“Hope is often seen in the eyes of a child and not an adult,” Bubba said to the Reader. “A child has not realized something cannot be done until they try it. The adult is too often preconditioned about possible failure. Take for instance the kid who crawled through the rotting fence at LaGrave Field.”
An old relic of a 1920 Charles M. Stieff upright piano sat where the pitcher’s mound had been. The infield and outfield grasses at LaGrave Field were gone. Mother Nature replaced them with weeds and infested them with snakes, fire ants, chiggers, and rats. It was as if the base paths never existed. No one came to this historical baseball place anymore — no one cared.
Since 1926, LaGrave Field was the home of the Fort Worth Cats, originally an independent minor league baseball team in the Texas League. The field was north of the Trinity River and downtown Fort Worth. It survived destructive fire, rain, and even floods. Lights were installed in 1931 so more fans could attend games at night. The Texas League suspended operations because of World War II from 1943 to 1945 and LaGrave Field sat quiet for the most part. However significant changes were in store for the Cats after the war. Branch Rickey and the Brooklyn Dodgers bought the team to create a farm system and develop up-and-coming players. On May 17, 1949, the worst flood in Fort Worth’s 100-year history killed nine people and left more than 13,000 homeless, including the Fort Worth Cats.
The Dodgers rebuilt the team and LaGrave Field where fifty members of the Baseball Hall of Fame played. Men like Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Jackie Robinson, and so many more played before 12,000 screaming fans.
Baseball left Fort Worth and LaGrave Field in 1965. Efforts were made to revitalize the field but were thwarted by soil contamination, and water pollution – but mostly by apathy. A foreclosure auction sounded the final death knell. The field faced a slow downward spiral of vandalism, arson, and theft. Any metal worth selling was stripped out and stolen. Graffiti covered seats, dugouts, fences, and benches. The old scoreboard in Center Field had bullet holes and more ugly graffiti before it almost toppled over.
Then the kid showed up.
No one knew who he was or where he came from. The kid just crawled through the rotting, warped fence in Left Field and wandered around. The auburn-haired boy wore faded bib overalls with one strap over the left shoulder exposing the green, gold, and red diagonally striped shirt underneath. Occasionally, he would look at the sports section of the old newspaper he carried. He saw a picture of thousands of baseball fans in the grandstands, then lowered the paper and sadly mused at a rusting relic of days gone by.
He turned around and looked again at the paper and the picture of the scoreboard out in Center Field where men and boys added placards to show the strikes, balls, outs, runs, hits, and errors as the game progressed. The outfield fences were painted with ads for stores, cigars, toothpaste, and cars. Again, he lowered the paper to witness only the scoreboard frame barely staying aloft and fence pieces of indistinguishable advertising of products that no longer existed.
He used pictures from the sports section in the old newspaper as his reference point. From first light to twilight over the next week, the kid miraculously removed all the graffiti and broken bleacher seats. The next week he tackled the infield and outfield to restore. He saved the best for last — the piano. He had never seen one up close, only in reference files. By the fourth week of repairing the field, the kid began playing the piano.
At noon the next day, people in the area heard a familiar tune ringing through the streets, their homes, and their businesses. “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” played over and over and over for 15 minutes. People fruitlessly searched for the source of the music until it stopped.
The next day at noon, the music began again — this time louder and more melodic. People stopped driving the cars on Main Street. People stopped on the steps of the Tarrant County Courthouse. They stopped eating barbeque in the Stockyards. Everyone paused and listened.
Stunned police officers slowly made their way to the source of the music – LaGrave Field. They saw the freshly painted grandstand – minus all the graffiti. New seats had replaced the warped and rotted bleachers. The outfield walls were repaired and painted but missing advertising. The concession stand was brightly painted but still missing the grille, fryers, ice machine, and refrigerators. The collapsed, old-fashioned scoreboard was gone. In its place was a new electronic scoreboard displaying fireworks on its screen just above an announcement:
OPENING DAY TOMORROW AT 1:00!
A burly police sergeant sniffled and wiped his nose as he said, “My grandfather played here, and my dad watched him from these bleachers.”
A woman stood nearby and replied, “My grandfather worked the display cards in the old scoreboard.” It sparked a wonderful memory for her.
There was one new glove and one new bat on the bench in the home team’s dugout. A new baseball sat on that restored 1920 upright piano still standing on the pitcher’s mound. The kid from Left Field continued to play “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” over and over as the grandstands filled, and the smell of popcorn and hot dogs filled the air.
“Trax, it is time to come home,” a soft voice came from the sky.
“But I am not finished down here,” the kid named Trax firmly announced. “I will be there in a few time units.”
Another voice boomed, “Now, Trax! We must depart this quadrant to survey elsewhere.”
Trax kicked the dirt between 2nd base and 3rd as he trudged from the pitcher’s mound with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his overalls. “I don’t ever get to finish anything,” he grumbled. He stopped and looked at all the hushed people in the grandstand. “Well, maybe you can finish the job.” There was no reply from the crowd.
As Trax walked head-down into left field, he was soon surrounded by a strange, glowing orange light. His clothes changed from overalls to a silvery body suit. As the light intensified, the kid from left field disappeared.
Stunned silence continued to fill the newly refurbished LaGrave Field. Mayor Cornwall stood and addressed the crowd. “The kid was right. It is up to us to finish the job.”