Tears on a Field of Dreams

There’s something about baseball, a compelling spirituality, that attracts grown men to its fold.

They come running like little boys across a field of dreams to their place at bat, hunched and ready for a waist-high fast ball they’re going to put over a fence as high as heaven.

When the ball does come streaking across the plate like a little white comet, some hit it and some go down in a spin that seems to last until the crowd goes home and the lights go out.

Wes Clements was one of those kids. He could hit a ball so high it scattered clouds, but he could strike out too with a burst of energy that rustled leaves a mile away.

He figures it was the strikeouts that kept him from realizing an ambition that always seemed so near and yet so far. He wanted to play in the majors.

Born in L.A., Clements toiled in the trenches of baseball for a decade from Houston to Detroit, playing with the farm teams, slamming home runs and striking out with the consistency of some kind of flawed hitting machine.

You couldn’t help but notice the power in his swing, the way he’d rip the hide off the ball, and a lot of people did notice. But they noticed the strikeouts too, and they told him he could never make the majors doing that.

When they eased him out of U.S. baseball, he played in Mexico for a couple of seasons, but called it quits when he seemed to be going nowhere. He came home in 1989 to sell insurance and coach Little League, and had adjusted to life in the shadows when the strike was called.

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I guess it’s hard getting over baseball. Clements’ mom remembers him being a natural from the time he was 7 months old.

“His uncle rolled him a ball one day,” she says, “and he picked it up and threw it back so straight and hard we couldn’t believe it. He’s loved baseball ever since.”

Clements was good at the game. At 6-feet-4, he led his teams in home runs at both El Camino College and the University of Arizona. When he was chosen to play Triple-A ball, his mother was sure he’d make it to the majors someday. She worked near Anaheim Stadium and looked forward to the time he’d be there.

At age 36, Clements knew how badly she wanted that for him, and when the opportunity came to play again, he grabbed for it.

He showed up at Pierce College one day in February to try out, and was the only one to be chosen by the Toronto Blue Jays for their training camp.

“I dropped everything,” Clements said by phone the other day from Florida. “It was another chance to give my mom something she’s always wanted.” Rena Clements raised Wes and three other children on her own, and Wes, at least, feels a debt to her he must repay.

He was the oldest guy at the Jays’ training camp, but that didn’t stop him from batting .300 in 25 preseason games. “I was doing OK,” he said, “and was sure to make the team in the regular season.”

The regular season was just a day away for the Blue Jays when the strike ended, and the dreams of all the replacement guys, the ones they called clowns and bumblers, went drifting off like a child’s dream.

Clements got a kiss goodby and a ticket home, and it was all over.

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I talked to him Saturday when he was still hoping there’d be some kind of miracle and he’d be on first base when the Jays played at Anaheim.

His mother’s birthday was in April and he figured it would be the best present he could give her. He’d put one in the stands for her, the way he did when she came to watch him in college and then in the minors.

Clements felt he’d been given this second chance for a reason and intended to make the most of it. He had overcome everything up to now, even a doctor telling him after a physical that he had a heart condition and was finished.

“They called it a valve problem,” Clements said over the phone. “I cried like a baby and said I’d do anything to play, even sign a waiver. I couldn’t do this to my mom.”

A more complete test revealed that the problem wasn’t serious and that he could play. It was all coming together when the strike ended.

Clements had already been given a plane ticket to L.A. when I spoke with him Sunday. “I wanted something so simple,” he said in a voice full of emotion. “And now it’s never going to happen.”

He isn’t sure what he’ll do now, but he’s pretty certain his season has ended forever. The little boy in him has stopped running across the field of dreams and is sitting at home plate with the crowd gone and the lights out.

It’s a lousy way to end a game.