Thirty years ago today, I spent an afternoon in the Denver Bears' nearly deserted stadium, watching a stupid Triple A baseball game and hoping Bobby Kennedy wouldn't die.

To reach Dan Bernstein: Call (909) 782-7532. FAX (909) 782-7572. Write: Box 792, Riverside 92502. E-mail him at D.Bernstein@pe.net

I was 18 and, like many other Americans that day, I was wandering around in a sickened stupor. Just the night before, I had watched Kennedy claim victory in the California primary -- "It's on to Chicago and let's win there." Then I went to bed. I've never regretted it. I fell asleep knowing my candidate had won. I was a Kennedy man all the way. Well, maybe a Kennedy kid. I was a little young (11) to be a full-fledged John F. Kennedy man, even though I did stay up very late to watch the 1960 election returns. By 1968, although still too young to vote (18-year-olds only got the vote in '71), I was firmly in the Bobby Kennedy camp. I admired his compassion for people who had so much less than he did. I was gripped by his fiery eloquence and his disarming humor. And his magnetism. When he plunged into a crowd, the Secret Service agents latched onto him while civilians literally ripped away his clothes and stole his cuff links.

The tragedy of the 1960s is well-documented. Assassinations, all manner of rioting and Vietnam, our TV war. But one reason they were so tragic is the '60s were so swollen with possibility. The cynicism that now chokes our politics was being incubated even then. But it was still far from malignant. Lyndon Johnson had stepped aside, weakened by Eugene McCarthy. Bobby Kennedy would pull us out of this -- the war, the poverty, the racial hatreds. That was his mission. This slight, steely man had been tempered by the deaths of his brother and Martin Luther King Jr. There had to be a reason for all that had happened. This was his time.

This, at least, was the romantic calculus of an 18-year-old who knew he wasn't going to war (asthma) and didn't think it foolish to cast about for heroes. (Mickey Mantle, on his last legs, would retire at the end of the '68 season. Bobby Kennedy's ascension would guarantee a smooth transition).

But it wasn't easy to be a Bobby Kennedy man. The proper thing -- the moral thing, and don't think we didn't talk a lot about the moral thing -- would have been to support McCarthy. He's the one who gave LBJ the shove. (Some would argue that the proper thing would have been to support Richard Nixon. I confess this never occurred to me.)

I couldn't warm up to McCarthy, and I felt guilty about it. But he was just too smart. I worried that if I ever met him, which, admittedly, would have been unlikely, he'd ask me to analyze a poem.

Kennedy took all kinds of flak, partly because he deserved it. He moved to New York and ran for the U.S. Senate. He watched LBJ crumble, then announced for the presidency.

"If it's a girl, we'll name her Ruth," Kennedy announced when it became obvious his wife, Ethel, was pregnant. "Then people can't say I'm ruthless."

But it does no good to disarm your critics if you can't deliver a message. Kennedy delivered. Whether he was sitting beside a fasting, weakened Cesar Chavez or motorcading, in shirtsleeves, along an LA thoroughfare on a bright, sunny California day, he carried the message that the good ones, whether they're Reagans or Kennedys, always carry: a message of hope, of optimism, of a better day.

California was make-or-break for Bobby Kennedy. Even a win, however, didn't didn't guarantee him the nomination, let alone the presidency. Shortly after midnight, he declared victory.

I remember sitting in that minor league ballpark on a windy spring afternoon, trying not to think about brain damage, trying to turn back the clock. Mostly, I felt profoundly sad. Strange that it felt like such a personal loss. But it did.

I try not to think about Bobby Kennedy that much anymore. Maybe it's because when I do, the image of his toothy smile melts too quickly into a man lying on a kitchen floor, eyes wide open, blood pouring out of his head. Whoever took that photo captured the promise and tragedy of the times. Thirty years later, I'm not sure we've fully recovered -- or ever will.

To reach Dan Bernstein: Call (909) 782-7532. FAX (909) 782-7572. Write: Box 792, Riverside 92502. E-mail him at D.Bernstein@pe.net

Published 6/5/1998