a chapter from

Wag and the Distant Bums

by Wells Dunbar

What follows does not strictly qualify as writing about the Mets, although it is very interesting reading! Author Wells Dunbar wrote to me asking if I would be interested in publishing an excerpt from his soon-to-be-published novel, and I was eager to make this fascinating addition to my site. Mr. Dunbar describes his novel as thus: "Wag and the Distant Bums is the story from the near future of how a fatherless Afro-Caribbean boy from Flatbush does his homework, in this case an essay assignment, and ignites the events which bring the floundering and forlorn Dodgers back to Brooklyn. In the media maelstrom that results, the boy, Wag, is threatened anonymously and is forced into hiding along with a witty and wise young tutor, Vickie Durrell. Meanwhile, the cast of characters that is the Dodgers (Five Asian starting pitchers, no two of whom speak a common language; a Dominican manager, a scholarly first baseman, and a pitching coach who is the spiritual descendant of Casey Stengel) do the best they can to cope with an increasingly strange season." Now that you know the premise, read on:

* * * * *

Roto Kuramoto, "Rocky" to his Dodger teammates, got the news while vacationing on Lana'i. He couldn't reach his interpreter, so he was forced to turn to his rather limited local resources. First, he asked at the hotel's concierge desk for a tsyaku, an interpreter. But the interpreter had taken a tour group from Yokohama on whale watching trip. Doing her best to help Kuramoto, the young concierge pulled out a map of the island, pointed to the bus route, indicated the Lanai City town center, and circled a building on the north side. "Tanigawa's. Nihon. Ne?" she said, exhausting her Japanese vocabulary.

"Hai. Domo arigato, gozaimasu." Kuramoto bowed his thanks, tipped her twice the norm, and headed for the shuttle bus.

Half an hour later, Kuramoto stepped gingerly through the entrance of Tanigawa's Restaurant. Five or six rather non-Japanese-looking people sat scattered at formica tables in the restaurant. He gazed hopefully across the counter, trying to peer back into the kitchen. Surely someone in here spoke Japanese, but he didn't want to draw attention to himself. He smiled his politest smile at a young woman behind the counter.

"Ready, sir?" She didn't look at him; instead she looked over his shoulder out at the town center, which doubled as a park and as the local newspaper, since there wasn't one. She didn't see his helpless shrug, his gentle shake of his head that he didn't speak much English. She swung her gaze back to him briefly, "Want something?" Again, having finished her obligation to be minimally considerate, she refocused her gaze back out the window.

Kuramoto hating doing this, but he braced himself, drew a breath, and sent a gentle blur of Japanese at her. "I'm terribly sorry, but I speak very little English other than a few baseball terms. Does someone here speak Japanese? Please?"

At the sound of the unexpected language, the young woman dragged her eyes back to Kuramoto. His one relief was that she clearly didn't follow American baseball. The brazen overtures of American baseball fans for his signature, always for his signature, continually tormented him. They only spoke more loudly when he indicated that he didn't' understand their longer phrases and their endless use of slang and local dialects. He wished they would restrict their comments to "fastball," "slider," "curve," "changeup," "ball," "strike," "walk," and "hit." But they never did.

The young woman held up a finger, an inoffensive one, and walked casually (Americans were phenomenally casual!) into the back area of the restaurant. After a moment's agonizing wait (since there was the ever-increasing possibility that a tubby, sunburned, camera-toting tourist would recognize him and want to take pictures of him semi-embracing all members of the tourist's family), the young woman returned with a man in his forties, a very American-looking man in an apron. He grinned sheepishly and waved.

"I am honored to meet you. I am Tanigawa of this restaurant." His Japanese was like a cool drink of rationality in a desert of desiccated communication.

"And I am honored to meet you. I am Kuramoto of the Los Angeles baseball team."

"Of course I recognize your name and your face. It is my pleasure to have you grace my unworthy establishment." Tanigawa's accent and vocabulary were untarnished by American custom, but the tone! Again, that hakkujin casualness. Almost as corrupted as his interpreter (where was he, anyway?)

"Thank you so much. I am humbled by your kind words. Please forgive me for interrupting your busy day. I speak so little English, and I need the services of an interpreter. Services for which I am grateful to pay. Is this possible in your full life today or perhaps the next?"

Tanigawa smiled and bowed too quickly. "You need not pay me. Assisting the noble Mr. Kuramoto-san is honor and therefore payment enough. And, if I may humbly interject, I have a notion as to what this involves." Tanigawa gestured toward one of the side tables in the restaurant, indicating that Kuramoto should have a seat.

Kuramoto nodded assent and bowed as if before a superior. This Americanized shopkeeper was his only window into what had transpired recently. He could explain to Kuramoto the confusing images he had seen that morning on the television in his hotel room. What did they portend for him?

Tanigawa leaned into the kitchen and requested, not ordered, Kuramoto noticed, that tea be brought to the table. With a familiar and insolent nod, the young woman went about the business of fulfilling this request with exasperating lassitude. American manners, a contradiction of terms.

Tanigawa had seated himself facing the town center and thus turned his guest's too-famous face from the general public. Now Tanigawa showed some pleasure at being the bearer of clarity, of news. "My guess, Kuramoto-san, is that you have seen television this morning?" Tanigawa sat back and waited for the reply.

Kuramoto could hardly restrain his agitation. "Yes. And I recognized the faces and the names to some extent. Still, there was clearly more to the news story. It was more than the images used when players are traded. There were basketball players, and a little black boy, and names I which were not familiar. For once, I could not tell if the news was bad or good. It was like nothing I have ever seen before, and yet I know it involved me and perhaps some of my teammates on the Dodgers. I even saw my face in the story for a split second." Kuramoto realized that he had spoken excessively. He resumed a more dignified countenance. "Can you tell me what has happened?"

Tanigawa nodded and smiled. "How much do you know about New York?"

Kuramoto thought for a moment. "We go there sometimes to play the Mets. It is like a Japanese city designed and governed by lunatics. Rudeness seems to be a legal requirement for the population there. And yet, the Japanese players on the Mets seem content there when I talk with them."

"And have you seen much of New York when you are there?" Tanigawa's questions puzzled him, but there was a clear direction in Tanigawa's discourse. Kuramoto would be patient.

Kuramoto considered the question. "Perhaps more than most, but not that much. The airports, the stadium, the hotel, parts of Manhattan."

Tanigawa sipped at his tea for a moment. "New York is divided into large geographic sectors. One of them is called Brooklyn. Before the bridges to and from Manhattan were built, this Brooklyn was a city on its own terms. It still retains an identity which is distinct from the rest of New York City. It is a matter of history that the Dodgers were once the baseball team from Brooklyn. They moved to Los Angeles in the 1950's."

Kuramoto nodded. He enjoyed learning things. The geographic division of New York and the minor history lesson were pleasant to absorb.

Tanigawa turned his teacup in his hands and spoke to the table now. "The man who controls the Dodgers is a Mr. Wayfair Dern. Do you know this man?"

Kuramoto nodded cautiously. "I have seen him twice. He both shook my hand and bowed to me. He knows about twenty words of Japanese." This was faint praise for Dern and elliptical contempt for most Westerners, few of whom could distinguish between Japanese and Spanish, so far as he could determine.

"Yes. Did you recognize him on the broadcast?" Clearly Tanigawa had seen the same news that Kuramoto had seen.

"I thought he looked familiar. The clue that caused me to watch the pictures more closely was the logo of the team, which is the most familiar to me of anything in America. The rest of the story seemed to be a symbolic representation of how the American mind works - a jumble of basketball players, film clips of buildings, quick shots of my teammates, and that little boy standing with Mr. Dern-san."

Again Tanigawa smiled that weird Western smile. "I sympathize with your confusion. I will try to explain each of these images in their respective relevance to you and the news story."

Kuramoto bowed slightly in readiness. A pupil acknowledging a wise teacher in this formica-clad café-style classroom.

"Let us start with the little boy. He is key to the understanding of what has transpired in the last month. He is a student, and evidently a promising one, in New York City. Specifically, he is from this Brooklyn. About a month ago, as a class assignment, he wrote a composition calling for the Dodgers to leave Los Angeles and return to Brooklyn.

"His teacher, impressed with the boy's work, e-mailed the composition to a district official, who e-mailed it to several other officials, one of whom e-mailed to friends and associated, and eventually it made its way to the owner of the Dodgers, Mr. Dern-san."

Kuramoto held still. He could only slow this process of education with his questions. Tanigawa was a thoughtful and thorough instructor, and he seemed to know which questions meant the most to Kuramoto.

"The buildings in the story are the buildings in Brooklyn where this boy lives. They are humble apartment buildings where ordinary workers live. You must realize by now, Kuramoto-san, that this is the kind of tale which speaks to the individualistic souls of most Americans. The script of the American folk or fairy tale must include a humble individual who aspires to a kind of distant greatness. This boy in Brooklyn meets those most primal requirements. His powerlessness, ironically, brings him power.

"So, when Mr. Dern-san read the boy's essay along with the comments of the boy's proud teacher, he was intrigued. He contacted the boy's mother, and invited both of them to a basketball game in Manhattan. You are aware, no doubt, that he controls the Lakers basketball team, as well?"

Kuramoto nodded slightly. He had the vaguest recollection of this fact. Dern-san owned and controlled so much.

"So the basketball players in the background are just that, background. The boy, whose name is Wag Durmster, first met Mr. Dern-san there at the Lakers-Knicks basketball game. They talked informally. The boy, his mother, and a friend of the boy all spoke fondly of returning the Dodgers to Brooklyn, a large community which has never forgotten that your team once played there. He found their arguments in favor of such a move quite compelling. They had answers, so he claims, to many of his thornier concerns about the logistics of such a move. They also had some solutions in mind for replacing the Dodgers in Los Angeles.

"And the footage of you and your teammates is, of course, the final piece of the story. In one year, you, the members of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, will all become the Brooklyn Dodgers. It is a story which has reverberated throughout the country and the larger world of baseball. It is not without controversy, but I believe that ultimately, it will transpire."

"So tell me about this Brooklyn, if you have the time to do so." Kuramoto said. And he sat back and listened as Tanigawa cleared his throat.

* * * * *

Here is the author's description of himself:

"Wells Dunbar is a professional goof-off who writes the occasional novel. He was born in New York City and moved to California in 1958 right along with the Giants and the Dodgers. A resident of San Francisco, he is a loyal San Francisco Giants fan who is totally opposed to the Giants returning to Coogan’s Bluff. He would be okay with the Dodgers going back to Brooklyn, however. Soon."

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