The Chambliss Tapes

  The Chambliss Tapes

  By Donald Capone

  "It's hit deep to right center--that ball is outta here! The Yankees win the pennant!"

  --Yankees announcer Phil Rizzuto, October 14, 1976

  "We must use time as a tool, not as a crutch."

  --John F. Kennedy

  My girlfriend Renna was on a roll.

  "You'll get caught, you'll get killed, you'll end up in an insane asylum, you won't make it back, you'll change the course of history!" On the word history Renna's voice hit a pitch I had never heard before. Shrill, yet breathy as she ran out of air. You can only argue a point so many times.

  "He's my brother," I said.

  "Was your brother. Warren died, Jon, twenty-five years ago. It may not be as easy to change as you think."

  "I have to try!"

  We were in the living room of my small apartment, Renna on one end of the sofa, me on the other. The TV flickered silently in front of us, muted as we got deeper into the discussion.

  "You want to fix something that is over and done with, but what will you fuck up in the process?" She stood and paced in front of me, her hands moving as punctuation to her statements. "You're obsessed. And what about us? Are you ready to throw away what we have on a whim?"

  "I'm not throwing anything away, and it's not a whim." Now I stood too, grabbed her arms and turned her toward me. "It'll work, I just need the chance!"

  "Time will tell," she said, and laughed a mirthless laugh.

  Time travel is what we were arguing about, with all the temptation, taboos, and possibilities it suggests.

  I work for Sports Illuminated, the media and historical group slowly, but surely cataloguing every major sporting event of the 20th century and earlier via time travel. We're sort of like the Library of Congress, but we work for profit. We obtain exclusive video of legendary sports events, then sell it every which way you can think of. Marketing to its fullest. Along the way we occasionally dispel some legendary sports myths, but what we gain is incredible. Ruth, Gehrig, Cobb, Abner fucking Doubleday laying down the rules of baseball.

  I remember my interview with Sports Illuminated. Xavier, the big cheese, had been one of the innovators of SI, putting together the team of scientists and making the first trips back in time himself. He looked over my doctored resume and was impressed with my double major of art and science (really, I had a degree in neither). The logical side of my brain would understand the intricacies of time travel, while my artistic side would see the abstract end of it, the possibilities and the dangers. I was a good candidate for the open position of time traveler/reporter.

  Xavier looked up from my resume and said, "If something went wrong while you were in the past--somebody died who wasn't supposed to, say--what would you do?"

  Now, I hadn't yet been through SI's orientation, six-month training course, or 3-month apprenticeship with a senior time traveler, but he must have been going for my gut reaction, testing my common sense.

  "Don't make it worse," I said. "Don't try to fix it. Come back and let SI work out the next step."

  A slight smile pulled up the right side of his mouth, as if he was pleased with my answer but didn't want to tip his hand.

  "When can you start?" he said.

  Let me tell you about the mechanics of time travel. Well, maybe I should say rules, not mechanics. I have no idea of the science behind it. People know how to drive cars, but that doesn't mean they can make their own, or even explain how everything runs together in unison to get you from point A to point B. But I can get from time A to time B.

  Let me say straight off in case you're wondering--there is no room for error, no chance of a stow-away fly mucking up the works like in that old movie. Everything is done by DNA recognition. The time traveler's DNA code is programmed in, and no other being with an unrecognizable DNA can hitch a ride. Simple as that. Either you match the DNA strand or you don't.

  So, I was talking about the rules. We have strict rules at SI. The main one being don't fuck with the past. Of course, SI puts it a little more elegantly than that. The Four Commandments of SI's time travel are:

  Rule one: You must not alter the events of the past to change the future. Easier said than done. The laws of physics come into play here--two objects can't occupy the same space at the same time.So this is a hard rule to adhere to. I mean, if I go back in time and do something as simple as stand on a street corner, I may be occupying space that should have been taken by someone else. A simple thing like that, theoretically, can affect the future. The person who should have been standing in my place is now three feet to the right or left. And the person who should have been there is now three feet to the right or left. Get my drift? An out of control car, an errant bullet, a falling safe could all take out a different person than was fated to die.

  On the other hand, history is harder to change than you might think. Events usually unfold the way they are meant to (which sounds suspiciously like destiny), especially when you're dealing with the superstitious world of sports. It has led the otherwise skeptical, dedicated men of science at SI to consider the possibility of fate. But that doesn't mean they like to tempt fate.

  Rule two: You must not have sex, ever, while you are traveling. Technically, this can be filed under the first rule, especially if the result is pregnancy or the introduction of an STD that the science of the time can't handle. But SI likes to spell it out for you: No Sex While Traveling!

  Rule three: No betting allowed on past sporting events. This rule is hard to break anyway, since SI only provides you with a limited allowance. I guess you could mug someone, place the bet, and come back a rich man. But it's too risky, and not worth the chance of landing in jail and not completing your mission.

  Rule four: Don't tell anyone in the past the nature of your mission and do not, under any circumstances, make contact with your relatives. I was about to break that rule.

  I settled in at SI, enjoyed the assignments, and made good money. I was proving myself, and after two years I had become a trusted young traveler. Some days I'd even forget the real reason I had wanted to work for SI in the first place.

  All along I was biding my time, waiting for the assignment that fell within my "Warren parameters." The parameters were simple: it had to be during the period he was alive, February 1976 through December 1980. The assignment landed on my desk on a Monday morning without much fanfare. Xavier, or as everyone called him, Exey, dropped it off casually--just another job--told me to read up, watch the footage, get the art department to work up some storyboards on what shots they wanted recorded. I opened the folder to see a black and white shot of Chris Chambliss standing on his tip-toes after his famous swing, watching the flight of the ball as it streaked toward the right field stands. I knew the moment, I knew the setting, and I knew the year. I closed the folder.

  A flush of excitement wrapped up with guilt, nervousness, dread, and a strange sense of inevitability rushed through me. Finally, this was my chance.

  I had to calm myself.

  I grabbed the folder (as if I let it out of my sight someone else would get the gig) and headed for the mens' room. I entered a stall, closed and locked the door, and sat down. My hands shook as I opened the folder and flipped through the printouts, the copies of the newspaper articles of the day, the report written up by Exey himself.

  Sports Illuminated

  Travel Itinerary

  Report prepared by: Xavier S.

  Date of assignment: Monday, March 27, 2006

  Date of departure: Thursday, March 30, 2006, 8:20 p.m.

  Point of Departure: Pod #3

  Traveler(s): Jon Pacone

  Destination date: Thursday, October 14, 1976

  Location: Yankee Stadium, B
ronx, New York

  Event: American League Championship Series, Game 5, NY Yankees versus KC Royals

  Weather: 48 degrees F, slightly cloudy, no precip

  Coverage needed: To be determined by art dept.

  Significance of Event: Chris Chambliss, Yankees firstbaseman hits game and pennant-winning homerun in bottom of the ninth inning off Royals righthander Mark Littel to break 6-6 tie and clinch the Yanks first pennant in 12 years. Fans added to the excitement by swarming the playing field, nearly preventing Chambliss from completing his circuit around the basepaths.

  Time Allowance: 3 hours

  I needed to gather hi-res digital video of it all, from the pitch, to the swing that launched the homerun, to the hundreds of fans that swarmed the field in the aftermath, nearly preventing Chris Chambliss from touching homeplate and making the homerun legitimate. I needed to be first on the field, I needed to have my three miniature cameras rolling, I needed to be prepared to take--or throw--a punch if necessary.

  The old-time reporters with more seniority got the plum jobs: Babe Ruth's called shot in the '32 World Series (yes, he really did call the homerun), James Naismith's creation of basketball in 1891, the early days of hockey and football, Jesse Owens sticking it to Hitler in the 1936 Olympics. All the events for which there is little or no video. My specialty is baseball, and as a young reporter my first tasks were to cover events that had already been covered by television, but which were pre-ESPN, pre-in-depth, pre-digital. I was to augment the existing footage, get the better camera angle, fill in the gaps.

  The assignment I gave myself would break all the rules, and in the least get me fired if caught, and that was in the best of scenarios. The thing is--and this is something I've kept well-hidden from my bosses for the two years I've worked for SI--my family home is less than ten miles from the Stadium, in the suburban New York town of Sunset Hill. SI's time travel rules forbid you from getting within fifty miles of your family home. The reason is to eliminate any temptation to make contact with a relative, and inadvertently or intentionally alter the course of history.

  I was a cub reporter in terms of experience, but I wasn't a kid. I was thirty years-old and had been working on my plan for years, covering the tracks of my past, changing documents, eliminating references to the Sunset Hill address. After I was hired by SI I had to put in my time, gain the respect and trust of my bosses. Wait.

  I was scheduled to have three hours in 1976. Right there in the bathroom stall I began to calculate and plan what I really wanted to do--go to the house I grew up in and rescue my identical twin brother from the fate that otherwise awaited him.

  I was born in February, 1976, at 3:52 in the afternoon. My identical twin brother Warren was born four minutes earlier. We weren't born in New York, but in my mother's hometown north of San Francisco, which enabled me to fake my past on my application to SI. But we lived in Sunset Hill.

  By 1980 Warren was dead, my family shattered, and I had begun to live what I thought of as my bogus life, always feeling it wasn't meant to be, it was a mistake. I longed to rewind to the day Warren died, to those quick, few minutes that changed everything. I wanted a do-over.

  I hadn't felt like I'd been living my life for the last twenty-five years. Or at least not the life I was supposed to lead. Without my twin brother I felt incomplete, half of a whole. Maybe you can only understand the feeling if you are a twin. But I knew the way to fix it. If I could pull off my plan, everything would be as it was meant to be. Warren would still be alive.

  Warren died on December 9, 1980, the day after John Lennon was gunned down in New York City. It was a cold winter day, but not cold enough. Warren and I were little, this being two months shy of our fifth birthday. Our family was in the holiday spirit, and there was snow on the ground from a recent dusting, as we headed off to Wilson Woods lake with our ice skates and a thermos of hot chocolate.

  Mom was an ice skater as a kid, competing on the state level with her eye on the Olympics. A bad ankle quashed those hopes, but she never lost her love for the sport and wanted to pass it on to her children. My father played some hockey when he was younger, so he was good on the ice, though not as elegant as Mom. He was the one Warren and I tried to emulate.

  It only takes a second, as these things do.

  While my parents were focused on teaching me the proper way to do something or other, Warren wandered off. He was a fast little bugger on those skates, and before anyone even knew he was gone, he was at the edge of the lake, where the overflow spills into the Hutchinson River. Where the ice breaks up, conceding its hold to the frigid rushing water below.

  As a family we somehow instinctively knew to turn around and look in Warren's direction. He sank straight down as he broke through the ice. It seemed like minutes--though it was only seconds--before his head bobbed up again. It was a hopeful moment, but then he went under again, the rush of water bringing him over the waterfall, one foot in the air, the metal blade gleaming like a distress signal before it disappeared over the edge.

  As a time traveler, the first notion is to return to that day and prevent the accident from happening. But I didn't have the luxury to pick and choose the days that I traveled to. I had to take what I was given. October 14, 1976 would have to do. I'd have to save him as a baby. I realize this opens up whole new avenues of argument: nature versus nurture, etc. As a baby, his personality was just developing; surely removing him from his environment would alter the growth of his personality. By five--or almost five, anyway--he was outgoing, funny, independent. He might not develop into the same person he was destined to be if I snatched him from the crib.

  But what choice did I have?

  I exited the bathroom, clutching the folder tightly to my chest, and left the building. I wanted to talk to Renna in private, and stay off the office phones which recorded every conversation for security reasons.

  Renna was the only person who knew of my plan.

  When it came right down to it, she didn't want me to proceed. After I finally broke through my wall of secrecy and told her of my intentions, we discussed it at length, sometimes with very heated emotions. The truth of my confession brought us closer together, while at the same time driving a wedge between us.

  I was relieved to have someone to discuss my plan with. She had a good mind for the concept of time travel. She was able to bat around the possibilities, intricacies, and consequences of any alterations I might make in the past, just as well as any of the experts at SI. But she knew the odds were against me; knew, really, that she would most likely lose me in the process, one way or another. She spent a lot of time pleading with me to reconsider. She'd argue it was Warren's fate to die.

  I'd argue--maybe this was my fate. That would stop the conversation cold.

  Once outside, I walked away from the building so I wouldn't be within earshot of anyone. I dialed her cell phone and waited. My heart was thumping in my chest, and the thought that she might not answer put a damper on my spirits. I had to share this new assignment with her, though I was also worried what her reaction would be. My plan had only been theoretical up until now, something we argued about but at the end of the day didn't really matter.

  Until now.

  Just before her voicemail would have kicked in she answered.

  "Hi, honey," I said.

  "Hey Jon,' she said. "What's up?"

  When it came down to it, I didn't know what to say. My hesitation told her everything.

  "No," she said.

  "October 1976," I said. "Chambliss."

  " '76? Warren would just be a baby. What are you going to do with a baby?"

  "Save him. Bring him back."

  "Jon, please. Take care of a child? And how would you explain his sudden appearance in 2006?"

  "I'll cross that bridge when I come to it."

  "He was destined to die, Jon."

  We were slipping back into the endless cycle of our usual argument. Except now it wasn't endless. In fact, the end was in sight. Anyway
, we were argued out by this point. As if we were thinking the same thing, Renna sighed, said, "When do you leave?"

  "Thursday."

  "So I have three days left with you."

  "That sounds so final. I'll be back."

  "Will you?"

  "Of course."

  "And how different will the world be because of your actions?" she said.

  "I'll have a brother."

  "That's nice. He'll visit you in jail. Once he's old enough, that is."

  Renna had a point. It wasn't just SI's rules I was planning to break. There are international laws set forth by the Time Travel Commission, governing the use of time travel, and what can and cannot be done. Similar to the laws against human cloning, which are different sciences, obviously, but with the potential to overlap. With the laws, the international society was in essence trying to curb man's curiosity. If you invent something, you have to give it a whirl, right? The atom bomb ring a bell? Imagine this: traveling back to the 1920s and cloning Babe Ruth. Or worse--Hitler. See how it can go wrong? Time travel was too tempting for mankind; laws were passed. So Renna was right--I'd be in some serious shit if I got caught.

  After Warren died my family was never the same. We limped along for another five or six years. It was hard; every birthday I celebrated was also my dead brother's birthday. There was no getting away from what was missing. My parents would look at me and see what Warren would have looked like. I was the constant reminder of their failure. My parents divorced just after my tenth birthday.

  It was too late to save my family; Warren was another matter.

  I went back inside the building, walked the long quiet halls until I reached my desk. I put my headphones on and logged onto the server, called up the film clips of the '76 playoffs. The play-by-play announcers brought the game to life with their vivid descriptions, put me mentally in a time and place I would soon be in physically.

  I closed my eyes and let their words flow through me as I recalled that part of my life that was happy and complete. I saw Warren in front of me, another version of myself. After all this time he almost seemed like an imaginary friend, someone I had made up in my loneliness. My memory had resurrected him over and over throughout the years. Now I would do it for real.