up and almost moved out of the way but found a sudden burst of courage at the last moment. My arm shot out and snagged the ball out of thin air. Ferris Bueller’s line, “I think I broke my thumb,” never felt more real. The pain was excruciating, and I really thought something might be broken. But I barely felt it because they were all clapping. Everyone was clapping. Even her.

She was on her feet facing me and we made eye contact for the first time. I might have been delirious but she seemed impressed. It was a hell of a catch. She had emerald green eyes that sparkled and lured me in. Of course they were green. It was Vermont and everything was green. She smiled and the freckles on her cheeks rearranged themselves.

“Nice catch. They should give you a tryout at third,” she said.

I blinked. Was she talking to me? I suddenly remembered the Expos’ third baseman dropped an easy pop-up in the top of the first and blurted out, “Thanks.” I was so stunned by the moment and couldn’t think of anything else to say so I extended my arm and offered her the ball. I felt my face flush as she took it, the tips of her fingers brushing against mine for a fleeting moment. They were painted the same ruby red as her toes.

She stared down at it for a moment. “My first foul ball.”

She smiled and removed the program from the seat beside her. I took it as an invitation to sit. I tried to breathe normally and look her in the eye without gawking.

“Was that a lucky catch or have you played before?”

And just like that, we were talking.

Her name was Kerry. She was a seventh generation Vermonter and grew up around the Expos. Her grandparents were season ticket holders when she was a kid. She used to come all the time. Birthday parties, the Fourth of July, you name it. Centennial Field was still her summertime home. The Expos were her extended family. She had just finished her freshman year at Middlebury College and loved baseball and plants. She wanted to be a horticulturist. I didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded very Vermonty and I suddenly wanted to be one, too.

We were still talking three innings later when she said, “I feel like a creemee.”

I felt my stomach knot. I had no idea what a creemee was but said, “A creemee sounds great.”

I later learned that’s what Vermonters called soft-serve ice cream. But don’t ever make the mistake of asking for soft serve when ordering. Vermonters are polite people but that will earn you the evil eye. I never got used to calling it a creemee, but God, did that extra dose of milk fat make the maple ice cream taste like winter in Vermont. Kerry and I walked and talked with our cones for another inning. She was curious about Kansas. Her family had been in Vermont since before the Civil War. Kansas must have seemed like another country. But she seemed interested. She asked questions. She didn’t stare at me like I stared at her. There was no longing or burning desire. But the fact that she stared at all made me feel important.

“Do you want to watch from the outfield?” she asked.

Of course I did. We plopped down in the grass just past the center field wall and polished off our cones. The next thing I knew a joint was hugging her bottom lip. I had never smoked a joint before. I had never even seen a joint before. I was the son of a cop and the only thing we grew in Kansas was corn.

She sparked it up and I watched, half mesmerized, half terrified. The orange embers brightened and blended in with the surrounding fireflies as she inhaled. She passed it to me without a second thought. I watched my fingers grab it and just stared down for a moment.

“Won’t someone say something?” I asked.

“It’s Burlington.”

She seemed so sure and matter of fact that I took a drag. The smoke hit my throat like a dry, burning whisper. I coughed like I had never coughed before, hacking and whining like a rickety car engine struggling to start, and a cloud formed between us. But suddenly, the tightness in my chest that I had been resisting all night loosened. When the coughing subsided, I waited. And waited. And waited. And all of a sudden, the world around me seemed to soften, like someone had turned down the contrast. The seconds stretched out and the rhythm of Vermont changed. Or maybe my rhythm changed and Vermont stayed the same? It didn’t matter. The grass felt weird on my legs. I couldn’t say why, but it felt weird. The sounds coming from the field became richer. The crack of the bat sounded crisper. More musical. When the announcer bellowed, “Now batting, Sammy Davis!” every syllable echoed in a different way and dripped down my ears like rich honey. I felt like I had stumbled onto an entirely new world hidden behind the one I already knew. Though, I wasn’t participating in this one. Just spectating, a passenger along for the ride. Nancy Regan popped into my mind and admonished me, “Just say no.” Thanks, Nance. From now on, I think I’ll say sometimes.

Kerry started talking baseball. I’d never met a girl who could talk baseball before. She rooted for the Red Sox like everyone else in New England, but Bill Buckner broke her heart in ‘86 and she never recovered. Though, she didn’t believe the Curse of the Bambino would last forever.

“Nothing ever does,” she said.

Kerry was an Expos fan first. She barely watched the Sox anymore.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because baseball is meant to be watched outside.”

I told her about Dad. Not everything, but enough. She didn’t pry or judge me for leaving Kansas. She never made me feel guilty. I talked about the Cardinals. No, not talked. I preached about the Cardinals. We strolled down memory lane as I cycled through every happy moment from my childhood. I told her about Ozzie Smith’s walk-off home run in Game 6 of the ‘85 NLCS. Jack Buck shouted through the TV, “Go crazy, folks, go crazy!” and we all did. Even Mom ran in from the kitchen and danced around in her apron.

At some point, I asked if she always came to the games alone. I wasn’t asking to sniff out whether she had a boyfriend. I just wanted to know more about her.

She nodded.

“Why?”

She thought about it for a moment. “My friends don’t get it.”

“What’s to get?”

I followed her eyes to the field, and we watched for a moment in silence. “It’s art,” she said. “They’re dancing out there. Haven’t you ever noticed?”

I shook my head.

Dancing. I usually hated dancing. But as the inning progressed, we sat and watched the theatrics unfold. The choreographed movements of the infielders all flexing their knees and crouching down right as the pitcher began his windup. The hitters wagging their bats once, twice, three times, before stepping forward and hacking at the ball. The third base coach touching his knees, arms, and hat in nonsensical movements. Baserunners shuffling back and forth a few feet from the bag. Outfielders spitting sunflower seed shells. Umpires punching the air. It all seemed like some free-wheeling performance.

Once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. Dancing. She was right.

I counted the third game as our first date. We met back on the same patch of grass beyond center field and Kerry brought a blanket this time. Sammy hit two more home runs. A low liner to left in the first inning that took off like an F-18 and never got more than forty feet off the ground. I missed the second one in the sixth because Kerry was wiping dried ice cream off my lip with a napkin while I tried counting the freckles on her nose. I got as high as eleven before I leaned in and kissed her. A quick peck on the lips that exhausted all my courage. When the fans around us started clapping, I broke apart and foolishly thought they were cheering for me. I was completely unaware that Sammy had just hit one out of the park and onto I-89. When Kerry asked me to go on the road with her and follow the team, I said yes. Of course I did.

For most Vermonters, Expos games were a one-time summer experience. Not Kerry and me. We crisscrossed New England with the Expos that summer. Kerry drove a beat-up VW Beetle. It was mustard yellow, scratched, and missing a hubcap. The first time I saw her sitting in it outside Cathy’s house, I thought it was the most beautiful car in the world. Sammy hit for the cycle against the Somerset Patriots our first night on the road. I don’t think they could have gotten him out if they played all night. He smacked a whistling line drive up the middle that almost decapitated the pitcher. Two doubles, one to right field and the other to left. A stand-up triple after a funky bounce off the corner in right. And a high majestic home run over our heads in center field. Sammy was nearly at second base by the time the ball landed. Everyone was on their feet screaming as he rounded the bases. Even the Somerset fans knew they had seen something spectacular. We all cheered and cheered and cheered until he came out of the dugout and tipped his cap. A curtain call at an away game. Who was this guy? I had never seen a player like him before. If Mickey Mantle was the first five-tool player, then Sammy must have had six. It was the first time I ever cried at a game. Kerry held my hand. We were both romantic about baseball.

We spent hours in that VW and hours more in shoddy motel rooms and dilapidated stadiums in Providence, Bangor, Hartford, and Lowell. I did most of the driving. The VW’s gear would stick going from second to third, and I could never get the hang of it. But Kerry had the magic touch. She would guide my hand every time we needed to upshift. Her hands were calloused and dirty from all the time spent digging in the dirt and nurturing her plants. But her touch was electric. She introduced me to Talking Heads. We would pass a joint and run her Stop Making Sense cassette back and forth so many times that it actually started making sense. Kerry catnapped a lot in the passenger seat. Cheek lying against the sun-warmed window. It took every ounce of concentration I had not to stare.

Kerry would sometimes go quiet for a while. It drove me nuts at first. I worried she was getting bored of me and thought I might have done or said something wrong. An hour or two could pass in uninterrupted silence with her gazing out the window, lost in the New England scenery rushing past us.

“Everything okay?” I would ask.

She always nodded and forced a smile.

I knew something was on her mind and wanted to know everything about her. Nothing she could have said would have scared me away, but I never pressed her. We all have our secrets. Parts of ourselves that we keep just for ourselves. I knew she liked me. She told me so. But I realized that we didn’t always need to talk. I think she just enjoyed my company. The other thing we never talked about was us. What was happening. How we felt. Where we saw things going. What would happen at the end of the season. We lived moment to moment. Breath to breath. No past, no future, just here and now. I had never lived like that before. Being with Kerry was terrifying and exhilarating and I couldn’t get enough.

I would still call Dad once a week. I knew he needed me. Knew he still cared about me but just couldn’t let go of Mom’s ghost. I usually called on Sunday morning. Every week, he sounded a bit further away. I kept having to ring earlier and earlier in the day to catch him before Jim Beam did. At some point, he was complaining about some right fielder I had never heard of when I realized I wasn’t a Cardinals fan anymore. I hadn’t watched a game or checked a box score in weeks. I didn’t know whether they would win the NL Central, and I didn’t care because baseball was meant to be watched outside and I was an Expos fan now. Vermont was my world and Sammy Davis was the best player in it.

I had found my Mickey Mantle.

Sammy hit .650 in July and was the only player I knew outside of Barry Bonds to be intentionally walked with the bases loaded. Twice. Every time he stepped into the box, he exuded this sense of impending doom. All the pitchers felt it and were helpless against him. Sammy was hitting the ball so hard that when he came to bat for the third time in Springfield, the whole infield took a collective step back. I hadn’t seen that since Little League. The more games he played, the more his aura grew. Do you know how hard it is to strike out an aura? But it wasn’t just Sammy’s play that scared the shit out of everybody. He was just different. He never wore batting gloves. He never stepped out of the box in between pitches. He never took his eye off the pitcher. Everyone played hard, but no one played harder than Sammy Davis. He was everywhere on the field at all times. He never stopped running. He played hard because that’s how baseball was played.

Kerry and I managed to take in a doubleheader, July 4th weekend, outside of Boston. Expos game at 1:05, Red Sox game at 7:05. We watched Sammy leg out an inside the park home run that afternoon and then booed the Yankees that evening with the rest of Red Sox Nation. Fenway Park enchanted me. It felt like traveling back in time. I couldn’t help but think of Dad. Mickey Mantle used to belt home runs and chase down fly balls on that same patch of grass. We bought knockoff Yankees Suck shirts on Yawkey Way. Roger Clemens struck out ten Bronx Bombers. I kept wondering whether Sammy could take The Rocket deep. We ate half a dozen Fenway Franks and danced to Sweet Caroline in the seventh inning. What could be better? After the game, Kerry and I shared a joint and strolled through Boston Common. We fell asleep in the park wrapped in each other’s arms while watching the fireworks illuminate the night sky. It was the happiest day of my life.

August rolled around and more people started showing up at Expos’ games. They were a mediocre team so it was obvious who the fans came to see. Sammy was a star. I knew it, Kerry knew it, everyone in Burlington knew it. But for the moment, he was our little secret. The baseball world didn’t know a thing about the Vermont Expos or Sammy Davis. But they would. I think a lot of people started coming because they wanted to catch a glimpse of him before he left. Was this what it felt like to see John, Paul, Ringo, and George play? To know that those guys weren’t meant to play in dingy Liverpool pubs just like Sammy Davis wasn’t meant to play in the New England Collegiate Baseball League? I tried not to think about it. Not to think about how with each passing game, we were getting closer to the end. Sooner or later, summer would end. Someone would come and snatch Sammy away from us. He would go back to Ohio and finish college or sign with New York or Boston or Chicago or wherever he wanted, really. With a swing like that, he could play anywhere. When that happened, when Sammy finally left, I could say that we saw him first. Kerry and I.

***

 August 12 was the day all the big-league clubs went on strike. Kerry and I had heard rumblings about it all summer but neither of us ever thought it would happen. Who wouldn’t play baseball for a million bucks? We were so naive. Vermont really was a bubble. I heard the news on the radio that morning and immediately called Dad. It was a Friday and I never called on Fridays. But I needed to hear his voice because I knew what losing the Cardinals would mean to him.

“I’ll never forgive ‘em,” he kept saying. “It’s our game, not theirs.” He wasn’t drunk, just sad.

The line to get into Centennial Field’s parking lot backed up for at least a mile that night. The radio said that caravans of cars had been descending on Burlington all day. Lines of headlights ran down Route 7, desperate to get inside before first pitch. They came from all over. I saw license plates from Maine, New York, Ohio, Iowa, and even a few from Quebec. It wasn’t just Vermonters who wanted to catch an Expos’ game, and I didn’t need to ask why. It was August. Kids were still out of school. Vermont was a dreamy 78 degrees. And there was no baseball to watch. No pennant race to latch onto. Summer cut short. The Vermont Expos and Sammy Davis were suddenly the only game for miles.

As we approached the ballpark, cars were backing out of the parking lot. Centennial Field was full. Kerry noticed the slowdown ahead before I did and pulled off to the side. She parked near the woods along Route 7 and got out.

“Follow me.”

And I did. Without question. Because I would have followed her anywhere.

We held hands and ran into the woods towards the lights of Centennial Field. Other eager fans saw what we were doing and scampered behind. As the gates came into view, we saw the box offices closed and families being shooed away from the turnstiles. I gripped Kerry’s hand tighter. We hadn’t missed a home game all season and we weren’t missing August 12. An elderly usher recognized Kerry and snuck us in.

“Try along the third base line,” she whispered.

Centennial Field felt different. A frenetic energy swept across the place and you could sense how happy everyone was to be there. Dads drank beer and strolled around in shorts and flip-flops. Middle schoolers played catch beside the field, grateful for at least one more carefree night of summer. Moms set up blankets and unpacked coolers. Almost everyone wore an Expos t-shirt with “Davis” scribbled on the back. On August 12, this was the place to be.

When Sammy came up to bat in the bottom of the first, the entire stadium stood and clapped. We weren’t cheering, we were applauding. Wide-eyed fans began pointing at the jumbotron. Sammy was batting .482. Nobody batted .482 this late into the season. Not anywhere. Fans pointed and whispered about the number like it was some exotic animal they were seeing for the first time. The funny part was that for the lucky few fans like Kerry and me who had watched him play all season, we knew he was better than .482. But Sammy struck out his first time up. He flied out in the fourth and hit into a double play in the seventh. An intoxicating combination of superb defense, lucky bounces, and stellar pitching kept the game scoreless through nine innings. It was the first time we had seen a pitchers’ duel all season. I forgot how tense they could be. Sensing the crowd’s energy, both starting pitchers elevated their game, attacking hitters with surgical precision. Bending curveballs. Fast fastballs. Unforgiving sliders. Sammy couldn’t hit them. Nobody could. It was baseball at its finest. Kerry and I hung onto every pitch.

Sammy did something in the bottom of the ninth that he hadn’t done all season. With the third baseman playing deep, Sammy laid down an exquisite bunt that caught everyone off guard. He charged up the first base line like a wild horse and ran through the bag before the third baseman even touched the ball. Most guys batting .482 wouldn’t dream of bunting. But that’s what made Sammy different. He didn’t care about those things. He just wanted to get on base.

Sammy danced around first as he took his lead. One step, two steps, three steps from the bag. His feet were always in motion. Always ready to run. We all knew he was going to steal.  But Sammy waited. For a guy who never stopped running, he knew how to read counts. He could be patient. He never took his eye off the pitcher. Not once. Sammy broke for second base on a 2-1 curveball. A moment later, the ball was smacked into right field. A hit and run. Sammy didn’t even think about stopping and charged around second base for third. The fans erupted, cheering louder and louder with each stride. They clamored to get closer to the field, desperate to say they saw it first. The right fielder came up gunning and fired a low bullet across the infield. Sammy launched himself toward third, arms outstretched, soaring like a wild bird. Kerry squeezed my hand and I could swear he was flying. Maybe we both were. Sammy crashed hard into the dirt and hugged the bag seconds before the tag arrived.

“Safe!” the umpire cried out.

The crowd really let themselves go. It felt like a rock concert. Even the hot dog vendors had all pushed their carts to the side and were suddenly transfixed by the game. Just another couple of fans who couldn’t take their eyes off of Sammy. This wasn’t Centennial Field in Vermont. It was Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. It was Mickey Mantle’s 500th home run. It was every fan’s chance to say they were there when their hero did something magical. It was my chance to be with Dad again.

Sammy stood up on third and dusted himself off. He was filthy and caked in a mixture of grass, dirt, and chalk. The guy always looked like he had been climbing through the trenches. But there he was, ninety feet from me and ninety feet from home plate. He danced and skipped down the third base line and then pulled back a smidge, venturing just far enough to grab the pitcher’s attention. Sammy never broke eye contact. Neither did I. If I hadn’t been clinging to Kerry’s hand, I might have forgotten where I was or what existed outside of Centennial Field and Sammy Davis.

As if daring the crowd to push their energy and excitement to another level, Sammy broke for home on the next pitch. It was a crazy move but made complete sense because Sammy could do it all by himself. If he needed to steal home, he was going to find a way. You just had to believe in the guy. The pitcher relaxed his delivery and hung on his back foot longer than he should have. Sammy noticed it and charged down the third base line. He was more than halfway home before the pitcher realized what was happening and rushed his delivery. The ball bounced four feet before home plate and Sammy dove in under the play. The Expos won 1-0.

The stadium erupted. Burlington roared. It didn’t matter who the fans rooted for yesterday or how far they drove this morning. Everyone was an Expos fan tonight. Everyone celebrated something to celebrate on August 12. I felt Kerry turn to look at me and we locked eyes. Tears ran down her freckled cheeks. I had never seen her cry before. Centennial Field slowed down. Burlington fell out of focus. It was just us. Kerry squeezed my hand and leaned in for a kiss. I felt my mouth run dry.

I wanted to tell her how I really felt.

That she was pure magic.

That I loved her.

But I never got around to it.

We were having too much fun.