We’re famous for our corn — grow it good and tall like they do in Iowa — so maybe that’s why he got confused, ended up in the ragged centre-field of a ball diamond in Ontario’s luscious Essex County. One Sunday he just walked out of the stalks, hocked a spit in his glove, and stood ready on the balls of his feet.

I was hitting flies, so I smacked a couple his way. He swallowed them up, each one sailing back with a flick of his wrist. I could see that Juice, now our old centre-fielder, had got the hint, and was watching our practice from the stands.

When practice was over Ty Cobb came to me and said, “You guys need players?”

“We can always use players,” I said.

He looked around. Our park wasn’t much to look at: dandelions covered the outfield, weeds sprouted along the base paths, and rusted light standards groaned in the wind. When tractors roar by during a game, a cloud of dust rises and floats over the field. The umpire has to call time until it settles — usually long enough for us to drink a quick beer.

“Is this heaven?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “It’s Woodslee.”

There’s no such thing as a bad baseball movie. Something about them compels me to sit through even the corniest moments because, hey, it’s baseball. But Cobb didn’t end up with the rest of them playing ball in an Iowa cornfield. I’m talking Field of Dreams here, with Kevin Costner and the tearjerker game of catch with his old man’s ghost. Cobb must have been floating around all this time, looking for a team that needed him. He found us. We are the Woodslee Muskrats, a team that’s been in existence since 1948, and had its heyday in the 60’s when our farming fathers were winning Canadian championships. But things have disintegrated. Until we met Cobb, we’d won only seven games in three years.

After practice I expected Ty to walk back through the cornfield and into the mystery of the after-life, but he wouldn’t leave. He just stood there waiting, as though he expected me to take care of him, make sure he got a hotel room and a decent meal. I couldn’t afford that, and neither can our team budget, so I took him to my place.

Things were quiet at the house. My wife had been moping, not saying much but cleaning things like never before, taking on new projects like rotating the canned goods, label out, and putting our deck of cards in order, by suit and number. I couldn’t blame her. It was going to be our first. I knew the best thing would be to try again, pronto, but I’d been tip-toeing around the idea, and the house, for months.

“Sharon, this is Ty Cobb.”

Ty took off his ball cap and held it between yellow hands. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

She grunted over her shoulder but was busy finding matching lids for our Tupperware containers. She failed to notice the dusty southerner wearing a vintage uniform and metal baseball spikes on our linoleum floor.

“He’s going to be living with us for a while,” I said. “He’s going to help our ball team win some games.”

“That’s great honey,” she said, wiping the counter for the umpteenth time.

“That’s great.”

I gave Cobb a spot in our basement. I plan on furnishing the room when the kids arrive. I’ll make a playroom and such. But for Cobb I just brought down an old mattress and tucked it in the corner. Sharon wasn’t pleased when she found him tossing grounders against the cinder block, but Ty has that old Southern politeness and charm, even if he’s remembered more for rudeness and racism. He can pour it on when he wants to, and Sharon ate it up. She even came out to his first game.

He hit the heck out of the ball. Not that it helped — we still managed to lose. But Cobb stole three bases, went 4 for 4 with two doubles and a triple, and scored three runs. Damned if he didn’t hold his hands apart on the bat about six inches, just like in the pictures.

We signed him on our roster as Tyler Cawb, and told the other team he was from Scarborough. We couldn’t very well tell the truth. You’re not allowed to play in this league if you’ve ever got paid for playing ball, even if your last at-bat was in 1928. Here it’s simply for the love of the game. And the beer.

I work during the week at a tool and die shop. When I went to work, I’d leave Cobb and Sharon at home. She told me he never left the basement, but kept things tidy. He loved my workbench and fiddled with stuff, used my electric grinder to keep his spikes sharp for the next time he slid into second with eyes for the shortstop’s leg. The grinder, he said, saves a lot of time he used to spend filing.

If you’ve seen the movie you’ll remember Ty Cobb wanted to play ball on the farm in Iowa, but Shoeless Joe and the rest of the guys wouldn’t let him. “None of us could stand the son-of-a-bitch when he was alive, so we told him to stick it!” was one memorable Ray Liotta line. And even in the year 2008, 47 years after he supposedly passed from this earth, Ty Cobb wasn’t much different.

He didn’t bring beer when it was his turn. He yelled at Bruiser for picking dandelions during a pitching change, and called Lester a jerk for letting a ball slip through his legs. We forgave him these things, but when Cobb went 5 for 5 with three doubles and two homers in a game we still managed to lose, he came charging out to the parking lot, mad as hell and wondering why we couldn’t pull out a win.

“Aren’t there any better leagues than this?” he said.

“No one plays baseball anymore,” I said, rifling through the cooler for another beer. I tossed him one. “Hockey’s the big thing now.”

“Hockey?” he said, his yellow hands twisting the cap.

“We got a beer league going Friday nights this winter. Wanna play?”

Cobb sat in the grass. “No thanks,” he said, tilting his head back and swallowing his beer.

Although no one in town seemed to recognise our new centre-fielder, they did begin to appreciate our new, old-time approach to the game, and they showed it by coming to the park in droves. Our rise in the standings pulled Sharon away from the kitchen, convinced her there’s more to life than tackling dust above the cupboards. She would even cheer now and again, a little reservedly. She started to act like her old self. Seeing the other players’ kids running around behind the dugouts put a smile on her face.

We were still trying, Sharon and I, though it was hard to get anything accomplished with Ty Cobb living in our basement. The vent above his mattress led right to our room. He could hear everything if we got too loud. But we weren’t getting too loud. We were just going through the motions.

Game after game our team improved. The guys played better around Cobb, ran a little harder, swung a bit smoother, mostly because Cobb would yell at them if they don’t. It’s tough to enjoy your post-game beverages when you hear the crack crack crack of ball after ball batted around the cage. Thanks to Cobb, we had a sniff of the playoffs, and we were almost there, had a winning streak of five games, when it happened.

I came home from a long shift to find Sharon gone, and Cobb staring at the television. He was watching the Major League Baseball All-Star game.
Barry Bonds was at the plate, thick with quilted muscle, stepping into a pitch and drilling it to the wall. Sammy Sosa arrived at the dish with a cheek full of chaw, and sent his burly arms swinging, roping the ball over the fence.

“I’ll be damned,” Cobb muttered, and with a straight but solemn face said, “You lied to me.”

I cracked an after-work beer and sat beside him. Cobb was silent as Randy Johnson poised over the mound. By the time that long lightning-bolt of an arm released the ball, it was halfway to the plate, a whiplash of a fastball that caught the corner and sent batters fuming, smacking their helmets in futility.
Cobb was never shy of words, but after the game he escaped downstairs for the rest of the afternoon. For once I didn’t hear the run of the grinder, or the whiff of his swing as he practised it in the mirror.

He slipped in the next few games. He wasn’t the same player he was when he came roaring out of the cornfield gates. His line drives didn’t have the same punch, and his legs let a few balls drop in the gap. He began to get sloppy with warm-ups, wouldn’t dig so hard into the dirt at home, wasn’t bunting for singles and stealing second but trying to pull the ball over the fence, and flying out instead. Soon he became the last guy to leave the parking lot post-game party, and the first guy there.

But despite Cobb’s slide, we snuck into the playoffs, a one game battle against the Harrow Barnbusters on a Sunday afternoon. The whole town was there. Sharon sat on the top row, screaming her lungs out.

The game went back and forth. They scored a couple; we battled back. They hit Buzz for a few runs, Bruiser sent one over the fence, we tied. Juice poked in an RBI, and we had the lead.

I was on the mound, placed myself out there to put the game away. I wasn’t going to let this chance slip through someone else’s fingers. I was mowing them down, walked a pair, but had two outs in the last inning when I threw a fastball on the corner, and watched it pop up to centre.

The whole town watched the ball reach its peak about tree height, then tumble down. Cobb was under it. Our infielders jogged towards the dugout. Our outfielders trotted off the field. We all stopped in our tracks, however, upon hearing the ball smack against an old leather glove, then thud against the ground and rustle in the grass.

Ty stood in the outfield, his toes twitching in his dusty spikes. The winning run crossed the plate and the Barnbusters swamped each other on the field.
Sharon jumped off the stands, came running through the fence and across the infield. She wrapped her arms around him.

“My poor baby,” she said.

I grabbed a beer from the dugout and walked out to where Cobb stood. I put it in his hands. “I ruined everything,” he said, and tossed the beer to the ground.

“You tried your best — that’s all that matters,” Sharon said as she consoled him across the grass.

I took one last look at the ball field before driving my family home.