“Can you play ball like your old man? He sure can play.”
I look at Dad and he is running around the bases like he is my age.
Every baseball story needs a little magic and the magic here is that Dad and I are having a lightning invoked age reversal switch. Usually in the movies people will have a personality switch, but this time I’m old and he’s young.
“Yeah, it’s like magic. He looks like a kid again.”
And I feel a flash of light away from death. I walk like I’ve been beaten with an old age club. Sligo is showing the anti-aging effects of doing nothing all his life. As a ball player all he can do is hit. He is a statue in the outfield and a target on the base paths, but he is a hitting machine. At times he is deceptively fast. He may be last in the morning in wind sprints, but he is first in the lunch line everyday. Some players have a nose for the game, he has an instinct for the catering truck.
By the afternoon game I feel I’m watching a slow motion replay instead of a game in real time. Dad is different like he has a new set of batteries and Sligo is sober so I barely recognize him as the mythological beast of Irish legend. This is the most sober I’ve ever seen him while in the confines of a ball park and I realize it could be a first. On this day in baseball history St. Sligo O’Shaunessy shows up to the ballpark stone cold sober. He looks like he needs a couple of drinks so he can remember where he is and why he is wearing a Cubs uniform.
I was worried that this might be the sports version of a Star Trek convention with an arena filled with geekazoids from far flung planetary places. Now I see it just a bunch of old guys with time and money who like baseball enough to spend their vacation playing the game.
When I asked Sligo why he wanted to go to the camp he said, “My life is so meaningless I should take up golf.” Golf was never his game.
By the late game Wednesday Dad is the only sign of life on the field. I’m not going to complain about the old gimps on the field because I feel like the old gimp this time. I can’t imagine feeling like this everyday, but these old farts have been living like this for years.
CHAPTER 47
“There is more to baseball,” Sligo said over his steak dinner at the Pink Pony.
“There is more to baseball than what?” I asked.
“There is more to baseball. There is always more to baseball.”
“I thought I was going to hear something that made sense, some great words of philosophy.”
Dad stayed out of the discussion and ate his steak quietly, not wanting to ruin it by talking to Sligo. It was Thursday night, so there were two more days of baseball to be played and he was the talk of the camp, playing like a twenty-three year old rookie who was born to play the game.
“Why do I need a philosophy when there is baseball?”
“Mickey, Saint doesn’t have to do much explaining in his line of work.”
“I think the lightning strike hot wired your brain,” said Sligo, “keep playing like you’re playing and you might get drafted next year as the oldest rookie or the youngest old timer ever to play the game.”
Dad just laughed and shook his head.
“I can’t play like he can play,” Dad said as he tapped one of my shoulders, “I just wish he was crazy about the game instead of lazy.”
“I was watching the rookie camp this morning. They’re all bigger, faster, skilled and strong.”
“So you’re going to talk yourself out of it.”
“If I don’t talk myself out of it who will?”
“Maybe your Mother is right. You’ve been hanging around him too long.”
Sligo ignores the comment.
“Maybe when you’re feeling better you’ll feel better about playing baseball.”
“Why do I feel like crap and you feel so good. It was the same bolt of lightning.”
“I got the positive charge and you got the negative charge.”
“Are you sure it works like that?”
“It makes as much sense as anything.”
“Is the Mother still mad at me?” Sligo spoke.
“Of course she is,” said Dad, “she’s always mad at you, but now she is, well, she’s still mad at you. This was your idea.”
“You think she’d be happy that I got you out of the house.”
“She has a right to be angry.”
“For what?”
“For any reason.”
CHAPTER 48
I’m the only person my age here except for the guys in the rookie camp which holds their spring training earlier than the MLB team. I scout it out when the golden oldies are finishing up the end of their games. They’re all good. The coaches watch everything and tell them “do this, do that” and hope that their advice will break through to the kids. Some of the guys are going somewhere and where they are going is a place where I want to be found. Signing a contract must be like finding money in a suitcase by the side of the road. They’re doing drills, improving their skills, while paying their bills. I feel I’m missing out, I’m off of the team bus, I’m doing a Google search without a keyboard. As Billy Williams said about hitting, “it’s all about putting ash to cowhide”. It’s baseball and I’ve been able to play ball while the summer wind is blowing. I’ve got to find a way to keep the ball in play.
CHAPTER 49
Thursday. No one has been hit on the head or hurt themselves tripping over the foul lines or pulled a muscle while trying to stretch a single into a double play. There is some surprisingly smart play, even if they look like they’re playing under water and running like mimes.
The play of the day as they say everyday in a sports channel way is between two gents of the ‘you really can’t tell how old they are’ category. They’re still walking upright above ground as Sligo says. He’ll say stuff like, “See that guy, he’s got abs of steel. Too bad he stole them from a fat guy named Steele.”
The play: the ball is hit half way to the mound. If it was golf they would let the next foursome play through, but they play it out. The pitcher on the mound behind the pitching machine charged off of the mound as fast as his seventy-five year old wheels could spin him across the grass. It looks like an easy swinging bunt single, but there is nothing easy about this play. If the base runner was moving any slower he’d be doing the moonwalk. The big wheels are spinning, kicking up dirt, but the vehicle is on a collision course with nothing. After some serious pursuit the pitcher finally catches up with the ball and without keeling over he picks up the rawhide and shot-puts it in the direction of first base. The ball floats through the air and inches its way past the runner and it reminds me of the name of one of Willie Shakes plays that J.P. told me about, ‘Mucho Doo Doo About Nothing’.
“I don’t think a motion detector would have picked up that play,” Sligo says.
There is no clock in baseball and any old kind of a hit is still a hit and an out is still an out no matter how long it takes to play out.
“The clock may be running out on some of the campers”, says Sligo, “but they haven’t run out of baseball. It is kind of a hurrah even if it is not their last one. No one remembers the next to last hurrah, they just remember the last one.”
He’s been giving speeches lately about what we’re looking at and he is giving it his best play by play effort. Maybe there is magic in the game if you can make a bunch of old men feel good.
CHAPTER 50
Saturday. Dad is dead and so is the magic.
I wake up and feel strange because I feel normal again and I didn’t feel normal all week. I was out early for breakfast and I come back to find paramedics in Dad’s room. He looks peaceful, but we aren’t.
Everything stops and you wonder if it is right to get things going again. Mom wants me to move back home to help around the house and help with the girls even though the girls don’t want me there and I think they might be right. Cubbiephrenia isn’t making any money, but St. Sligo is still paying me to keep the site runni
ng. Mom won’t talk to Sligo and we all know that she blames him for Dad being dead which is a heavy load of blame. Crazy as he is Sligo doesn’t control the skies, the thunder and the lightning.
I had to get away so I went to the cliffs where people go to jump or to throw things or to listen to the prayer of the ocean and hope that it will stop the screaming in their brain. I look at the water and it is choppy, not a surfer anywhere on the coast.
My Dad is dead?
CHAPTER 51
Not to be alarmist, Dad didn’t die. Yes, we were struck by lightning and Mom asks so many times, “What if the both of you were killed”, that I start to think it and have it in my dreams that Dad did die and that Sligo and I are directly responsible for an action and a dead result that we could never revive.
So it is scary, but in a delayed reaction feeling I don’t have time to think and I wasn’t reminded to think about it until I see Mom after fantasy camp week. She always thinks my brain is short circuited and she has no doubt now that the gods have taken the time to give me electro-shock just to make sure that I knew I was still alive.
Baseball still has magic and I still have more than my share of bad dreams about death, lightning and bean balls. Dad’s energy level hasn’t died, but he has gone back to being an older guy who stands up and goes to work every day without the excitement and the fantasy camp bounce in his step.
CHAPTER 52
Parents like secrets. One my parents kept to themselves was about baseball and me. What they did not want to mention was that I had been selected in the MLB draft.
I’m number thirteen in the thirteenth round according to the General Manager of the New York Mets. Mom and Dad had managed to block all information regarding the subject. They told Sligo and they all decided that I am not ready for the pros, the thinking existing that the pros are for phenoms and college ball is for possibilities.
The Mets. I do know about the Mets. Sligo can’t deal with the Mets. Sligo has a history with the Mets, the premise being that all Cub fans have a history with the Mets going back to the beginning of the Mets. The league expanded and the Mets appeared and they were much loved by the Cubs people because the New Yorkers had fielded a team that was even worse than the Cubs and as everyone from Chicago knows, losing that badly and consistently is not easy. They started out a bad substitute for baseball and ended up killing everyone else’s World Series dreams in 1969. One man’s miracle is another man’s misery.
The umpire yells play ball, the crowd stands and cheers and the Cub fans pray for a miracle. All you can do is buy your ticket, drink your beer cold and dream for an afternoon.
There is a dinner at home with the family and Mom has issues a probationary pardon to Sligo to join us for a drinkless dinner.
“I’ll be your agent,” says Sligo.
I don’t know who to look at to see if this is a joke.
“I’ve done all the necessary paper work. I can call the Mets office and negotiate for you.”
“Okay. I thought you didn’t like the Mets.”
“I’d like to stick it to them the same way they stuck it to me.”
“What about school?” Mom asks.
“If he does it right he’ll never have to work in his life.”
“I don’t see why that is such a wonderful goal. You’re talking about selling my boy off like he is a piece of furniture,” Mom says.
“If your sofa can hit a curveball I’ll sell it to the Yankees.”
“I want to sign. Talk to the Mets.”
Silence.
“Good luck on your career son.”
“Are you sure that’s not the lightning talking?” says Mom. “Sligo you’ve got my son into this. The least you could do is say a prayer on his behalf.
“Yes, I can. I can say a prayer.”
St. Sligo bows his head and makes the sign of the cross with his right hand.
“God help us all!”
Amen.
CHAPTER 53
The deal is made and it is agreed that I’ll play for the Brooklyn Cyclones, a AA ballclub named after an amusement park ride on Coney Island. It happens quickly with everything moving too fast and soon I find myself in a locker room waiting for the manager to make an entrance and introduce himself.
He walks in and stands at the center of the room. He keeps taking his cap off and running his hand through his hair like he was checking to see that it was all still in place on his head. He looks around the room once and the talking stops. He doesn’t say his name or introduce himself. You know he is Frank Chessi or you don’t.
“Play by the cliché kids, play by the cliché. Play it all the way. Play it everyday. Be like wee Willie Keeler, hit it where they ain’t. I used to think that a cliché had something to do with French hookers. If you don’t know something look it up.
Don’t think too much, but don’t play stupid.
Don’t get into a pissing contest with a pissant .
Don’t start thinking about how big you are. Ball players aren’t larger than life; they’re just a hell of a lot bigger than most people.
A player hit .390 one year, but all people remember about him is that he got hemorrhoids in the World Series. Don’t be in a hurry to be a hero. Good things come to those who wait, not to those who masturbate. Some things speak for themselves. Some things don’t need to be talked about.
There are a lot of outs in this business. Three strikes and you’re out. We’ve got fly outs, ground outs, fake outs, rain outs and then we’ve got down and outs. Most of the kids that were here last year are out, out of professional baseball. They found out, yes, they found out, that baseball needed them, not as ball players, but needed them as paying customers. It is a business and a business needs to cash out.
There’s the phone. They’re probably calling to fire me. Don’t try to make sense of it. Sometimes this life is like that high fly ball. You yell, ’I got it, I got it’. Then the wind kicks in, the ball is gone over the fence and you’re in second place on someone else’s highlight reel.”
He takes off his cap, brushes his hand through his hair, snaps the cap back on his head and walks into his office to slam the door shut and pick up the phone. Frank Chessi.
CHAPTER 54
Dad and Sligo made the trip, but Dad had to go back after a couple of days. We did the tour of the boroughs. Coney Island is like a place that only exists in stories as an excuse to have some cheap laughs on someone else’s admission ticket to a strangely amusing ride through freakland with the kind of human that humankind points it’s fingers at unkindly. After Dad leaves Sligo starts making up his own history of the area.
“Indians invented baseball. Pilgrims shot musket balls at them and the Indians would hit the balls back with clubs.”
There is too much time to fill here even for Sligo so he flies back to the west coast with a promise to return soon.
I’m left here with a cast of baseball possibles and a promise to call J.P. There is a group of us and we’re all from somewhere else except Pizza Boy Pizzarelli who is from Brooklyn and seems to know about half the people in the neighborhood.
Elmer Presley is from Tennessee and “yes sir” he will answer when you ask him if he is somehow related to Elvis the King. He says he is not sure “in answer to your next probable question”, if he is better at singing or playing baseball. Unless he works on his game in a big way he should start practicing his rendition of the National Anthem since singing that song before the game is the only way he’ll get into a ballpark without paying after this season is over and his contract is done.
Before we can say “Thank you very much” Elmer gets a band together and says we’ve got to go see him and we go to see if he can sing, especially those who think that his name is not really Presley. In a local bar he takes the stage with a three piece rockabilly band and three female backup singers. He introduces the first song.
“I’d like to introduce you to an itty bitty
ditty I wrote called “Elvis Ain’t Dead”.
He riffs some notes on the guitar and sings:
“They say the devil runs this town
I saw an angel in the lost and found.
Don’t think I’ll make heavens stairs
The way I’m playing I ain’t got a prayer.
Try to remember what the singer said.
‘What you say was it, the singer said?’
The singer said, ‘Elvis ain’t dead, he’s in my head’
Thank you very much.
(Repeat refrain)
Viva Las Vegas has stripped me down
I dance on lonely street like a clown
Here comes a walking bass, piano taking chase
The band needs a singer, a song in place
What you say was it, the singer said?
The singer said, ‘Elvis ain’t dead, he’s in my head’
Thank you very much.
(Repeat refrain)
CHAPTER 55
“I’m Taylor ‘The Legend’ LeGrand. Call me The Ledge.”
He is my locker neighbor. He is talking to me on the first day I enter the locker room before I set my equipment down.
“I’m black.”
I look at him and he is right. He’s black. I hate it when people lie about stuff like that just to look cool.
“Do you hate me?”
“Hate you? I don’t even know who the fuck you are. Give me some time”
“I’m ‘The Ledge’”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.”
“I just did. Maybe you do hate me.”
Enough said.
Clarence “Needles” Nova has trouble using his talent on the field, but has a talent for finding trouble off the field. This will probably keep him off the field even though he is the natural of the group, the one who could play the game blindfolded. No one has ever seen him use needles, but the nickname fits his drug marinated person.
He quickly disappears after practice and no one will see him for a long time and if you run into him he’ll shine you on, “hey how you doing” and shuffle past to drift away to a different place.