There is a whole cast and crew here of solid pitchers, hitters and fielders up and down the lineup all carrying good stats, but they only talk about one stat, the big W that goes with every win.
It is almost the end of the season and the Cubs have the most W's in the division even more than the Cardinals which is enough for Cub fans in most years, but not this year; with all the good play and good luck their only regret is that they can't beat the Cardinals in the World Series because the Cardinals won't be there.
CHAPTER 103
Sligo’s followers decided to carry him. Two at a time, one on each leg, they lift him and parade him back and forth, as he calls it now, to and fro. The more he speaks the more his Irish comes out and he occasionally gives speeches like it was bad Shakespeare open mike night in a deserted college town pub.
“Here is for our fathers.”
Cheers.
“And here is for the fathers of the fathers.”
Cheers.
“And here is for four others and the mothers of the fathers.”
The crowd is never satisfied. He rants until he loses his voice.
“The rabble is rebelling at Wrigley. Let’s drink and unravel the vines one at a time.”
He either meant grapevines for making wine or the ivy vines on the outfield wall. Either way, the crowd cheers and carries him into the nearest bar. No need for factual accuracy when you’re listening to a drunken Irish baseball bard. The Cubs are winning, but who’s counting?
J.P. calls and assures me that Sligo turning himself away from Wrigley is a selfless act with my welfare at the forefront of his insanity. Yes, all Sligo wants is a Cub win. Like all we have to do is say, ‘Cubs win’, put up a small white flag with a blue W painted bold in the center and repeat the same often enough so the Cubs will be in first place.
I forgot to mention that Sligo always calls them the Cubs, not the Cubbies. “Don’t call them Cubbies. I hate the Cubbies.” He says it sounds like the name of a team destined to lose. One night when he held vigil on Waveland Avenue during a game he started chanting, “don’t call them Cubbies, don’t call them Cubbies” and his followers responded to his call, “don’t call them Cubbies, don’t call them Cubbies”. They said it like they meant it. At least they’re not throwing bombs.
I don’t tell Jasmine that I’m getting packages in the mail with bits of the ivy vine that was stripped from the outfield wall at Wrigley. They’re either from terrorists or a horde of locusts with an attitude. I’m having a meeting with St. after I drop the packages off at the police station.
CHAPTER 104
“I have a plan,” says St. Sligo.
“I was afraid of that.”
“I’ll take care of Eddie Wrecks.”
“Brilliant Uncle, then we can blow ourselves, get it over with and be martyrs for the cause.”
“Don’t be a Cubbie.”
“I can’t get involved in something like this.”
“You’re right. Hit the delete button in your brain. Zip. Nothing. You never heard of this.”
“Right, I’ve never heard of the dumbest plan on record, one that will be sure to get me killed.”
Early in the day there had been reports of a bombing on the near North Side and although no one has taken credit for it I suspect it is Eddie Wrecks and the Blind Gang in action since the bomb damaged a sporting goods store that specializes in Cub paraphernalia.
Since he has gone blind Wrecks has also gone invisible. No one has seen him except for his occasional appearance on TV. He doesn’t have much practice being blind, so he can’t be very good at getting around without working eyeballs. He must not be Eddie Wrecks all the time. He must just wear his blind man gear when it is time for the show. He could be working with a hidden camera crew, so he can pretend it is all real. Maybe I should start wearing disguises, something that’ll help me blend in with the crowd.
CHAPTER 105
We’re into the late innings and all our hits are falling onto the outfield grass while the other teams line drives are finding our gloves. Hurry up and win. I can’t wait for tomorrow’s game to start. No, I’m not going to say let’s play two. That phrase has been said and made its point, but it is time to move on into the win column. All I care about right now is the Cubs. I’m being paid to be obsessed about winning for the Cubs, but I think I would get there anyway just to bring it all home after over a hundred years of nothing. This is beyond the power of a curse. It is one of those places that makes kind people warn you not to go there, but you go there because they warned you not to and you have to see what is going on with all the badness.
CHAPTER 106
Why don’t I just come right out and tell you that we’re in the World Series. I suspect that you detected where this storytelling expedition was going to take you and like in any bad news sports type story the scruffy misfits have their day in the Wrigley sunshine. Not completely true. In the post season they play by night. It has been that way for decades. Sligo always took it as a sign of faith that the Wrigley guardians put the night lights in after the league decreed that playoff games were to be played at night. If they didn’t put lights in that meant they had no intention of fielding a playoff worthy team. Who is putting on? Let me explain how we got to the World Series. We won more games than the other teams in our league. In the playoffs we won more games than the other teams. This is a trend that could lead to something good. Like the World Series. See how simple this game is when you have the better team.
Did I say World Series? Oh yeah let me say one more thing.
Yankees.
Yankees. Everyone has another name for them. You can start with Damn Yankees and end with words that insult their mothers and question the method by which they were brought into this world. They’re kind of like the bigger, stronger, more talented older brother who beats your ass at every kind of sport you play, then wants you treat him like the lovable revered sibling who left wonderful childhood memories the way Santa Claus left presents.
The North Side of Chicago is now World Series Land. It doesn’t look like anyone in the city is working anymore. They’re all on a two week baseball festival vacation. Even Sligo has lightened his psychic burden, but he still won’t walk through the gates of Wrigley. He lives in a bar called the Paddy’s Day Parade. The owners came up with a place and a name for it so Irish people could celebrate their heritage year round instead of just one day out of the year. Now we’re celebrating baseball everyday.
CHAPTER 107
THE LONG LOST ST. SLIGO CHRONICLES:
Tantum ergo makes your hair grow. A wise man said that to me once and I never knew what he was talking about. A lot of humor is lost in the translation of Latin and you can’t really explain a joke in any language except Slaplander, the explanation being, a poke in the eye or a saw blade across your skull is so funny it hurts. The victory has
uplifted me. If I was one to fall in love I would, I, I can’t finish that statement. That’s what love does, it makes you forget what you are thinking, so you don’t yell out – where were you a hundred years ago?
This winning is exhausting. I’ll try writing later.
CHAPTER 108
I’m the team mascot. You might as well dress me up as a goat and parade me through the bleachers. I’ll be a pinch hitter, a pinch runner, a back up fielder or a pitcher in a one sided game. I’ve got to keep my mind on game real time so I can be ready to make a game saving play whenever my team needs me to make one.
Time is a fleet that never stops sailing. The Cubs are a boat that never stops sinking. Sligo drinks from a vessel that keeps on chugging. I better stop talking like this or I’ll have to come up with a metaphor for Lake Michigan and compare it to Wrigley Field or the other way around.
This is the part of the story where everybody is attacked by vampires and zombies and there is nothing left but blood and guts. I think I’ll leave this part out since it w
ill take away from the drama that is inherent in baseball and the World Series.
It’s the World Series, but let’s not talk about it. I can’t say enough. No one can say enough. It is happening and no one wants to say anything. Who would take that chance?
Dizzy. There used to be a baseball player called Dizzy. He didn’t play for the Cubs until his career and talent were finished, but he had the right name. These are dizzy days and dizzy nights. I’m moving too fast and everyone around me is moving too fast. Dizzy. Not so fast, but it can’t help but be this fast. The last shall be first and the first shall be fast. Now after almost a hundred years the Cubs are achieving with amazing, blazing speed. Speed up and be dizzy.
This is not the bible or a holier than thou for even the holiest of holy sacred holy cows. Even Britain gave Hong Kong back to the Chinese after one hundred years. I’m not saying we should give the Cubs to the Chinese. They probably wouldn’t want it or understand the gift and would think it was some sort of stupid American trick to undermine their economy. The one hundred years makes it sound full of importance like a story in the bible. If we win. A blessed holy baseball story.
The end of a song is near. J.P. says the story is getting weird, a good weird as long as I don’t find out that Sligo is my real father and that my loving parents just brought me up as my loving parents without the genetic reality package of having genetically enabled me by themselves. It probably won’t turn out that way, but these days you’ve got to be able to handle anything.
J.P. is coaching me on how to handle Yankee fans seeing that she knows so many of them and how they behave. She explains that Yankee fans don’t hate the Cubs or anything. They look on it more like the Yankees versus some local softball team that won the right to play the Yankees in some bizarre TV promotion with the Cubs being the softball team that will show up and get beaten and will be expected to take their beating with a smile. After all they’re playing the Yankees.
CHAPTER 109
Shane’s World:
I must end the world before it ends me. One of us has got to go. If I destroy O’Really and the Cubs it will begin the chain reaction of events that will end with the end of all ends. It could even destroy a parallel universe. Now I know you’re thinking that the world will end if the Cubs win the World Series, the world championship of baseball. That’s not how it works. O’Really is the key. He must be destroyed. Once he goes the rest will go and the rest will disappear like a bottle of vodka at a Russian prayer meeting. Don’t save the vodka. Drink the vodka. There is no point in saving the vodka.
I’ve made some contacts and met with some people who know about the things that can make things happen and blow up for me in a real big way.
I am a terrorist now, but I am always right about everything, so I have the right to blow up whatever or whoever I feel like blowing up. Most terrorists are just misguided lunatics. I know exactly what I am doing. I’ll have to write them a guide book, “Mr. Shane’s Guide For The Dead: How To Make The Most Of Your Dead Years”. Is there terror in the afterlife? I’ll answer that question and drive a stake through the heart in issues that keep the living awake at night.
Am I making a mistake? You made a mistake asking me that question. I don’t make mistakes. If I ever did make a mistake it was not destroying Dada High School before they tried to destroy me, but now nothing can destroy me and my killing philosophy. Die and be happy. Ha! You can’t! That’s what makes me happy. Die!
We’re not just playing against the Yankees, we’re playing against history. History is stubborn if it doesn’t want to change. Sometimes it likes itself just the way it is in the books. History doesn’t want the Cubs to win. History likes a good story and the Cubs are a good story.
The Yankees have a very good team. They should, they paid for it. They still have to earn a win despite all their money. It isn’t like the Cubs owners forgot to pay us, I’m just worried that history likes the Yankees; it’s called their name often enough.
Okay, you’re afraid of something. You’re concern is that I’ve taken you this far along and then I’m going to tell you that no, it was all just a dream, the Cubs never did really make it to the World Series. You think I was just setting you up to be the punch line of the same old joke.
CHAPTER 110
Lon and Ron:
Ron: Looks like the Cubs have finally made it to that big Budweiser sign in the sky.
Lon: That’s right Ron. A lot of beer goes a long way to get that big time bleacher belly.
Ron: The biblically ballyhooed bleacher belly.
Lon: How will that belly hold up against the big brother of baseball, the New York Yankees?
Ron: Will the belching barfly of baseball bombast give them a break?
Lon: I’ll pour a brewski and read the future in the suds.
Ron: What do you see?
Lon: Budweiser.
Ron: Is that a sign?
Lon: No, that’s a sign, on the roof of the building across the street.
* * *
I, Sligo, do hereby decree in this time and place that it is game time at Clark and Addison. Game one of the World Series between the Cubs and the Yankees.
Snakes preserve us. May the saints fall off the ancient green rock of Saint Patrick’s Ireland and swim the holy waters of Lake Michigan to the North Side Shores of Chicago and carry sanctimonious victory to the downtrodden, depressed and detoxed in the tiny town of Wrigleyville. Besides, the Yankees suck. May the last viper in the land lash out and bite them on the ass.
The Cubs in six. That’s all I’m going to say. If they can’t do it in six, then it will take seven unless they have some luck and win in a four game sweep. I shouldn’t say anymore on the subject. Still it would be cool to win in five, because it would mean we kicked their butts.
I’ll sit outside the gates. So patiently I’ll wait.
CHAPTER 102
Game one: Cubs win! History! Count the years, count the days, count the hours, minutes and seconds. Figure out how long it has been. Cubs win a game in the World Series.
Game two: Cubs win! I could get used to this World Series thing.
Game three: Welcome home Yankees, you’re winning. At the end of nine we have one in the L column, so it is two games to one. Four more possible games. We need to win half of those.
Game four: Yankees.
Game five: Yankees. Still no playing time. The Post did a piece on me, wondering where all my good luck went. Say Goodbye to New York City.
Game six: Back to Chicago. All we need is a two game winning streak. All we need to do is beat the Yankees here in the place where Babe Ruth beat the Cubs so many years ago.
J.P. told me that I was going to play today. I don’t know if that is good or bad for the Cubs. I don’t know what makes her such an expert, but she is right. She didn’t say I would play in the eighth inning.
In the eighth the game is tied and the Yankees are batting in the top of the inning. After two quick outs they get a cheap double, a walk, a wild pitch and end up with men on second and third.
Our pitcher holds his throwing arm like he is in pain. He is finished and the manager is not giving the bullpen a confident look. They are tired and they got lit up in game five. The next batter is the number eight hitter.
I’m in the bullpen warming up our big relief lefty. The pitching coach comes up and takes away my catcher’s mitt and hands me a fielder’s glove and gives me my instructions.
“You’re going to throw an intentional walk. After that is the pitcher. They’re going to pull him for a pinch hitter. You’ll stay in until we see who the pinch hitter is.”
I nod.
“Can you throw a walk?”
I nod.
“Don’t trip over the baselines.”
I look to the mound. The Manager and infielders all stare at me. I trot towards the infield. I wish I had
practiced my run. I wish the coach hadn’t made that crack about the baseline.
The manager stares in my eyes and x-rays my skull.
“You know what you’re doing right? Nothing fancy. Just hit the target.”
The manager pops the ball into my glove. Everyone clears out and leaves the pitching to me.
The catcher stands behind home plate and pounds his glove. It’s a left handed batter. The catcher stands as far away from the batter as he can and extends his left hand out so the mitt is two feet outside of the righties batter’s box.
I don’t like the way the runner on third is looking at me. I check him and look back at the catcher. The catcher runs to the mound.
“Don’t worry about him. He isn’t Jackie Robinson.”
The umpire is right behind the catcher.
“This ain’t spring training. Start pitching or I’ll send you back to the minors.”
Back to positions. Back to pitching. Four high and away outside the strike zone. No problem. I throw a soft pitch and hit the target. The batter pretends he can hit the ball and fakes, then checks his swing. Ted Williams couldn’t hit that pitch with a ten foot fungo.
At the pitch the runner on third charges ten feet down the line, but scurries back to third. They’re trying to mess me up with little league tricks. Maybe we should try the hidden ball trick if they want to play that way.
Pitch two: The batter and the runner try the same lame bluffs they tried on the first pitch. They’re trying to get me nervous enough to balk and let in the go ahead run.
The runner is far enough down the third base line that if the third baseman made a move to third we could try a pick off play. I look and the third baseman shakes his head. He’s afraid I’ll throw the ball into the stands. He calls time and runs to the mound. The home plate umpire is already on his way to break up the meeting.
“Just walk him. Don’t be looking around.” He heads back to third base.
The Yankees Manager runs out of the dugout and catches the ump before he gets back to home plate. He yells loud enough for me to hear.
“Are you sure this guy is clear with the commissioner’s office? He looks like he got lost on the way to little league.”