Three Trunks, Part II

The sun had set several hours ago yet the office around the young intern buzzed with energy. It almost felt as if the energy being generated from the building was emanating it own light and even powering the whole city. In some ways, what happened in and next to that long, six story brick building, did power this jewel of a city in the throne of one of America’s great water ways.

“Did he call yet?”

“Yeah…yes…about five minutes ago,” stuttered the Young Intern, caught in a day-dream, “they are on the ground.”

“What about the truck?”

“Should be here soon.”

“It should have been here and hour ago.”

“Yeah…something about ‘South of the Border’…not sure what that means.”

“As soon as it gets here, you get there. We need the trunk.”

“No problem.”

The Young Intern can’t remember the last time he saw his own bed. A year ago, he was sitting in a college classroom counting down the days to graduation wondering what lay before him. He had only been on this job for five months and they had been some of the most challenging five months of his life. Waiting for that trunk in the truck…waiting for that bus…it felt like it was the first time he had a chance to take it in. For the moment, it was his only job.

He starred out across the hall and saw the lights flickering and and off in a dizzying pattern through the window. They were testing the scoreboards and the video screen in the stadium. He walked over to the window and gazed at the field. He would grow to love that view. Two stories up, over looking the field from across the concourse, especially at night. The field was perfect in the dimmed down stadium lights. In this state, it seemed to have a story to tell. A story of a game that had just been played or the story of a game not yet played. A lit field, in the middle of the night begged to be played on. Begged to be listened to.

He loved baseball. It was his first true love. He was lost before he had found baseball. It was baseball that found him, actually a baseball…a little roller…a ground ball that was trickling that had found an uninspired teenager struggling to figure out where exactly hit fit into the world. It didn’t just inspire him to chase down his dreams…it inspired him to dream a big dream and then to have the faith to chase it down, even when hope had been abandoned.

Like any love, baseball would break his heart in the way that love is suppose to break your heart…the kind of break that makes it stronger. Eventually, however, the love would betray him in the form of drugged up stars, childish antics, greed and a lost World Series. He would walk away from baseball, only occasionally looking back to take a look.

Seven months ago, he was a college graduate working in a job he hated, barely keeping his head above water when the magic of the game grabbed hold of him in the form of the Iron Bird and the unbreakable record. He was reminded of the love he felt for The Game. He was reminded that the impossible could be possible.

The trickling baseball spoke out to him again. It came and found him after all those years. It came and told him that it was time to dream again. It told him it was time to have faith again. And it was with him when he got in his broken down car that October morning in the drizzling rain. And it was with him when he boarded that train to enter the city. He didn’t have a plan except to tell his friends that he was going to go knock on some doors for a job. He knew he was only going to knock on one door.

He believed in faith and God and that small miracles do happen everyday. You just need to open yourself up to those miracles. Miracles can happen, if you are willing to put forth the effort of faith to meet it. That trickling ground ball…his faith, brought him down to the city and to the front desk of the team and had him ask to talk to someone even after the receptionist made it clear that she wasn’t going to allow it. The miracle was the head of HR walking by at that exact moment. The miracle was that she had just been commissioned by the Director of PR to find someone to fill a role that he the young man was looking for. The miracle was the Director of PR believing in fate. Somewhere, in that old brick building, faith met up with a miracle and a dream came true.

Six months later, there he was, on the inside, staring down at the field. The team had broken camp earlier in the day and were heading home. It was a team that had completely rebuilt itself in the last six months. It was a team that was full of promise and excitement. It was a team that inspired new dreams and new journeys of faith. And they were on their way home. They were, literally flying north for the summer.

The young mans eyes were still trained on the field, but they no longer saw the field. He was tired. He was scared. He was unsure of himself. He was the quiet, reserved type living in a world of giant personalities and even bigger egos. He was a kid. He was just the kid waiting for the trunk. He was just a kid waiting for something bigger than him…bigger than all the egos…bigger than even the stadium. And even though he was just a kid, he knew he was living a man’s dream and he would not have wanted to be anywhere else than in that old building staring at an empty field, waiting for that trunk.