Thanksgiving Tradition

We set out, this year for Thanksgiving, just the two of us, Sid and me. Sid was sad that his cousins would not be joining him this year. He was glad to hang out with grandma and grandpa, especially in the kitchen.

We arrived on the holiday eve. Leaving town amid the last remnants of the day’s rush hour, mixed with other holiday travelers, leaving the city for regions closer to Lake Wobegon in geography and spirit. Watching a steady stream of tail lights I wondered if travelers are headed home, to a relative’s, and of the stories of the people inside each vehicle. I cannot keep track. I cannot ponder each set of lights. It is enough to contemplate the stories that put my son and me in our seats that late afternoon.

It’s a matter of perspective. I can look at the faint images of drivers and passengers in the early dusk as we pass. I cannot tell if they are headed someplace happy or a place of annual or daily obligation. I don’t know the nature of the commotion that ensued prior to them getting into the car, if it was wrapping up details before the long weekend, organizing small children and the things they would need to survive four days at a relative’s, fits of loathing that often accompany times with family that are aggravations of the dysfunction and ill health that plagued their developmental years, or the greatest of joys that comes with the prospect of spending time with the most favorite and precious people in the universe.

These trips matter and so do the histories that lead up to them. We all have history that makes the days what they are, the day-to-day reality that created the relationships we encounter most intensely on a holiday as well as what those days looked like in years past.

The story of our preparation was marked by excited anticipation. Sid asked if we could go up to grandma and grandpa’s a bit earlier than I suggested.

This year, Sid spent hours in the kitchen entertaining grandma and grandpa with long discussions about China, school and the finer points of learning grammar and the teachers who were as entertaining as the escapades of pedagogy. I sat in a spare bedroom, listening to quick wits and luscious stories. Mother, who was always a good speller, the kind of smarts that helped her graduate from high school at age 16, traded her knowledge with Sid about the finer points of English–alternating that with her well-remembered math anxiety that made itself known as she entered college. Dad, the great story teller, compared his college French class with Sid’s experience. Even coming from New Orleans and French heritage, we do not maintaining much French language, but dad retains the stories, especially of his professors, as a language no one teaches as well as himself.

As I sat resting, I could hear each of them laugh from at each others’ stories and their own. Teachers are the same from generation to generation and, at the same time, so different today than the days when high school graduation was little more than behaving well enough to convince the teacher to give students a C and then to march them capped and gowned into an arbitrary adulthood. They were full of conversations, most of which I have had over the past years and recent weeks with each of them, in smaller bits and pieces. Sid’s monologues were enough to wrap grandma and grandpa’s attention. He looked forward to this trip as well for the stories he learns, as well as the grandkid attention.

I knew there are more stories. I hear them. As many stories that get shared, there are long, dark afternoons endured with the aid of the second or third drink. Off in a corner with a concocted fetish of a tumbler and melted ice. So much easier to peer slightly over the lip of the glass than directly into the eyes of past shames that the relative does not want to let you forget, the in-law who still dreams of the other woman for their son and the failure after failure to conform to something that is less about virtue or morality than it is a struggle to keep family members corralled in a cage of a family secret.

History, however you define or identify it, means something. Some we carry from our childhood. Some, we carry from generations. Americans have a short history and even shorter memories. Even the short 400 years since English separatists arrived and nearly all perished in the new elements is played out with most of the details mostly forgotten and lived through a fiction of harmony that masks the genocide that makes the losses of the initial losses of the first immigrants look like the loss of one nonagenarian relative whose suffering warranted moving on into the next world.

A friend, thankful in her own rights, shared a piece written by Dennis W. Zotigh in Indian Country Today Media Network, “Do American Indians Celebrate Thanksgiving?“ The present-day follies that dress children in garb to play Pilgrim and Indian mark our history better than we remember it. Was it so necessary to insult Native identity as it is to insult our children’s intelligence? For some purposes, yes.

We are making new traditions. Some fitfully. While some school children’s are led in rituals that still mock native peoples, but more people are interested in accurate and respectful representations of history, story and the people who lived and perished in those stories. New traditions.

I have often said that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It is that day, for me, that has been about getting together with people who I care about. Little obligation other than to enjoy a mean and share it with great people. Okay, there’s more than that, especially if you are making a big meal. I’ve shared a few green bean bakes over the years. It is the day when mom and dad usually invite other company, student strays and need the card table to fit everyone.

In years past, we would always have snow for Thanksgiving. There would be snow on the ground, almost every year. Even if the day before had none, it was sure to snow before dinner was set on the table. Two families in St. Cloud, the Statzs and the Opatzs, would hold a touch football game between the families. It was always held in a field covered in snow. But in recent years, climate has brought us something different. I have gotten used to brown Thanksgivings. Things change.

This year, it was only Sid, me, and mom and dad. Without his cousins, Sid gets more attention from grandma and grandpa, but he said, “It’s not the same without Kamarah and Nyah here.” Mom turns from the counter and says, “What are we missing?”

My impulse was to say, “Your three other children.” I was silent.

My siblings and my nieces are having a great Thanksgiving and we are looking forward to Christmas together. Traditions.

I had mentioned to a friend that I might bring baseball gloves. She was excited to hear this, surely missing her father with whom she shared a love of baseball and the misery of the Cubs. I might be able to give mom and dad’s neighbor Thom Woodward a call: a former baseball coach, he has expressed a desire to join us, having seen Sid and I and often his cousins at the park across from his home. The gloves sat idle as the morning sun became lost behind solid clouds and the wind picked up enough toward the end of our walk. Later, it would snow. A historically accurate Thanksgiving.

[Leave comments at http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/thanksgiving-tradition/]

A Return to Baseball's Cathedral

The rain let up with an hour to spare before last night’s Twins-Phillies baseball game. In the quiet overcast of the day’s storms, I remembered in my haste to get out the door that I had forgotten an umbrella. Moments later, I remembered that I had forgotten our scorebook. Sid gave a shrug of his shoulders at omission of the umbrella. The missing scorebook was of more concern.

The umbrella would be unnecessary. We substituted the scorebook with an inexpensive scorecard and a pricy pencil from the gift shop.

Sid and I arrived at Target Field on the light rail train that was less packed than Sid expected. The girl who would turn four in three days, wearing her heart-decal-ed Twins t-shirt would not sit down and exerted the power of “NO” quite often. A cute couple nestled with each other in their seats, the man totally oblivious to his surroundings and the woman somewhat distracted by us. Outside, waiting at the platforms for trains headed the other direction, lonely faces of women and men who stayed too long at work, nothing, no task and no one who would have waited for them to step off the 4:30 train.

Even under the heavy gray sky, the threat of rain had passed. Sid and I made our way to seats. The air was calm and pleasant and the only weather menace was the beads of rain that clung the the green seats that were much better than either of us anticipated.

Close enough to the field to notice the blades of grass that were disturbed by the sliding play of Twins second baseman Alexi Casilla, vivid numbers sewn onto the backs of uniforms, the chance at a souvenir foul ball. Behind us sat a father and his primary school-aged daughter, a bright girl of whom her father is proud and may grow up to be as much of her fathers baseball buddy as Doris Kearns Goodwin.

We saw Julian Loscalzo, a native Philadelphian and reason d’etre for Ballpark tours and of “Save the Met” fame, wearing his hometown insignia sitting down in the seats in front of us. I had enough time to start a conversation before he realized that his seats were in the next section over and the people to whom the seats belonged eagerly wanted to sit down.

It was an interesting game, satisfying to Sid’s baseball mind. A nice night and still air that produced three home runs, one by Jim Thome, now playing for the Phillies, again, launched into the right field flower boxes and which, even into the next morning, had not been found.

The Twins lost to a struggling, injury-laden but usually powerful Philadelphia Phillies ball club. No matter. It was a sweet night, our first successful trip to the ballpark, where we belong.

The last month of this summer, Sid will be in China. I do not know if I will make a trip to the ballpark. It is not the same without him. I don’t know with whom I would visit the park. It might not matter if I go—does not matter if the thunder storms saturate the ground and air. It does not matter if the stillness is disturbed and the air swirls and the atmosphere is filled with electricity and the smell of ozone. They will keep me company, even if I forget my umbrella.

When There Is Crying in Baseball

There is a difference between crying over spilt milk and grief.  Or maybe not.  There are some things about which we should cry and others, not so much.

Having baseball tickets stolen might seem like the loss of a material thing or the chance to hang out in the elite company of those spectating the gladiators.  It would be sacrilege to say that it is on par with being told that you cannot come into the church for worship.  But what unholy transgression was it?

My son Sid and I had planned a trip to see the Minnesota Twins play the Detroit Tigers. It was to be our first outing of the year to the home field. It was a trip to do what fathers do with their sons, some of my mother friends do with their children, a gift that some of these mothers and fathers are passing along to their sons and daughters and a place where so many stories of the love between them have been told, written and lived.

It also was a spot, in that gray-skied Saturday afternoon where many of our friends waited in seats adjacent to the ones we had for the game. They were there for the same loves that get entangled in watching and playing that game and for the love of our friend Mel, who knows all of those loves and people well.

But Sid and I did not make it to the game. In the moments before we boarded the train to the ball park, the tickets went missing.

I reached to my back pocket to feel the void where the envelope holding the tickets should have been. The pocket felt as empty as the gap left by a missing tooth and as crazy as a lost child: the lost slice of childhood that I planed to share with Sid that day.

At first, I told myself that I must have let them slip from my pocket. We ran from the train platform, tracing our steps back to the car, the Mexican fast food restaurant where we ate—a place much cheaper than the extra meal we might eat from the ball park concession stands. I looked hard, back and forth, in the car, on the ground, in the restaurant, in the eyes of passers by: something that would tell me it was okay, place them in my hand and make everything okay.

As I looked, though, the image of a man on the train platform kept appearing in my mind, a man who lingered too close as we swiped the pay strip on the fare box, the image of the man who, I am quite sure, lifted the tickets from my pocket moments before we would be on our way.

After those moments of the frantic, Sid and I got home and were quiet in the living room.  I tried my best to hide my sadness, but not so much as to fake something happy, fake a substitute that would not have even worked when he was younger. 

He did look sad on the sofa.  I asked him how he was doing, and he said he was pretty sad.  "And this one was for Mel's birthday, too--wasn't it?"  I told him yes, the man who took his not-quite-two-year-old self to the second baseball game he could even notice.  He cried a little.  I tried not to show much of my sadness, tears, frustration or anger; and how do you show grief over something like this?

We are sorry to have missed the chance to share baseball with each other, with you and everyone else who was there for the happiness of baseball.  While the money it cost us to participate in that day is significant in these days, but even at the greatest cost, it doesn't describe that what was missed was more than just a fun event, recreation or a chance to get out.  I don't know how many people will understand or how to describe the loss--even to a lot of people who know baseball. 

I think I can only have other people describe it.  They know, somehow, maybe from watching the two of us, seeing the game not through our eyes but through our sharing with each other and with anyone willing to get close enough.  Those who love us like seeing us together--seeing us in ways that are accentuated by baseball.

I am not sure which parts of what was defiled and violated are sacred.  I know that it is more than a violation of our personal space.  More than my friendships.  More than spoiling a game.  I just know that I feared such a catastrophe as much as I feared missing an important flight to an important event: like I had missed a relative's wedding. 

It is not a wedding.  It is just a game.  Just a birthday.  Just a day out.  Just another day filled with hazards.  But it is that day that remembers the first time I walked into the Bowie Bay Sox stadium with Sid in my arms, then settling in our seats, his eyes fixated on the animated diamond with more attentiveness and fascination that I thought was possible for a pre-toddler and my eyes welling with more tears than are allowed in baseball.  

I would not experience the kind of emotion I felt at the ball park until the first day we sat together, the two of us in church.  These are things that can define what fathers can do with their sons, friends with their friends, love with love and joy with joy.  (See “Crying at the Cathedrals.”)

For a moment, that is what was taken from us.  For a moment.  We will recapture it another day.

Leaving Kevin

Ten minutes into sandbox play, I wanted to go home. I sat across from Keven Ward. Kevin was in 5th grade. I was in 6th. Kevin, a toe-headed, skinny lad, avidly plowed with his Tonka Toy bulldozer. I was less enthusiastic.

I felt odd, because for the previous ten years, just about everything I got my hands on became a car or truck--or bulldozer--or some vehicle I pretend to drive.

Suddenly, watching Kevin move sandy earth and listening to truck sounds coming from his mouth as we sat in front of the ranch office his parents owned, I was aware of how uninspired I was to do the same.

Instead of feeling the fun, I felt guilty. Guilty for leaving Kevin. I was still there in the sandbox, but emotionally, I had left the play space in which he was earnestly engaged.

Kevin was nice enough to invite me to play. He was cool enough--not that cool meant much to me at that point in my life. His family had a ranch. They had a college bookstore, both of which held enough adventure for two grade-school kids, and enough trouble to tactfully avoid. They had a camper, a Winnebago in which they took me on two camping trips. They were all nice to me. 

And maybe that is why that leaving felt like such a betrayal.

But I had already left that childhood space before I got there.  It was the first time I had any concept of my own personal maturation--real change that was, for some reason, more powerful than graduating to footless pajamas, being able to bike across town on my own, or even later, getting behind the wheel of the huge family station wagon.

I had an awareness that, at that moment, different from any other moment during the time I had known Kevin, I was older than him. Somehow, we had lost, without either of us noticing, a big chunk of peer space, the space where we could both be excited by toy cars and making truck noises and having that be enough to keep us entertained and connected with each other.

The next year, I would be in junior high and Kevin would still be at our grade school. I am not sure how many little boy things I had shed by the time I reached junior high, and how many I carried with me. A pile of toy cars that I left in the toy bins of our basement were not missed, but even today, the loss of a baseball glove is devastating. (I am still mourning the loss of a baseball glove I acquired in college.)

But losing friends from childhood is inevitable. The guilt of not knowing how to bring Kevin, occupied with the amusement of the toy bulldozer, into my emerging adolescence has belatedly transformed into a mild grief. Today, I am none-the-wiser, except to understand that I have grown out of friends and they have grown out of me, and it is a blameless loss. And it is a constant renewal with joy, pain and pangs of longing for past simplicities and futures not yet achieved.

I think of this today as I think of an old photograph of the old gang, Kevin included. We are posing with our baseball gloves on the vacant lot behind a house of another friend. We all seem happy with the sun beaming down on us, glad there are just enough to field a two teams for pick-up sand lot. I am wearing a glove that I still have today, one I pull out when an emergency game of catch breaks out and a kid needs a glove to participate.

I still have the memories of that lot, the place, the faces and the fun we had. A couple of these kids are still friends. But more is different than the same, as it should be.

And I look at my son and the relationships he has, how they have transformed and what it will mean in the future, what they have meant in the past, the joys, the heartaches and the wondering: what will happen in later days—or even with the passing of the next summer. I look at some of his friends and see Kevin in them—and sometimes in him. I see Kevin in myself.

In the mean time, it is a luxurious discovery to find that adult fun is really kid fun. It is a luxury because what I see as recreation is really the life work of the young while for us grown people, it is just play. It is adult because I am old enough to see that those things are so good for our mind and body. Our creative imaginations. An academic test of how we interact with others and care for their fun and well-being. Only games.

And most of the time, the grief that comes from winning or losing—either the game or the friend, is more a lesson than permanent injury, and we pick up with life and the kids who happen to be on hand for the next game, lesson and adventure.

And in the mean time, it is fun because it is fun. And now, more so than before, it is fun because I can see it in the faces and bodies of the children in addition to feeling it myself. And in the mean time, I can tell myself that I have at least grown a little.

New Year’s Baseball Glove

The best Christmas gift I received this year was the reaction on my son Sid's face when he opened the box containing a new baseball glove. It was a look of joy and appreciation. Not at getting a new possession. The glove meant more: it meant hope promise, joy and opportunity.

During Fall baseball this past October, Sid's glove disappeared in a case of mistaken identity. During batting practice, he glove went missing. What was left behind in the batting cage was a glove that looked a lot like his, slightly older and smaller, but at first glance and even at second glance, looked enough like Sid's to mistake the two gloves.

We are guessing that the glove left behind in its place was itself a borrowed or second hand glove because the name on it did not match or resemble the name or family name of anyone signed up for the league or clinics that autumn and the numbers I called from the phone book matching the name were not missing a glove nor had any children that age playing baseball.

Still, we both handled the grief over the loss quite well and Sid finished the season with my glove, a worn, slightly larger, Derek Jeter model, which worked quite well for him, even though he prefers second base to Jeter's short stop.

It was sad to lose the mitt regardless. Sid had taken a couple of summers to completely break it in and, as many of us will remember from our childhood, baseball gloves are the kinds of precious things we sleep with at night and that fuel our fields of dreams.

The lost glove sadness was overtaken as Sid continued on with a conviction like the Whos of Whoville after their Christmas presents had been taken. Each inning, he ran out to his position with dad's beat up but more-than-functional glove and played the game he loves the most. He was not going to let the loss of his possession ruin his chance at celebrating on the green grass and ag-lime base paths.

With the help of his aunt Jennifer and my good fortune at finding the last of last year's models at one of the sporting goods stores, which meant that it was about 40 percent of the price of this year's model, Sid has a new glove to break in. We started the process the day after Christmas, in this rare warm-aired and brown-grassed winter.

On the 26^th, we went over to the park near grandma and grandpa's house with two of Sid's cousins and his uncle Michael and played catch, hot box—and we played long enough to make it official.

We played long enough to stir our hot stove dreams of the coming season, which have been spliced with a smattering of newspaper pieces about players and for whom they will play in the upcoming season. And roused by activities like Sid's school History Day project that is largely about baseball's free agency and the biggest hero of that piece of history, the late St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Curt Flood. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curt_Flood)

Sid presenting 4th grade biography project to Biography Day guests.

Sid is learning that baseball isn't just about the game, which it is. It's only a game, but it is also about life; it is about the politics that we cannot avoid and it is one of our strongest parallels to American culture and history. It is an ongoing lesson about small-and large-scale justice, on and off the field. It is about how to care who wins and what we win—and what we lose; how to love those things in the right way, appreciating them when we have them and letting go when they are gone.

I think deep down, these must be lessons that we, as kids, yearn for and maybe are as much a reason we play so hard as for the fun of the game. Maybe that is why Sid has done three class projects on Jackie Robinson, one on the 1919 (Chicago White Sox) Black Sox scandal and now Curt Flood.

Not long ago, Sid took his Brooklyn Dodgers replica baseball hat to a chess tournament. We originally got it to go with a costume he had for his Biography Day presentation several years ago, playing Jackie Robinson, of course. During one of the rounds of chess play, it got lost.

He's not a little kid anymore, and it seems that losing the hat did not phase him as he continued to play. At the end of the chess tournament, we looked all over the tournament area for it, finally finding it at the officials' table in the gym. As he and I walked out, I noticed that he was a little weepy. He wasn't going to cry. He does not cry easily these days, but I had to ask him if something was wrong.

He said, “Well, the hat really means a lot to me.” At that moment, my idea of what the hat meant to him turned into a strong mental and emotional knowledge. I knew it was an important hat, even wearing it during Little League when he was younger instead of the team issued hats of the same color. One of his grandmothers remarked that baseball season how proud he was of it.

But what he carried home with him after the tournament, wore on the baseball field and for his history day project was more than just a floppy piece of sewn Dodger Blue cloth with a bill; it is a badge of so many things he and other young people need and want to learn about the joys and sorrows of our stories—of life. It tells us we have something to unwrap every day, things that will elate us and bring us tears.

Maybe that is the lesson for the coming year—a lesson from the last one. I am still learning, and maybe this coming year will be better, smarter and more joyful than the last. I hope it will be for you.

(Please leave comments at http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com)

Friday Night Baseball: Game 7

It is Friday night. I am getting to this post a bit late. I have an excuse, or a few.


My son Sid and I have been spending a lot of time with the World Series. It is baseball. The best of baseball. It calls for my attention. Even now, as I type, Game 7 is pulling my attention from this craft. That is my story of the moment. Baseball is full of many more.

One of the big ones this year is Ron Washington’s story. Ron Washington, former Twin, former 3rd base coach for the Oakland A’s, and current manager of the Texas Rangers. He has led them to their second consecutive World Series. Interesting man.

He is getting a lot of attention for his animation in the dugout. They call his stirring “The Wash,” a dance of excitement that shows his emotion more than what we see in most Major League managers. He stops his feet as his players round the based and waves his arms.

This dance is not just about his personality. “Wash” is a Major League manager by merit, but a 3rd base coach at heart. The 3rd base coach, as his players round the bases on their way home, has to guide them home, using hand signals and moving his feet as quickly as a player to get in position to relay the signals to a fast-moving base runner. It is one of the most exciting dances in baseball. Windmill arms, the body English guiding a runner to home.

Being a 3rd base coach also requires a quick mind that can communicate complicated instructions to base runners and batters using an even more complicated system of clandestine hand and body signs. The job requires a fast-paced understanding of baseball situations, individual players and strategy. In short, a good 3rd base coach is smart.

We don’t hear much about Ron Washington’s intellect. It is hard for Black men to get that piece of respect. On top of having the visible animation and the smarts to run a team, he also has the quality of being able to understand and respond to the emotional disposition of his players. This was never more evident in how he spoke with Game 4 of the World Series, meeting this young pitcher at his emotional apex.

Sid and I, along with his friend Otto, went to see the movie “MONEYBALL” a couple of weeks ago. It is the story of how Billy Beane built a winning team for the Oakland A’s, a team that had far fewer resources than large market teams like the New York Yankees. It is more than just a good underdog story.

Sid loved it. So did I. Still, our favorite line is when Billy Beane and Ron Washington are visiting are talking to Scott Hatteberg about playing first base after spending his whole career as a catcher and having nothing left in his arm–and Billy says, to Hatteberg that first base isn’t all that difficult and turns to Ron Washington and says, “Right, Wash?” and without missing a beat, right on the tail of Beane, he says, “It’s ineradicable difficult.” It was one of many laughs tow baseball fans

I am writing this as the last game of the 2011 World Series plays next to me. I am writing this to describe why baseball is a love of mine, and my son, and some other people who find the stories of human character and beauty. And the complications of social realities, shortcomings of that human character and what we do to make our way past the imperfect.

I will finish watching the game, this time without Sid sitting next to me on the sofa as is the usual (apart from those moments when he jumps up in excitement as one of the many nuances and not-so-subtle events that make fans cheer or groan). We’ll see how this story turns out.

An 11-Year-Old's Profile in Courage

It is a good collection of boys, my son Sid's Midway Stealth baseball team. Two nights ago, they lost a tough playoff game after winning their previous two. It was a season of wins and losses on the field, in the life of the team and in the lives of our families.

The biggest victory came with the biggest loss for one of Sid's teammates. It was an unparalleled profile in courage, not just for him but for all the boys.

I don't know how many times I have watched a sports telecast to hear how one of the participating athletes had recently gone through a terrible loss, loss of a parent, sibling, someone close. Commentators talk about the bravery of the athlete, how they fight through the pain and grief and continue to perform, to live. We feel for those women and men. The stories help us appreciate and admire them. At these times, we are reminded of the important things in life, that we are witnessing humanity even as we enjoy what is “only a game.”

Still, most of these athletes are, while relatively young, are not children. Sid's teammate, Patrick is 11. In the middle of the season, Patrick lost his dad to a long battle with cancer. Patrick is winning his battle with courage.

Patrick had been missing from games and practice for weeks. He was along for his father's trips across the country to visit important people in his life, saying his last good-byes.

Like a lot of us, Russ Connors shared baseball with his son, Patrick, as an act of love. We show our sons and daughters that this baseball love is about so many things of life, not just learning how to win, how to lose, or even being good at the game. It's about more than fun. It is about a list of things that is too long to share in one sitting, in one life time. It is about things that are too big for an 11-year-old to understand and bigger than many of us grownups want to contemplate.

When someone dies, someone close to us, even as adults, we are often at a loss for what to do with ourselves—with others. Somehow, as parents, we want to be able to prepare our children to do what we have trouble doing ourselves—hopefully before we pass. We want our kids to be a little braver and on a path that is more mature than the one we strode. Credit Russ, because at age 11, Patrick learned enough of this lesson in love, love for a game, but more love for his father, that on the day of his father's death, he knew what he was supposed to do.

That evening, under a solid gray overcast sky, Patrick, in full uniform stepped out of the car of a family friend, who met a couple of the coaches to formally and gently deliver Patrick and some important pieces of the story of the day.

The stories were shared with us by family friends, while Patrick and the other boys took their warm-up cuts in the batting cage and did their drills on the field. We learned about the time that Patrick spent with his dad in the last days. We learned about how they shared baseball. We learned enough to know why, even on what is likely the hardest day of his life, Patrick was playing baseball.

We are told that Patrick said, “This is where my dad would want me to be." There was little question of that. It was the place for him to be, for him, his dad, his teammates and all of us who needed that life lesson.

The Midway Stealth won that evening's game with Patrick closing out the game on the mound, pitching a great inning of relief.

After the game, coach Jay, brought the boys out to right field, as he does after each game. I don't know much of what he said. What he and coaches Allen and Jason have said in those team meetings over the course of the season has produced some lessons for the boys in how to be the important young men they have been for each other throughout the season. What he said definitely prepared the boys to be there for Patrick that night and beyond.

Days later, coach Jay organized a team presence at Russ' visitation, with the team attending together in their game jerseys. After, the coaches took them all to Dairy Queen, a due summer salve and just reward for stepping up on a difficult day—because just as life and baseball are important, treating ourselves along the way is, too.

Russ said, “Death is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. To live without love or joy or meaning or hope would be the far greater tragedy. And there’s the faith in resurrection to which Christians can confidently rely on.”

I think Patrick worked out some of that resurrection the night of the game. That night, he played in honor of is dad. His teammates played in honor of Patrick. The team played the rest of the season with an “RC” on their hats.

This story has made me cry only a few times. Just a few. It has made me quite proud of my son and a group of boys with whom he shared a great season of baseball. And this is one of the reasons why baseball is important. 

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We Whisper for Love

“I wonder what your parents said when they whispered,” I told her. They were in love. In a way like few other parents I knew. They were good parents, like mine. 

Growing up, I did not know our moms and dads were so rare. I did not know that the sharp words that make children hide in the corners where, in some houses, common and made the children hide their emotions and made them hide their family from the rest of the world.

Julie and I are twins of different parents, separated before conception, born at the same time into John Kennedy's America. We grew up not knowing that other parents did not bother to whisper, that in other homes, the dialogue in our parents' hush was the every-day, out loud currency that curled children's ears, pounded them until they thought it was normal and they became numb to the pang. Numb, they carried that numbness into the conversations of their adult relationships—with a slew of predictable results.

What did they say when they whispered? The things, good and bad, that kids should not hear. Things those kids will only know when they old enough to unravel the code inside of their own relationships. And out of convenience, forget that it was a truth harbored by their parents—secrets so pleasant and so unpleasant.

Things too complicated to explain, to understand, even for the grownups.

It is too complicated to understand that mom and dad are so mad at each other that they wished they did not love each other so much so that they could let out the rage whose origin they can't really understand because it is not the love. The rage is a stranger on the other side, wanting to jump in and play and make life look like mom and dad did not love each other so much.

Things too complicated to understand. Things like being in love. Like what mom and dad share that kids don't get to see—at least not on purpose and not deeper than an unconscious touch, stolen glance or tiny kiss. As kids, we are lucky to hear our parents say, “I love you,” to the other, and show it. We are lucky to not know the details of what comes after or what came before that compels them to say and show who they are to each other. We are free of that burden. Not our responsibility—even as we take on that responsibility in our own lives.

They also whispered the numbers in the checkbook ledger and the worry and the caution. At the same time, they show us a frugality that attempts to spare their children from that worry in adulthood.

They whisper the intimate illnesses of neighbors, relatives or their own, but still show us how to care for and be kind to their suffering. And to be especially nice to their kids, because they were hurting, too.

They whisper the fights of neighbors or relative—fights made of the rage that did jump to the other side—the other side of the bedroom door that is mommy and daddy space. They whisper for moms and dads whose hurt is so much that they no longer love each other and the rage escapes. And somehow, we know that we should feel for the children, even if we are afraid to absorb those scary emotions.

When they can, they whisper their own fights. The quiet tension confuses.

Julie and I could not imagine living on that other side, the side of life where no one bothers to keep parent stuff behind the bedroom doors. Or sometimes it is just so much that it cannot be contained in that small intimate space. She and I grew up in houses where we would have never thought that we would ever find ourselves saying out loud to a parent—or at least to ourselves—“How can you share that with your daughter/son?” It is not a child's burden, even an adult child.

Julie wonders about the winter of losing her father. She wonders. We wonder. Losing him, did she also lose the love he shared with her mother? What questions where left unasked?  What did he leave? He left her with with more than his memory of his childhood Cubs and the baseball glove that reminded her of why baseball is important, important even to one of the girls of John Kennedy's America, even in her great longing.

But what is the secret to that love? What is that answer? We still search for that, not knowing what questions we would or should have asked to know better. Or, in my case, what questions I am still not brave enough to ask to learn the lessons that hid behind the door. What is worse is that we sometimes forget the lessons we have already been shown, strong and good and that made our homes.

There is more to know. How to we find out? The reality of her father's passing: I know Julie's mother wished she could whisper that, but the news was so loud. Did Julie's ears curl? I still have the chance to ask, knowing I have some of the answers, knowing I am afraid of other truths. My mother, my father: they are waiting, waiting to lean over and whisper the answers in my ear. But not all of them. Because there are some things kids just should not know.

A Lesson from Harmon Killebrew

My son Sid and his new team mates gathered at the rec center garage to be issued baseball uniforms. It was the day after Harmon Killebrew died. Earlier, Sid read the feature piece in the daily newspaper about Harmon's life and passing. He said it was a good piece and when I read it, I saw that it could only be good because of its subject. What he read was the kind of example of something that makes me feel good to see my son put on a baseball uniform.

Many things, people and events from our childhood can be easy fodder for nostalgia. What else could cause us to turn a blind eye to Ty Cobb carrying a piece of rope from a lynching in his pocket, or the sad stories that followed Kirby Puckett in the last years of his life. (See “'Are You Really KirbyPuckett?'”)

I will not carry a naivete that will convince me that Harmon Killebrew was without sin, a man as perfect as he seemed—who made almost all of his noise with a bat and a quiet, gentle manner but almost none against another player or human being. But his strong silence was a true example. He treated people well, especially kids, for whom an autograph is as valuable as any item that could possibly be bestowed upon her or him.

Many years ago, I was in Arizona during Spring Training with my friend Tom, where the Oakland A's and the San Francisco Giants were warming up before a game. Things were much more relaxed back then, when a chain linked fence was meant more to keep the ball in play than spectators out.

During a sparsely attended warmup on that late 1980s Scottsdale afternoon, I saw two boys pleading with then A's slugger Jose Cansaco for an autograph. He ignored the boys. “Jose, Jose,” they called. “Please, can we get your autograph? Jose. Jose,” they both called. Nothing. They left disappointed.

Moments later, a young woman who was wearing very little, waving her piece of paper and pen came to the fence. This was something (and for Canseco, I mean something) of value to him. She/this got his attention. He motioned her to jump the fence and run out to him. She did. She got his autograph. What Canseco got, even in the momentary exchange, was more than he deserved from his actions to that point and, given his detailed history as a ball player and as a man off the field, what he deserved at points before and after.

It may be a lesson about the real world, and maybe my values and naivete are just unrealistic, but what the boys could learn from that moment is not something that they could use to make their world a better place.

Harmon helps young boy at Miracle League game in, May 30, 2008. Photo: Mike Peterson, StarTribune.

Last week, I unearthed a commemorative Harmon Killebrew baseball card, a photo of him in his prime that Sid and I picked up at a Twins game years ago. I save everything. There must be a reason. Maybe I am hoping for more lessons. I need more lessons.

Like Killebrew, I am not without sin and certainly have conveyed lessons that are not ones that I care to remember—or for anyone else to carry into their interactions with the rest of their worlds. But Kellebrew's legacy is a lesson about manhood, strength and when to be quiet and those actions that are louder than any words: Lessons like ones I hope to convey on my better days.

And yesterday, as Sid took his cuts in the batting cage, in preparation for his team's first game. I hope he does well. He may not do as well as Harmon Killebrew on Saturday, but I hope he learned a couple of lessons.

One of Sid's chess buddies, Jake, helping a girl with her glove at a Miracle League game in honor of Harmon Killebrew this week.  Photo: Renee Jones Schneider, StarTribune.

Baseball Short: How Do You Remember Tee-Ball?

Yesterday, my son Sid and I had two outings playing catch.  The first time he was waiting for his guitar lesson.  The second was at our favorite park, Aldine Park.

Today, his throws, at his stage of development, are starting to pop in my glove like the big kids.  As we threw, some smaller kids where getting what might be their first instruction in tee-ball.  Looking at them, he asked me if it brought back fond memories.  I told him no.  My fondest memories, these days, are of the most recent throws and catches he makes. 

I was not sure if he was talking about his tee-ball days.  I think he was talking about mine.  It was more than 40 years ago.  I remember a few vivid images.  Nostalgia.  True fun.

I remember hitting a lot of triples--never daring to make the turn to home plate for a home run, even though it was unlikely that our opponents would make the throw and catch and tag to get me out.  Heads-up baserunning is a good skill, totally lost on tee-ball.

I remember the day dad took off from work to come see me play. 

I was eager to show him what I could do.  I remember the disappointments that came with each at bat.  A double each time.  I was trying so hard.  Too hard. 

I was competing against myself.  The concept of competitiveness was as lost as the skill of mindful base running--somewhere in the hapless play of primary schoolers.  That day, I know I could and had done better.  And dad did not see.  But he knew.

I do not think anyone kept score.  We all won, running on and off the field in our 7-Up shirts, the back of which I had inked with my last name, just like some of the professional players.  Likely, I had a Twins hat slightly askew on my head and the black glove given to me by my Uncle Alvin--the same glove that my son and I, along with some friends and family, took with us to a park near grandma and grandpa's to play catch and hot box. 

The year after tee-ball, I would take the same glove to little league where I would play first base most of the time.  I was assigned first base because I was one of the few kids who could catch with confidence--my own confidence and that of the coach and team mates.

Maybe I am a little nostalgic.  Or maybe that's just baseball. 

I think of those summer days.  I think of my son, who has a different relationship with baseball that is marked by things like the day, as an eight-year-old, when a pop up dropped intentionally, so it seemed, untouched in the infield. He turned to the "umpire" asking, with dismay, "What about the infield fly rule?"  Of course I hoped he would catch the ball.  Instead, I had a very good laugh--a laugh that reverberates when I see Major Leaguers who forget the concept. 

I am waiting for Sid to give me the complete definition of a balk, and a lot of other things that have to do with baseball and things that have to do with life, love and the pieces of each of those that are truly important. 

How good of a learner am I?

How much do I long for the tee-ball days?  Maybe you should ask me the next time Sid's Second baseman's arm zings a shot into my waiting glove. 

Maybe Sid is nostalgic, the summer before he leaves grade school to jump fully into the ranks of the junior highers with whom he is already taking math class.  He and I know that being a kid is hard.  Some days, nostagia makes us forget.  Or we can escape the memories or the present day, lost inside a game of catch.

“The Giants won the Pennant! The Giants won the Pennant!"

On an early October afternoon in 1951, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ great Jackie Robinson stood alone in the infield, hands on hips as New York Giants slugger Bobby Thompson circled the bases. Most interpreted this as dejection, maybe a sign of his competitive nature, unsettled with the idea of loss. Dejected, maybe. Competitive, yes. Competing to win, and competing for one of many spots in sports and American history.

That year, the New York Giants (yes, the same Giants who are now in San Francisco—or really the same business entity) won the National League Pennant. This may mean little to many of the readers who are not connoisseurs of baseball history. Apart from the drama of the season being decided on its last pitch with a home run and that it was the first baseball moment to be dubbed “The Shot Heard 'Round the World,” there is enough American history buried in that moment to describe more about us as Americans than the celebration of a home run.

If you know baseball history—or are even a 1950s nostalgia buff, you may be familiar with sports broadcaster Russ Hodges' famous call, “The Giants won the pennant! The Giants won the pennant! The Giants won the pennant!” heralding baseball's first “shot” the call that told baseball fan's around the globe of Bobby Thompson's home run that won the game and the National League pennant for the Giants.

What Thompson did is the ultimate in game-ending drama. This event particularly marks baseball history because that season, the Giants trailed the Brooklyn Dodgers (yes, the same Dodgers who would sneak out of town to Los Angeles) by 13½ games going into the last month of the season. They tied the Dodgers in the standings on the last day of the season, winning their last 16 games. But this is little more than a prologue for the story.

A field day could be had by anyone student of statistics and probability. Unfortunately, attention to statistics was not particularly de rigueur in sports at that time, and came a little late for the Dodgers.

The Dodger's Charlie Dressen managed by the seat of his pants, more so than most in this era without number crunching. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Dressen brought in Ralph Branca to pitch to Bobby Thompson with two runners on base and the Dodgers leading by two runs.

If Dressen had paid attention to statistics, he would have known this; Branca had given up few home runs that season, a plus.  He also would have known that even though he had given up few home runs, most of the home runs he gave up were to the Giants, and none more than to Bobby Thompson.

But Bobby hit a looping fly that, in any other stadium than the Polo Grounds of New York City, would have fallen harmlessly into the left fielder's glove for an out, or would have curved into the seats as a foul, leaving another chance for either a hit or an out. Instead, it was history and the crowd went wild.

I said, though, that this was an event of SOCIAL significance, that brought a single joy to some New Yorkers and a hefty playoff bonus to the guys in black and orange instead of instead of the Dodger Blue.

Jackie Robinson, who a few years before, broke the color line in modern baseball was just one of a host of baseball greats on each team.

The Giant's team included great players like Monte Irvin, among the first of the African American players in the major leagues. Ray Dandridge was not playing for the Giants. He was playing for the Minneapolis Millers, a Giants farm club at the time. He was playing in the minor leagues even though he was widley recognized as the best third baseman in the Giants organization, and maybe in all of North American baseball.
Why did the Giants not have Ray Dandridge with them with the big club?

The Giants ownership said that they never gave Dandridge a shot at the big leagues because they did not want to deprive the good fans of Minneapolis of such a great talent. Was it better to deprive the world? Was it better to deprive the greatest compilation of baseball players in the world of one of its finest talents? Was it better to deprive a great player of the ultimate dream of playing in the Major Leagues?

Dandridge was a star of not only the American Association, with which the Minneapolis Millers were associated. He was also a star in the Negro Leagues and the Mexican League. While the color barrier was broken years earlier by Jackie Robinson, the wall was not totally broken. The National League of Major League baseball was more aggressive than the American League in enlisting the talents of Black players. This included the Giants and, of course, the trend-setting Dodgers. What tends not to be spoken of is the reason Dandridge was not with the Giants in New York; at the time, the Giants had five Black players with the Major League club, an unspoke "gentlemen's agreement betwen owners and executivesof the quota allowed, and five was all they would have.

Dandridge would not be called up.

What if...

What would the season look like if the Giants had the best third baseman with the squad for the entire season? It likely would have saved the baseball world from the last-pitch-of-the-season dramatics. Maybe. A different relief pitcher. A “normally” configured ball park. Maybe.

As Russ Hodges called out "The Giants won the pennant! The Giants won the pennant! The Giants won the pennant! The Giants won the pennant!" as the crowd went crazy, as hundreds of thousands erupted in pandemonium in the streets, homes, schools and bars of New York City—everywhere except Brooklyn and the pockets of fans devoted to the Blue (like little Doris Kearns [Goodwin] and her dear father), Jackie Robinson stood as an island of quiet and composure.

The photos are famous. Jackie Robinson, standing in the infield, hands on hips, somehow sensing that in the middle of the pandemonium, the story was not over.

Some fans jumped out of the stands and onto the field in celebration. Most of the Dodgers ran off of the field to avoid the assault of celebration. Ralph Branca walked slowly, trying not to get run over by the gleeful Giant traffic. In the tornadic frenzy, Robinson stood at his post, watching to be sure Thompson touched each base.

Inside baseball fans and players know the drill.  If Thompson misses a base, the home run is nullified. If he touches all the bases, the game is over and the Giants win. What Robinson realizes is that even if he does not touch all the bases, and if all the Dodgers leave the field, effectively conceding the game, it is also over and the Giants win.

Thompson is mobbed as he touches home plate. Russ Hodges' voice rings out from the broadcast booth and over the airwaves.  Robinson waits, watches, attends to the last hope for the Dodgers and leaves the field only after the last punctuation at home plate.

Moments of quiet dignity: something required of most Black players of the era. It is why Henry Aaron will always command a kind of respect that Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds will never achieve. It should remind us that Babe Ruth , (Pittsburgh Steelers' quarterback) Ben Rothlesberger, and Ty Cobb continue to receive relatively big passes for their behavior and Barry Bonds, (NFL quarterback) Michael Vick and Manny Ramirez will not.

But no one was thinking of the social significance, the fate against probabilities or the disappointment of little Doris Kearns and her father in the Brooklyn borough as Bobby Thompson rounded the bases to beat the Dodgers, 5-4, and ignited Russ Hodges' famous call. The Yankees would go on to win the World Series in six games, the other of the three New York teams, to much less fanfare and hoopla. It would be their third in a row, another notch in their entitlement of purchased sense of superiority.

Today, we do not talk about the 1951 World Champion Yankees. We talk about that October day in 1951 and Bobby Thompson and “The Shot.” And we should. We should also remember all the heroes of that day and those who toiled conspicuously and in obscurity and dignity—and who made history as surely as the stars of the show.



*For more historically and socially significant information about this event, see Past Time: Baseball As History, “The Shot Heard 'Round the World,” by Jules Tygiel, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Special thanks to David Unowsky and Mel Duncan for helping me (and countless others) form the thoughts around this event.

"Are You Really Kirby Puckett?"

Pitchers and catchers reported this week to spring training in Florida and Arizona. I'm not sure if this means anything to a lot of you. It means a lot to us whose psyches are fed by the idea of being outside, throwing, running, hitting and witnessing the magnificent art of baseball.

Knowing baseballs are flying from the hands of hundreds of young people who are working on their throwing mechanics and cultivating joy for the game means a lot to stem the doldrums of long, hard winters. Hot stove fantasies carry visions of sun-filled summers of our youth. We live the joy of seeing young bodies carry that everlasting youth on the field of immortality.

We don't keep the youth alive by fooling ourselves into thinking we could take the place of the kids. We keep it alive when we remember and emulate the joy that we see in a child's eye, in their enthusiastic dash across the diamond or between the bases. Kids are our role models.

Even as adults, as we did as kids, we are emulating our heroes on and off the diamond. We mimic what we see on the field and the trappings of their status off the field. We do this for better—and sometimes for worse, and sometimes we just have to ignore the worse to keep ourselves from advocating bad behavior, to keep ourselves from the disillusionment of being grown up and facing the real world of mortal beings and gods of clay feet.

One of the gods was Kirby Puckett: Mortal, flawed god who brought more joy to kids and adults than today's reputation of professional sports can support. It was not fair to Kirby that we made him into a god. The day I met him, he was human enough, maybe just in God's image.

I worked at the famed Hungry Mind Bookstore for most of the 1990s. David Unowsky, the store owner, had a healthy appreciation for and relationship with baseball and baseball players. This was seed enough to urge the publisher of Kirby's autobiography to send Kirby to the bookstore for a book signing one spring afternoon a few days into the season. I remember two things about his visit.

The first is that when Kirby arrived, he did not strike me as the god that he had been made into. The man I saw stepping out of the car in the ally behind the store struck me with the kind of familiarity that one has when seeing one of the baseball stars who is a two or three years ahead of you in your high school. And in those moments, he was superhuman nice, as was his reputation.

The second memorable thing about the signing was the people who came. It was during a school day. Not many kids. I stood next to Kirby, opening each book to the page which he was to sign, a common convention of convenience to speed the process we use when there is such a big crowd for any famous author. Most of the participants were men, a few moms and other women getting an autograph for their husband or their kids. There were the collectors, showing up with a box of books, hoping that the signed copy will bring a nice price some day in the future (especially if Kirby were to die a heroic death, either on the field on a Roberto Clemente-type demise, which, of course, was far from the true track of history).

Also in line to meet Kirby were a small boy and his mom. When it came time for the boy to meet Kirby, he stood back, not moving forward into the large open space before the table where Kirby sat. The boy was slightly frightened, anxiously peeking from behind his copy of I Love This Game: My Life in Baseball. (See http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/531748.I_Love_This_Game.) The boy's mother bent down and whispered to him. She gently nudged him forward with her hand. He studder-step resisted and then he slowly, tentatively made his way to the table.

The boy was small for his age. He wore glasses that made it clear that he was never going to see well enough to hit a curve ball, and maybe not even a fastball. He was never going to emulate this god-like image in a fashion that even resembled his peers' level of accomplishment. But, like many of us, he was there to emulate and celebrate in spirit.

When the boy arrived at the front of the table, he received a most cheerful greeting from Kirby. The boy stood slack-jawed, still protecting himself from the glare of stardom with his book. “Hey, man, want me to sign your book?” Kirby asked. I think the boy managed a slow nod. I gently took the book from the boy's hands, which I placed squarely on the signing table, the boy's mouth still agape, eyes wide open, breathless.

Kirby signed the book. The boy, hands still planted on the table, found the strength to utter the words, “Are you really Kirby Puckett?”

“Yeah, man,” smiled Kirby with his trademark grin. “I'm really Kirby Puckett.”

“Really?” the boy asked again.

“Yeah, it's me. I'm Kirby Puckett.”

The boy turned to his mom who was standing back with the other patrons waiting for signed books. With eyes bigger than the glasses on his face, he looked to her and said, “It's really Kirby Puckett!” He turned back to Kirby and said, “You're really Kirby Puckett!” Kirby held out his hand, I think going as far to pry the boy's hand off the table to shake it. With a slow, stunned hand shake, he was meeting the real Kirby Puckett.

There are many reasons I love this moment. One, for this boy, Santa Claus, at that point, became totally unnecessary. He met the Real Kirby Puckett.

Another reason is that by meeting this young man, I gained another role model. He reminded me of why baseball is important. I remembered for whom baseball is most important. That boy was my role model, our role model because he showed us—reminded us that there are good, healthy and important places from which to access and practice joy.

I have to say that most of us adults at the event were making a small attempt to access that joy, the joy that belongs with baseball, with the kid inside us and with the hope that comes with every spring. This is the hot stove time of year when we really start to look forward to tasting that cup of joy, the trigger that can often turn our winter depression into one of those things that gives us new life.

Baseball is, at its heart, a kids' game. When the Twins played at the Dome, it seemed that most of the people who filled the stands where there for one or more of baseball's joys. As much as baseball purists scoffed at baseball indoors, most still showed up to experience one of their childhood loves.

Now there is a new stadium—or I should say ball park. Seats are more expensive, more than a kid can afford. Tickets are hard to get. Looking at the patrons who make their way through the gates, they are just as likely to be guys taking a date who they intended to impress by sending at least three times the steep ticket price. Like at any park, old or new, Metrodome or Target Field (and why it is not called Hennepin County Stadium is beyond me, since that is where/who the money for it came from) the hot dates and business clients are still the ones with the best seats, close up like the side lines at a Los Angeles Lakers game—next to Jack Nicholson or some other movie star. Maybe one day, those seats will be filled with boys and girls aged eight to 15 and the tycoons can sit in the nose bleed section of the field with their corporate claim: “No bad seats in the house.”

But who am I to talk—on several counts. For one thing, I had a front-row seat to see a boy make the best use that anyone could ever make from meeting one of the most memorable baseball players in recent history. Over the years, Kirby Puckett's image has acquired its share of tarnish, a failure of godliness that wakes us up to who we really are after we have devoted ourselves to media's graven idols. Still, the reality that I cannot take away for the world of realities is the one that I saw that day, in the eyes of the boy and in the person of Kirby Puckett: that is Kirby's ability to bring that kind of joy, excitement and positive energy to a game that has enough foibles to make us jaded; to a society filled with mortals and mortal limitations; and to anyone who needs to remember to pursue our life's joys and all the seemingly compromised sources that help us make that joy.

In places all over the country, all over the Americas, not just in Florida and Arizona, but in other warm places, in gyms and field houses, and on scraggly, weedy fields, you can hear the sound of balls popping in leather mitts and the chatter that propels the happiness of play, games and life. Boys and girls asking for autographs, even from guys who will spend the next six years in the minor leagues or who will never make it further than the college squad.

Baseball is important for a lot of reasons. I could go on about its place in society, how it is a profound expression of American culture and the deep social and economic justice struggles of our country, the style and attitudes of the people, and as an impeccable marker of history. I could talk about all the great personal stories of triumph and tragedy that express themselves like in no other sport. But today, baseball is important for this fact: For the coming spring, we have the chance to find at least a little corner of happy on more days than not—because of a terribly far-sighted boy and because Kirby Puckett was really Kirby Puckett.

Ducks on the Pond

I look out over the pond. It is an odd occurrence of open water in our Minnesota January. I am curious as to why there was open water. Everything else I see is frozen: everything from my landscape to the personalities I meet, hot stove crabbies desperately waiting for the spring thaw. The pond is filled with ducks.

The phrase “ducks on the pond” has a special meaning to baseball fans, to my son and me. It means that there is a runner in scoring position, either on second or third base where there is a reasonable expectation that a runner can score on most base hits. 

Something exciting might just happen.  I look at the flock, bobbing on the water. There is a hint of expectation; what might happen? They seem excited, anxious that maybe the next duck to land on the pond will be the hit.

But my mind is elsewhere. The ducks all look the same from the office window from which I view them. Their anxiety produces no opportunities, no epiphanies, and no Emmanuel-like swans. They are all gray-looking. I look again. They are all the same. In my anxiety, I suddenly realize I am hungry.

Crying at the Cathedrals

For the first time in a while, I made it to church. My church, that is.

My son Sid had mentioned that it had been a while since we went there. Do eleven-year-olds do this? It is heartening to hear him remind dad, instead of the battle it had been when he was younger to get up so we could make our way to the service.

Sunday morning we sat in our frequent place—maybe a little unfamiliar with the lapse of time and the fact that we attended the later service, and we have been, generally, early service attendees, where we chatted with familiar faces instead of the later service habit of stacking chairs for custodial staff.

We sat in our place, scouted out by Sid, with our friends Barbara and her son Zander. I sat with my arm around the back of Sid's chair, about as much public affection a preteen would allow, and my hand in Barbara's, about as much as it took to make me feel the wonder of how good it felt that day.

And I cried. I don't know why. I cried the first time Sid and I went to church together. I also cried the first time Sid and I attended our first baseball game, just the two of us. The church and the ball park: two of America's greatest Cathedrals. Two places where we run the risk of misplacing worship—something we can afford at neither place.

Sunday morning, I started to cry with the first song. I don't know why, but I was happy. Over what, I can't be sure—something more sentimental than salvation, and less practical. I don't know. Part of the mood was seeing my son sing—some songs that at some times are favorites; some that he may play on his guitar soon—if he practices. Maybe it was sharing that piece of love with Barbara for the first time, at a time when we really needed it. Maybe it was a joy of taking our sons to a very important place, maybe—just maybe more important than the ball park.

At the ball park, we watch and dream of heroes on the field and in our memories. There are great and beautiful stories behind those diamonds. There are pages full of heroes in the primary text of worship and as many heroes who have been created since the consecration of those texts. There were a few of them, sitting next to me, two thirds of the way back on the right side of the gym where the services are held: one hero who could hardly sit still through such a grown-up service whose restlessness was interrupted by some songs (Sid promised Zander, “It gets better soon,” with more music.) and the recognition of a Bible story he knows from reading with his mom almost nightly; one hero who gave me a bit of joy and security in the palm of her hand against the palm of mine, an intermittent gaze and a shared pleasure in where we had taken our sons—taken ourselves; one hero who let dad know that he was ready to go back to church and who turned to me half way through the service saying, “We have to come back next week.”  This is a blessing.

I don't think any of my heroes saw me crying. It was a very faint tear and in the middle of one or two songs; they were reading lyrics. Doesn't matter.

What does matter? Something: Whatever it is we get from being there. Whatever is important. Something in a message. Something in the spirit. Maybe even something in the lefty pose that doesn't always seem necessary but marks our congregation for good or ill. Something about being there with people for whom I care.

The first time I set foot in one of the services, it was with a Love from a previous stage in life. It was not I who cried that Sunday, but she. Maybe because that Sunday, her children were not there. It is hard to trace the paths of those griefs, sorrows and joys. They intertwine and no one can tell the difference. Another neatly concealed secret.

Next week, I will not cry. I promise. I will listen, enjoy the space with reverent gratitude (the topic of Sunday's message) and wait for a cookie after the service. Maybe a moment to dream about baseball. But today, I will pray for more of my heroes.

Celebrity Crush

Bookseller conventions have their perks.  Near the end of my career as a bookseller, I had the grand opportunity to sit next to historian and author Doris Kearns Goodwin, most famous for her biographies of Lyndon Johnson, the Kennedys and the Roosevelts, at the convention dinner where she was a keynote speaker.  This is especially significant—at least to me, because Doris Kearns Goodwin was once the object of the closest thing I ever had as an adult to a celebrity crush. 

The crush was a secret that I appropriately kept from her for the couple of hours we shared in the dinner hall.  I forewent much of the school boy gush: Traded such statements about loving her work and asking her about the challenges of working with her subjects—being polite (or timid) around the issue of Lyndon Johnson and his reputation for hands that roamed as much as most men’s fantasies.  Better that banter than exposing my fantasy that ignores the reality of Mr. Goodwin.

Doris Kearns Goodwin is smart. She is cute.  She knows how to turn our allure to  history's charismatic characters and to salt their personae so that we don’t recognize them as history, but, rather a compelling and even slightly sexy story.  She also loves baseball and knows the importance of the institution to American culture and the importance of baseball’s stories (history) to the American story. 

I saw her as the lone woman commentator for Ken Burns’ baseball documentary aired on PBS back in the mid 1990s.  Except for the fact that I was currently in love at the time, I would have fallen head over heals right then.
When she got up to give her talk, her small frame struck an imposing figure, in spite of her slight and petite size.  Her words were large as she read off her page, like the smart kid in class, grown-up school girl who was making good, once again, on her promise to go far.  She stood at the podium with her smart suit, smart ideas and a smart gaze at her notes, the ones that held her assignment for the night. 

But before her talk, we had the chance to share a mediocre meal, great conversation and, one or two great ideas.

This was big.  I had the best seat in the house, which is saying a lot given that the other keynote speaker was Suds Trukel.  I don’t remember much of the conversation.  I am sure any facility in conversing was compromised by my not wanting to appear too fawning or by the fear that I could not possibly hold my end of a conversation with her about any Roosevelt, Kennedy, or Lyndon Johnson.
But, of course, the conversation turned to politics. And even my reticent self knew that this was one subject on which I knew a little more than my opinions.
The next year would be a Presidential election year and somehow the conversation turned to who we wanted to see as the next President of the United States.  She said something that shocked me.  She said, You know who I think should be the next President of the United States?  Paul Wellstone.

I smiled to myself.  Two thoughts crossed my mind.  The first was that she was just saying this because she was in Minnesota amongst a crowd that almost certainly loved Paul—unconditionally.  This may have been true, but I did not quiz her on this. 

‑­The second thought was, Oh, here we go again.  A well-off, out-of-touch elite who is going to go on about how wonderful and liberal Paul is and “don’t you just love him?”  But what she said surprised me.  It was smarter than a knee jerk and was what I now see as a distinction that, today, is fading: that distinction between liberal and progressive.

She said something like this:  You know, Paul and Sheila (Wellstone) are just about the only people on Capitol Hill and maybe the only ones in the Senate, who, when they go out, have to pay attention to how much they spend.  She reminded/pointed out that the Senate was a club of the very wealthy.  As such, most of them had little perspective on what it meant for most Americans to live day to day, make their way through the mine field of common economic and social realities. 

It was an important articulation of the difference between liberal and progressive.  Today, the two seem to be used interchangeably, since so many people have become shy to use the world liberal and find “progressive” more trendy.  It seems the term liberal has gone out of favor, for some good reasons and some not so good ones, but seems to have as much to do with the waning of liberal glory that reached its apex with the charisma of Camelot and found its nadir in the series of political defeats, culminating in the disaster of Michael Dukakis’ campaign that will ever be marked by the press opportunity image of his egg-head bobbing out of the hatch of that blasted tank.  (I think it is more than an urban legend that said that the guy who had the idea for this photo-op was looking for work before the next news cycle.)

Paul was a progressive.  A profound and fundamental antidote to the criticism that says all non-right wing politics is about the elites.  He was also the response to a subculture that looks to segments of society with mock pity and finds itself sufficiently superior to the masses upon whom their empire was built. The class that hands out bread crumbs of mock generosity left from their lavish feast.  And Paul still stood in profound opposition to the supremacist cultures that chose to pick on an underclass that includes more of us than we care to admit.   We would still rather do for ourselves than have the crumbs handed to us.

And at the same time, looking closely to the public that surrounded Paul made us look at the liberal, conservative, progressive, tentative moderate, and supremacist in ourselves.  It is a place where we met the enemy if we looked in the mirror—if we looked.

But I didn't need to think about any such complex social diagrams.  I didn't need to remember Stud's stories.  I didn't need to think much about the dinner which was most likely chicken and something.  I didn't need to sound smarter than the school boy I never was in front of the smartest girl in the class.  No matter, because I got to sit with her, talk with her and at least seem smart in front of her.  (Or she made me feel smart.)

Could Dr. Doris Kearns Goodwin forgive the fact that I did not totally fall in love with her at the sight of her on the Burns baseball special (cute, smart and loves baseball for what it is: who could possibly resist?) given that, at the time the show aired, I was in love with  a woman who was dearly loved by Paul and Sheila? She would have at least been impressed.  I was and continue to be impressed—by all those people. 

So, I am humble enough to admit that I am not above succumbing to a celebrity crush.  It is a lesson that helps me (us) be humble enough to accept the reality when real-life crushes are not returned.  Maybe it is a lesson that prepares me (us) for the true humility that comes when a crush IS actually returned.

To end the drama, as you might have guessed, I did not succeed in wooing her away from her husband.  (Gosh, one would think, after sharing the “rubber chicken,” we would have been ready to elope.)  I did get to sit next to Doris Kearns Goodwin, hear a story about one of my heroes, and learn that some days, I am just smart enough to appreciate and participate in those glories. 

And if you run into her, please don't tell her my secret.  I'll be like SO embarrassed.