Geronimo! (And not the Cesar who used to play for the Reds.)

[captainsblog]

I usually don't cross-post from the baseball blog, but I also usually don't write Doctor Who drabbles over there, either, so here you go, just this once:



The short flight into LGA was almost over, the seat back and tray table were back in their upright and locked position, the flight attendant checked for final beverage items among the incoming flight of expatriate New Yorkers, and the still-new but inevitable sight of Citi Field now occupied the hallowed ground of Willets Point on the edge of the airport runways that....

BLOODY HELL!

As the plane maintained its slow descent, I saw the impossible happening outside my window seat. No, not K-Rod saving a close game; some miracles are too implausible even for science fiction. Yet before my eyes, the Elysian-field brick of my team's home field Met-amorphised into exposed and colorfully-dotted steel. Quirky outfield fences became uniform. The quaint centerfieldy scoreboard collapsed to the ground with a palpable THUD pulling us slightly from our seats, before disappearing just as a new one formed from nothing in the right hand corner of the open horseshoe. 

It was Shea, and yet it wasn't. It was slightly smaller in each level except for the middle tier, now double-decked with what appeared to be skyboxes. And on the edge of the outfield seats stood a most definite Shake Shack.

We'd rebuilt it.We had the technology. Or at least SOMEONE did; someone who, I saw when the plane turned for its final approach, was parallel-landing his own craft into the car park still bearing the plaques of the original plate and pitchers mound of Our Old Shea Stadium. A craft appearing, for all the world, to be a 1960s London Metropolitan Police emergency call box.

----

Worp! Worp! Worp!

I ran from the arrival gate and grabbed the first cab I saw outside.  "Citi Field, and hurry!"

"What field you talking about?"

"The ballpark, man! I just saw the most amazing thing!"

"Of course you did! Shea is where the Amazins play, after all," he replied, flooring it and arriving in front of Gate C in record time.

For once in my life, though, I did not want to go inside, for there, thirty feet and three inches between the plate and pitcher plaques, was the still-glowing TARDIS. As the door opened, I wondered which Doctor would emerge. Nine would be appropriate out of sheer numerological irony, but cases could be made for any before or since, except,....

Black slacks. Dirty white sneakers. A racing-striped Mets jersey with the number 16 on it, and, of course, a bow tie.

"How's about them Home Run Apples," he said.  "That's right. I'm the 16th Doctor."

----

I was still rather in shock from it all, but gradually it started to make sense.

Doctor Who first appeared on BBC television at 17:15 GMT on 23 November 1963.  Granted, our people, and even theirs, were a bit preoccupied with other historical events at that time, but the franchise clearly shared a time and place with the ballpark that was, by then, just getting its finishing touches put on for the season to come.  When the Beatles invaded a year after that, the ground became almost de facto property of the Crown. I'd vaguely known about the horse farms in Kentucky, but never suspected Her Majesty's influence extended this close to home.

The Doctor's rounds began again in earnest in 2005, just as the writing was being put on Shea's rickety outfield walls. While his story remained faithful to his own series past, the Mets spent most of their final four years at Shea, and their first in the new place, ignoring most of theirs, instead favouring an even older series on the BBC (Brooklyn Broadcasting Company) that most modern fans had little connection to.

It was wrong. For all intents and purposes, the Jackie Robinson Rotunda had a crack straight through it. And as usual, the Doctor was called upon to save the day- and possibly even the Bay.

----

"I tried a few simple moves at first," the Doctor intoned. "Sacking Castillo and that Perez bloke; what was wrong with you people leaving that time rift go for so long?"

"That was you?!?," I feigned surprise. "We'd wondered if the Wilpons could afford to eat the salary with this Madoff thing hanging over them."

Doc grinned. "You mean that nice man that's been getting such good returns for all the tea-drinking little old ladies in Finchley? I just set the controls for 1979 and slipped a few shares of Microsoft and Berkshire-Hathaway into his safe deposit box. Bloody fool won't be able to go broke if he TRIES now."

I looked over at the clean, spacious, yet Shea-ier venue over our shoulder. "But THIS! How did you...."

"Ah, that took a bit more energy," the Doctor replied. "I knew I could never break the Wilpons of their love affair with their Dodgers, so I....made them fall out of love with them."

Now I was confused. "How do you mean?"

The Doctor was in. "Funny game, this Base Ball you colonists made up. It really is one of inches, and seconds of time. One little pebble in a little different spot on the pitch, and things can go in completely different directions. Remember all those years in the 1950s where the Yankees won out over the Dodgers in seven games, year after year?"

"Except 1955," I remembered.

"Brilliant! Only it never happened, after some BBC sportswriter got that Thompson chap a little too drunk the night before that 1951 playoff game, and Ralph Branca got him AND Willie Mays out. The Giants didn't win the pennant! The Giants didn't win the pennant!"

"So the string of Yankee victories,...." 

"Not that, either. Brooklyn won that one, and all of the next six. Oh, the team still left town, and the Giants followed them west, but they did so out of arrogance, and nobody cried a tear of regret."

Now I understood. Not much had changed in the present world- the Mets still needed to be, still got their ballpark by the bay, still grew into the team I loved- but the key players at the ownership level never had the misguided longings that led them to take our team away from its time and back to an older one I'd never known.

----

"You going to stay for the opener?," I had to ask.

"Erm, sorry, but I've left a bit of an insurrection involving some Weeping Angels that we've got to attend to."

"I'd weep, too, if I had to share a media market with the goddam Dodgers," I said. "Wait- what do you mean, we?"

"My Companion, of course," the Doctor replied. "Picked her up back in some of those late 50s music halls; always did have a spot of luck with the singing type."

From inside the TARDIS, I saw a strangely familiar face, under the equally familiar white hat:



"I had to bring her back this once, though," the Doctor said. "Now, she's right back where she belongs."

"Anything you can do about the division race this year?," I asked.

Doc just smiled. "Go inside; you'll see."

----

Through the familiar gate, across the much-wider concourse, up the amazingly functioning escalators, and to my mezzanine seat I walked. And there, on the pristine outfield wall, I knew what the Doctor meant: