catfish 39

 That was 1959.  Both of us were eighth graders in Sawyer School and in Tonti. I was a Cub fan but out of loyalty to my city I outwardly showed nothing but support for the Sox, but deep in my heart I felt schadenfreude when they lost it two games to four.

The sirens went on late at night (I checked), well late for an eighth grader.  I seem to remember waking and turning on my little red transistor radio, as I always did when there were sirens and I wanted to know if the bomb had been dropped.  It had not.  I may be wrong here, but I seem to remember people coming to their porches in their bathrobes and murmuring to each other what is going on and finally somebody said that it must be because the Sox won the pennant and everybody went back into their houses and to bed.

West Side Story came out a couple years later and when they sang that Officer Krupke song I think there was some line about the bomb, kind of as an excuse for their being juvenile delinquents.  I think I may have weaved that into my adolescent story, how I grew up in the shadow of the bomb, but I don't recall being all that afraid of it at the time.

Well in retrospect the cold war was not all that bad.  There was no actual war, and the sides were clear, anymore who knows who is on what side.  

When I was subbing about 2000 to 2007, the girls were always better behaved than the boys.  Before the kids arrived I would go down the aisles and read the names and if girls outnumbered boys I was happy, but if it was the other way around I was unhappy.  I remember this one class, third grade I think, where I handed out protractors to the classroom, the girls ran all over the room measuring every angle they could find, and the boys pretended that they were pistols and ran all over the room shooting each other.  How,  I wondered had we ever established the patriarchy? 

And those Champaign Bar Association assholes, they were cagey fuckers.  Tiger you know, nobody could hit him hard, but if you held back, took a short stroke, you could bounce one into the infield, which was no problem with Tinkers and Evers slapping them up in that casual way they had, but with the second stringers it was a clown circus.  They scored one here, one there, by the time we got to the seventh they had scored five runs to our three.  Bottom of the seventh, after two outs Ron had a double and Itch scratched out a single, first and third and two outs and I was at bat. 

Shit, I didn’t need that drama, but there in the stands George, drunk as a skunk, is yelling and Gina is shrieking, Gina.  Shit fuck.

Okay, I’m keeping my eyes open like Dan taught me, watching the ball, and the first, second and third pitches come in and they’re nowhere close.  “Pitcher’s getting nervous,” I hear George and Gina and the other girlfriends chanting, and I’m thinking this is great, I can coax a walk, nothing wrong with a walk, puts the winning run on base.  And then taking a little time at the plate, adjusting my hat, making sure my shoelaces are tied, just killing time to make the pitcher more nervous, I glanced back at the on deck circle,  It was one of those second string infielders.  These guys never played when Tinkers and Evers were there, they just drank beer till game time and sat in the dugout waiting for the game to be over so they could drink some more, and this guy had clearly had plenty, could barely stand straight doing his warmup swings.

So I swung at the next pitch, missed it by a mile, almost fell over in the batter’s box.  The clapping from the stands stopped rightaway, and there was kind of an almost a gasp, thought I heard it, like the air going out of something.  It started up again, but not so strong, and I don’t know why, I was kind of swept up in the moment, but I held up my hand, time out, and turned back to the stands and zeroed in on Gina who had her hand in her mouth and blew her a kiss.

It was grandstanding, I knew that, It was okay, I wanted to piss off the pitcher, rattle him so he wouldn’t want to walk me after all that, smirked at him, kicked a little dirt off my cleats, waggled my bat over my head as I stepped in.

 He pitched fast, wanting to catch me while I was still waggling the bat, but I was expecting that and I was expecting that it would be hittable, and one thing I did wrong was that I closed my eyes.  Knew I shouldn’t, did it anyway.

 And that smack.  I’ll be able to feel that the rest of my life.  So pure, so clean, a white slice into the night.  Time was frozen.  I could see the whites of the centerfielder’s eyes, uncertain at first, then stepping back, then just turning tail and running into the darkness past the lights.  I almost wanted to laugh, but then I heard Dan yelling, “Run asshole run.”

 Oh shit.  Got a late start, but it looked pretty good going past first and rounding second the centerfielder was still running after the ball.  My back was to the action as I came into third, and I almost slowed but then I remembered the drunk in the on deck circle and just came in.  Saw the white flash of the ball over my head halfway to home.  It landed splat in the catcher’s mitt and he stepped back to cover the plate and there was no way to it except through him. 

 White Sox baseball.  Bounced my butt just in front of the plate and went in spikes high, caught him in the mitt, tore into it, knocked it out, saw it dribble onto the ground as I slid in safe.

 I was a fucking hero.  I was laying there, the poor catcher yelping and swinging his bloody mitt, the ump swinging his arms in that safe sign, and there was Dan reaching out a hand to lift me up, and almost pulled me off my feet so that I fell heavily against him, and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss me, but then the whole team was there and I was like actually lifted on their shoulders, hauled around on top of them like you see in the movies. 

 They weren’t really athletes, like I’ve said, the second stringers, and I was let down pretty quickly and there was Gina and a big wet one.