The crowds were long gone, but the stadium lights remained on, standing sentinel over a silent diamond where a city’s dream had come to die. Grady sat alone, stealing an illicit moment with an illicit cigarette dangling from his lips. His gaze stretched to nearby first base, past second and into center, where the final out had fallen not one hour prior. He twiddled the broom he’d used to sweep this section between his knees and sighed. Like thousands of fans before him, Grady had thought, however naively, that this year would be it.

It was warm for October, too warm for his windbreaker, but Grady didn’t care. Headlights twinkled on the interstate beyond the ballpark, chains of fans bidding the hopes of another season goodbye. Cautious optimism would return come March, the residue of a city haunted by more losing seasons than it dared to count but would never forget, but for now–an all-too-common disappointment.

Grady crushed his cigarette on the concrete and dropped it in the dustpan at his feet. He cast a glance around the park and affirmed he was alone. No one else much felt like sticking around. Like Grady, his fellow ushers had pushed through the highs and lows of every home game, and they, too, had slunk away to nurse the hangover of another year without a crown. It’s a funny thing, the postseason, thought Grady. Twelve teams, jubilant in the wake of a winning season, twelve cities in celebration of glory yet to come, each ignoring the reality that eleven were guaranteed to end the year with a loss.

“Grady?”

He started, his knee striking the broom and sending it clattering to the concrete. Up on his feet, Grady whirled to look up the steps and toward the concourse. He forced a deep breath. Exasperated, a  relieved sigh puttered out when his eyes landed on Ollie, the twenty-something usher who usually worked two sections over.

“Damnit Ollie, you damn near gave me a heart attack,” Grady said. “I’m too old for that shit.”

“Sorry.”

Grady glared up for a second then shrugged it off. He collapsed into his seat and ignored the pop in his knee. Ollie’s sneakers crackled on the steps behind him until the kid was at his aisle, eyes shaded beneath the brim of a cap his father had passed down some years before.

“Are we still allowed to be here?” Ollie asked.

“You’re here.”

“I just finished,” Ollie said. “Should we go?”

Grady shrugged. “I figure if the lights’re still on, someone must still be here somewhere. Doubt anyone with the power to fire me is still around.” His eyes inhaled the field again. “I’m not ready to leave yet anyhow.”

Ollie shuffled awkwardly and checked the concourse, unconvinced. Grady rolled his eyes and wrapped the seat beside him with a knuckle. “Take a seat, kid.”

Ollie did, his shoulder brushing Grady’s. They sat in silence and faced the field, maybe ten aisles behind the home dugout. Grady scratched his too-grey stubble with a too-thin hand weathered by more years than Ollie could yet imagine living. Two years of working together, and to Grady’s knowledge, this game and this team were all they had in common.

“How long’re you staying?” Ollie asked.

“Shit kid, I dunno. Maybe until we win the Series again.”

Ollie blew out a puff of air. “Might be waiting awhile. Might never happen again.”

Grady swatted Ollie’s arm. “Ah, what kind of fan are you? Don’t say that. It hasn’t even been that long since the last one.”

Ollie jammed his hands into the pocket of his hoodie. “Yeah. But think about how long it’d been since the one before that. Almost twenty years before I was born.”

Grady nearly smiled at that, not only because he remembered that series so vividly, but because he could only wonder at how this game had connected him to this kid who spent his days at an outrageously priced university for a degree that would earn him far too little. Many faces over the years, all vastly different from him, all intersecting for eighty-one days a year among the hot dogs and the cotton candy and the overpriced beer and the greatest game on God’s green earth.

“You still came back,” Grady said, looking at Ollie directly.

“Hm?”

“You still came back.”

Ollie pushed out his lip and nodded once. “Guess I did. Not always sure why, though.”

“Nah, c’mon, you know exactly why you’re still here,” Grady said, nudging Ollie’s shoulder. “Same reason I’m still here, same reason as everyone else.”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so,” Grady started, and he was about to say more, to let loose his unexpected frustration at the kid’s flippancy, but he couldn’t blame him. He’d never fully been able to explain it himself, why this place mattered so much to him. He supposed few who set foot here could. Most years were losing years. In fact, Grady figured there’d only been four or five winning years in Ollie’s entire life. But here they were. “Guess I can’t really imagine not coming back. I always have.”

“Even when we suck?”

“We always suck.”

“That’s what I mean.”

“That’s what I mean, too.”

Ollie fixed him with the kind of look only the young can muster for the old, the kind that said he was deciding if debating long-held beliefs was worth it. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Are you here by accident?”

“Am I what?”

“Are you here by accident?”

“No I’m not here on acc–”

“Then why? Why here?” Grady flared his palm toward the field. Ollie’s eyes followed and flicked back to Grady. “You could’ve worked anywhere. This is just your gig while you’re in school, right? You don’t even get paid all year. But you’re here anyway, so what’s the reason? Why not somewhere else?”

Ollie folded his arms and leaned back, propping crossed ankles on the seat in front of him. His eyes trailed toward the twilight. “Maybe I’m still holding out hope,” he said, looking back to Grady.

“Hope for who?”

“What do you mean, ‘for who’? For us.”

“Are you the one on the field?”

“No, that’s not what I mean–”

“I know it’s not. It’s just what you said. You didn’t say you were holding out hope for them.” Another gesture toward the field. “You said it was for us.” Grady flipped his index finger between them. “And you’re not wrong, either. When those boys run out on the diamond every night, they are us. You and me and everyone else. This whole damn city, crazy as it sounds.”

The interstate was clearing up, the clog of traffic finally giving to flow. They wouldn’t have much longer, Grady knew, not long at all before he’d have to say goodbye, too.

“Everyone?” Ollie asked, dubious.

Grady nodded once. “Everyone. We can say it’s just a game all we want, but it’s more than that, and I think we all know it, somehow. Those guys carry everything. Every hope or dream we ever had for things to be better, every hope we’ve ever had to be proud of who we are and where we’re from. I think we live for all the ‘maybe next years,’ even though we all know next year might be shit, too. Because look at the memories we make along the way.”

“Maybe,” Ollie said. “Funny thing is, I can’t even remember my first time coming here. My family just did. Can’t remember a year we didn’t.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Grady said. “It brings us together, whatever actually happens on the field, you know? Whatever the score says at the end. All of us united behind something, which you don’t hear much these days, if you ever did. Could be a whole city, could be a family killing a Friday night. Could be a kid like you out on a date. I don’t know.” He playfully flicked the bill of Ollie’s cap. “Could just be a father trying to spend some time with his boy.”

The kid offered a half-smile, readjusting the hat. Grady admired the thin streaks of dirt across the bill and around the side, like Ollie refused to erase the stories behind them, his own connection to the diamond. Then Ollie looked at him again. “It has to be bigger than that, though.”

Grady sighed. “Nothing bigger than that.” Not that he could expect the kid to understand that yet.

“I’m serious,” Ollie insisted, hunching forward. “I mean, I’m tired of losing so much.”

“There you go, inserting yourself into the game again.”

Ollie frowned. “Grady.”

“Alright, alright.” Grady held up his palms with a gentle chuckle. “You want something bigger? Fine. Maybe you don’t see this yet, I don’t know, but you ever feel like you step into history every time you come here?”

Ollie thought about it. “Maybe.”

“Think about it. And not just about the all-time greats on the field. But off the field, too. Think about everything baseball’s seen come and go.”

Ollie smirked. “It’s a game.”

“Humor me.”

“Alright.”

Grady paused. How to help this kid understand so much he had never seen himself, how this game had intersected with more events and lives than anyone could fully comprehend? “Think about this–‘01World Series. Yankees and Diamondbacks. You know why George Bush threw out the first pitch?” Ollie nodded that he knew, and Grady continued. “It was exactly what that city needed at that point in time. So much unimaginable tragedy, but for three hours, everyone in New York could just be together, and things could feel alright for a bit.” He coughed out a laugh. “All united in hatred of the Arizona Diamondbacks.”

“Who won the Series.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Grady said with a shrug, then reconsidered. “OK, it does, but it doesn’t. Of course we care about winning and losing–we all do–but in moments like that, baseball is bigger than whoever walked away with a shiny ring. Like when Jackie Robinson took the field for the first time, or when David Ortiz reminded fans that Boston is their city. I have no idea who won or lost on those days, but that’s not what people remember.”

Grady thought he was losing the kid, but Ollie nodded contemplatively. “I guess I see what you’re getting at, but not every moment is as big as those, either.”

Grady shook his head. “Doesn’t need to be. Our lives are more than just the major moments, so what’s wrong with baseball being the same way?” He paused, drumming his knee absently with his fist as he thought back. “I finished high school in the early 70s, kid. You ever think things suck now, then lemme tell ya–that time sucked. Nixon and Watergate and some shit with Israel I was too young to understand at the time. Not to mention Cronkite on TV every night, making sure we all knew war like we’d never known it before.” Another pause. “Music was alright, I guess.”

A wry half-smile from Ollie.

“Every night, though, my dad flipped to the ball game. To this team. The games themselves didn’t have to be big moments, though some of them were. But most of the time, the games just got us through the big events, the hard times.” Back to direct eye contact with Ollie. “How could I not come back?”

Ollie still didn’t look convinced, still with that half-smile, still almost amused. But there was something more there, like he was mulling it over, however doubtfully. Then: “You’re really just an old romantic, you know that?”

“Bite me,” Grady huffed, not acerbically, not without offering his own smile. He turned to the field a final time, taking it in. The exquisite cut of the outfield so delicately maintained, the subtle beauty of the infield he’d never quite been able to name. The final lingering whiffs of spilled beer and hot dogs, as though over the decades the grease had been baked into the concrete. Then, grinning, he faced Ollie. “Just allow an old man his musings, alright?”

“Alright.”

Grady stood, stretched. A low groan escaped, the kind that signaled the years between him and Ollie. “I guess if nothing else, coming back is just fun. Maybe that’s all it needs to be.” He gathered the broom and dustpan to return on the way out. “Come on, we really should be getting out of here.”

Up the stairs they went, to the concourse and, once Grady had stowed the broom away, around to the exit for staff parking. The concessions sat dark, the beer taps covered until the thirsty hordes returned. They moved wordlessly, companionably. Grady spotted his car and made for that direction. Ollie split off his own way, swinging his keys around his index finger. Then Grady paused, turning to Ollie’s receding figure, and called out, “See you next year?”

Ollie only half turned, still moving, and called back, “See you then!”

Grady watched him all the way to his car, until he clambered behind the door and vanished beneath tinted windows. Then he, too, slid into his car, keyed the ignition, and pulled away. Soon the ballpark and its lights sparkled far behind in his rearview mirror.

At some point, the stadium lights would switch off, but they’d be back.

They’d be back, too.

***

Ryan Fullerton is a middle school educator living in Lawrence Kansas. He is, however masochistically, a passionate fan of the Kansas City Royals. Ryan can be found on BlueSky at @ryanfullerton.bsky.social.