ALEXANDRIA. GiveThursday evening 17 June, before returning home, I went to see Moccagatta.
Off the straight of the parterre, which are no longer there but remain so for the Alexandrians. Where on the wall there is a large B of red paint. Besides me there were only the garbage collectors who were sweeping the floor.
Even though the last penalty had been taken hours ago, the spotlights still illuminated the field with that very white, dazzling light. I was reminded of a film that many of my generation loved very much. The Italian translation of the title, «The man of dreams», somewhat takes away from the original «Field of dreams».
It tells of a farmer, played by Kevin Costner who was in vogue at the time. He hears a voice telling him, “If you build it, he’ll come back,” so he builds a baseball field in the Iowa void, among the tall “corn plants”, as we call corn in the dialect.
In that empty field, in that field of dreams, old players from the past actually “come back”. At that moment I imagined that, where a few hours earlier Matteo Rubin had put the most important ball of the last half century into the goal, he was kicking again with his little left-handed Pepetto Lorenzetti, the first idol of me as a child. Toni Colombo, who had met shortly before in the midst of the celebrating fans in Piazza Garibaldi, stopped his opponents again, he who wore the gray jersey most of all, always honored and loved. Paolino Scarrone once more scored Ciccio Marescalco.
Fabio Artico was going to shoot one of the penalties (he must have thought about it for sure, while he was compiling the list of the five nominees). Faina Salvadori took his head off and put in the Parma goalkeeper, as in the match that is still told 49 years later, perhaps a good omen given that the Emilians will return here for the next Serie A championship, and with a world champion in goal.
They were young again egordienti, full of talent and hopes, Alfredo Baloncieri, and Giovanni Ferrari the boy from the “canarola” who will win two Rimet Cups. Bertolini, Banchero, Renato Cattaneo passed precise low shots.
The fùtbol then came to queThe gentleman with the Borsalino on his head who one day as we were leaving the stadium my father introduced me to, and to me as a child he seemed so old in his heavy coat. “He is the surveyor Avalle, he played in the gray and in the national team!” My father said, shaking my hand to get my attention.
In the film, in the end, it turns out that those who had to return were not the old champions, it was actually the father of the protagonist.
In the meeting “of dreams” what united them after so many years and allowed them to meet again was sport, the game. As it was and is for so many of us, with the passion for grays handed down from father to son, which has become a meeting place (and then a regret).
I was alone, ignored by the garbage collectors, looking at the empty stadium on Thursday night, while the spotlights still illuminated the pitch.
I came to paraphrase the cinematic dialogue between father and son:
– Is this heaven?
– No, it’s the Moccagatta.
But it looks like heaven.
