He Got What He Wanted--and Finds It Is Wanting

Ah, the dreams of a 6-year-old boy. At that age, I longed to live near Disneyland and a major league baseball park. Now, here I am. Disneyland is a few freeway exits from my north Santa Ana home. Anaheim Stadium is even closer.

So why am I feeling so troubled?

The answer lies in the past.

I’ll never forget that first visit to Disneyland. My family packed into our new blue station wagon and traveled down from Santa Cruz in the summer of 1964. The Magic Kingdom sparkled as it can only in the eyes of a child.

We rambled through Sleeping Beauty’s Castle and cowered at the sight of African tribesmen and the bellowing hippos on the Jungle Ride. At my insistence, we stayed a few blocks away at the Space Age Lodge, with its swooshing-asteroid decor and shuttle van featuring a fake rocket mounted on the roof.

As we drove back to Northern California, I was struck with the singular sense of disappointment only a kid can feel--the trauma of leaving such a special place. If only I could live near Disneyland!

That same year, I experienced another first. With my best friend and his parents, I attended my first major-league baseball game, at Candlestick Park, home of the San Francisco Giants.

Perched on our seats under the chilly blanket of fog that always seems to shroud Candlestick on summer days, Mark and I pulled on our trusty child-size baseball gloves. I recall that some older kid--he must have been at least 15--turned around in his seat and smirked at us. “You’ll never be able to catch a foul ball with those little mitts,” he said, gloating.

Then came the crack of a bat, bright, clean baseball was whistling its way toward us. Mark and I rose with the rest of the crowd.

We never had a chance. The ball hit the cement lip of the upper deck over our heads, then ricocheted into the throng a dozen rows in front of us. The excitement etched the moment forever in my memory.

Now my youthful wishes have come true. In June, my wife and I moved to a neighborhood of quaint old houses just a few miles from Disneyland and even closer to the concrete edifice that is Anaheim Stadium.

This was it. I had finally arrived.

But the dreams of the 6-year-old boy have evaporated with the decades.

Disneyland now seems more a bother than a delight. A few weeks ago, we visited the amusement park with my vacationing sister and her family. I could barely stomach the $23.50 admission fee. For that, you get no E tickets, no Carrousel of Progress.

The crowds seemed oppressive, closing in on all sides like castaway extras from “The Ten Commandments” seeking their own version of the promised land. All I could see was the blaze of lights, the commercialization and glitter of a new generation. (At least I was taller than the sign that kept me off the Autotopia in my first visit.)

Like well-trained lab rats, we headed for the shortest line: the 3-D movie short “Captain Eo,” starring Michael Jackson. I marveled at the special effects, but something felt hollow inside.

I looked at the kids seated around me, absorbed, eyes dancing with Jackson’s every pirouette. What was this feeling? It seemed akin to that first Christmas morning I decided to sleep in rather than rush out to see what was under the tree. Maybe it wasn’t Disneyland that had changed so much.

So it is with ballparks. Anaheim Stadium is a fine place, but the team that takes the field there could never be mine.

When I attended an Angels-Cleveland Indians game a few months ago, I felt lost. The names of the players on the two American League squads seemed as strange as those on a troop roster for the French Foreign Legion. I felt an affinity only for Chili Davis, a former San Francisco Giant.

As the Angels bolted into the lead, I burrowed in my seat, chomping on my hot dog to pass the time. I found more entertainment in watching a buffoon-like young father cheer on the Angels with his toddler son.

We left the game early, returning home in time for the nightly neighborhood show.

Each evening at promptly 9:30, the Disneyland fireworks billow into the sky a few scant miles from our home.

The first time I heard the distant reverberations, I wondered whether there had been a refinery explosion. By the third time, I knew it was Disneyland. For me, the jubilant display now seems cold, calculated.

Echoes of the past. One can never reclaim those pure childhood emotions of joy, of Disneyland days and baseball dreams, of feelings unfettered by the trouble of deadlines and responsibilities and the other trappings of adulthood.

The boom-boom-boom of the Disneyland fireworks hopscotched among the houses. I wasn’t there anymore. I could never really return.