Field of Dreams

For years, the only place I wanted to be was on the shoddy grass soccer fields of Bayonne's 16th Street Park.

Photo by David Clark.

You know, we just don’t recognize the most significant moments of our lives while they’re happening. Back then I thought, ‘Well, there’ll be other days.’ I didn’t realize that that was the only day.

—Dr. Archibald “Moonlight” Graham, Field of Dreams

Note: This story was updated to its book version in October 2023.

Read or listen to “Picado,” a poem I wrote about pick-up soccer.

Three or four nights a week, I’d meet them at 16th Street Park to kick around a soccer ball. It was our ritual—men, young and old, known only by our nicknames: Chombi, Chele, Lupe, Guanaco, Jamón. And me, Batistuta.

The games were picaditos: informal gatherings of construction and white-collar workers, high school students, servers and line cooks—almost all immigrants or sons of immigrants. We arrived at the patchy grass field around 6:30 every night with our fingers crossed, all hoping that we’d be the ones to pull off a nutmeg or rabona and avoid being embarrassed by the few players who had played professionally in Honduras or Colombia before coming north.

We played 5-v-4 or 9-v-8 or 12-v-12 in the outfields of baseball diamonds, where there were no sidelines or out-of-bounds. The goalposts were two backpacks or pairs of sneakers and sweaters balled up and placed five paces apart. The teams were picked by veterans like El Viejo (The Old Man), who waited around beside the goals until the better players showed up so he could pick them for his team. His salad days long gone, he’d enjoy a brief return to glory by teaming up with young headliners like Tarzán, a long-haired Honduran who spoke like a Puerto Rican and broke ankles without ever touching the ball, and JP, an equally slick-footed Ecuadorian who was always decked out in a fresh kit from one of his favorite European club teams.

But everything changed on Sundays, when a veteran Ecuadorian named Armando—who we all knew as Rossi because of the Paolo Rossi Italy jersey he wore—showed up with two small training goals. His arrival brought a civility that was otherwise missing as players toed the line between toying with opponents and provoking them with a slight that could result in a retaliatory forearm across the jaw. When Rossi and El Hombre de Hierro (Iron Man), a 68-year-old who remains the measure for how long I hope to play this magical game, showed up with their crew of mostly older Jehovah’s Witnesses, everyone was on their best behavior. And the best news for me and my friends, who were usually the worst or quietest or most American guys on the field, was that Rossi always picked us for his team.