Quotables

 “Being on your own away from home is like being on base and taking a big lead. There’s danger. Risk. You could get picked off, or you could run into a double play. The only place you’re really safe is when you’re at home base. It’s the only base in the ground like a foundation, that’s shaped like a house. Funny, in baseball, you start at home, and you journey across the sacks trying to get back. Home is where all the action is. You defend it, clean it, run to it, throw at it, step on it. Some try and steal it. All the important stuff happens at home.”

“Politicians mix truth and lies as easily as a card shark shuffles clubs and spades”.

Walter slapped the table. “I think he’s asking you out, Kitty.”

“Oh, he’s a foul ball,” Kitty said with a teasing smile.

“You can’t strike out on a foul ball,” Uncle Jimmy said.

“Yeah, but you can’t get on base neither,” Kitty replied

“Listen kiddo, there are two sides in this world. Honest people are on one side of the fence and crooks are on the other,” Margaret said.

“Ma, this is Chicago. There aren’t any fences,” Eddy said

“Think of going to church as going to a Cubs game. You sit in the pews or the bleachers, listening to organ music. You stand. You sing. You watch the players and the priest and altar boys who are all dressed up in uniforms. You praise the Cubs or Jesus. Right?”

“Hey, there’s no ketchup on my hot dog,” Elmore said.

“Ketchup? You’re not from around here, are you?” Eddy said. “We don’t put ketchup on hot dogs.”

“Why? You put relish on yours.”

“Relish is different. Ketchup is too sweet. Would you put chocolate syrup on your hot dog?”

Pigeons would stuff the basket with cash as if they were trying to buy their way into heaven. His parents would drop a fin each time. Priests were no different than police and politicians; they all had their hands out

Elmore tramped up the steps as if he were sleep walking. A cool breeze swept through his red hair, tousled like a flickering flame. He reached the top, and froze, his lips parted in wonder. The infield was the color of golden sand. The outfield grass, a radiant green, looked like felt on a brand-new billiard table, glowing in God’s light.

Life under the El was a creepy dark underworld, a rough and rugged region where sidewalk people didn’t go. A no-man’s-land where men fought for dibs to park cars, drunk Cub fans pissed behind steel beams, or bums dug through trash looking for God knew what.

Eddy studied the hardwood floor he was about to sweep and mop. It was pockmarked with cigarette burns and scuffed by the soles of countless customers. He straggled toward the jukebox, waiting for a tongue lashing from his dad who was shrouded behind a mix of cigarette and stale cigar smoke that drifted and eddied across the tavern like an early morning fog rolling in from Lake Michigan.

The next batter, Bill Nicholson, swaggered to the plate. His brow furrowed under his Cubs cap,
set low over his sneering eyes, a chaw of tobacco bulged from his cheek as he crouched in the batter’s box. The lefthander leveled his bat across the plate as if he were measuring the strike zone.

Eddy cut into the crowd like a halfback running around tacklers. He glanced back and, in the glare of the stadium lights, saw Bruce slithering his way through the throngs of fans, eyes bulged and lips curled with a savage fever.

The headwind lifted Maria’s hair in all directions, and shadows flickered across her grinning face as they passed under a row of maple trees. She could have been riding on the roller coaster, the Bobs, at Riverview, anticipating a dip and a sharp turn. There was no destination in Eddy’s mind. He was just driving. Time stood still.

Eddy took a drag and blew a perfect smoke ring that soared skyward and dissolved into the murk of the city night. Dull light trickled through the window and etched a shadow of Eddy’s head on the opposite wall. The silhouette slanted sideways, crooked and faded.

Footsteps marched down the hallway at a fast pace. Eddy’s booming heartbeat pounded with the cadence of the steps. His skin tingled, and his breathing labored. He was trapped in his bedroom like a condemned prisoner awaiting execution but hoping for a pardon.

Eddy gazed into the darkening sky, his lips parted in wonder. Sun streaks swept across the edge of the western horizon, an orange blaze smothered beneath a slumbering purple haze. How many times did he curse the sunset that ended ball games due to darkness? Here he was, standing free in front of his new home, a tent, its sides rippling in the wind, silhouetted in the dew-soaked dusk. True, there were no ball games to play, but there was nobody to boss him around. A summer smile beamed across his face. He welcomed the night.

Eddy reached into his pocket like he was reaching into his own stomach and planted ten quarters on the table with a look of agony pinched in his brow. He had one nickel left.

Eddy peeked a look so his father couldn’t see him watching, and saw his father’s glimmering eyes. But he didn’t want his dad to know that he saw. He didn’t want his dad to lose his pride, and he didn’t want to lose any more of his own. He wanted his dad to see that he was a man now. All right, he’d proven it, in a way, by being on his own. He felt ashamed that he’d lost all his money. That he couldn’t find work and support himself. That he’d been hustled and that he had to admit to his dad he was just about to call him, as if he were eight years old. He’d wanted to show them. He hadn’t realized it up till now, but he’d wanted to show all of them: his dad, his mom, Bobby, Florence, Nonno, his friends, that he didn’t need them. That he could do it. That he didn’t need any Roosevelt Military Academy.
    But now he’d lost. It was the same feeling he had when he’d blown a pitch or lost a game. It was feeling like a little boy. It was feeling ashamed and frustrated at the same time. His dad was right. He wasn’t ready for the cold, cruel world. It was funny, but here he was, from the city, and it took the country to swallow him up and teach him that. When all the older boys like Lockerbie were getting drafted or volunteering and shipping off to war, he always envied them and wished he could fight alongside them. But now he knew he wasn’t ready for that. Maybe that’s what his dad meant by what he’d said. And maybe his dad was right about a lot of things. Maybe he needed to go to military school so they could make a man, a real man, out of him.

The family cut through the crowd and found the platform. The stench of diesel wafted in the stale air of the cavernous station. They stopped in front of a silver train, its steely sheen shimmered off Eddy’s watery eyes and its engines hummed in steady rhythm to his trembling body. He struggled to swallow down the hot tears that bubbled inside. Hold it in. Hold it in. He set his trunk on the vibrating concrete floor and swiped his nose with his forearm.

To Eddy, the goalposts seemed a mile away. The placekicker ran up to the ball and Eddy heard the soft thud of the steel-toed kicker’s cleat as it bit into the hide. Eddy watched the oblong ball spiral upward into the air and then peak midfield as it sailed downward in a line that seemed destined for him. He had shagged a million fly balls, but this was different. Eddy caught it on the run.

“I’m like some old beaten-down stray dog with a stripe running down its nose, sent away from home to live with mean strangers who chain you up, spit on you, yell at you, and feed you table scraps. They call you plebe to make you feel worthless and dumb.”

"You should know that there are powerful people unhappy with this situation. They’re the kind that stalk and hover over politicians like a murder of crows."

Thoughts raced by like Hank Wyse fastballs.

“Baseball teams are like family, you care for them. You want them to win because they’re part of you. A lot of people can’t remember most of the players on the Cubs twenty or thirty years ago. But they remember if the Cubs had a good team."

Nicky leaned in and said in a rigid tone, “We collect politicians like bananas, by the bunch. And you ain’t one of them. Understand?”

Clarence’s head bent back, and the big man burst into a bellow of laughter, his lips quivering like an opera singer belting out “The Star-Spangled Banner.” He composed himself, cupped his hands over his mouth, and shouted, “Jackie Robinson’s playin’, the first Negro to play in the majors."

He saw his shadow on the grass. It followed him like an infielder following a batter trapped between the bases.

“You gotta learn how to lose before you can learn how to win.”

The manager’s smile formed lines in his craggy face that brightened like sunshine on a slab of cracked cement. He smelled of sweat and after shave, and his breath reeked of tobacco.

A smile cracked across Eddy’s face, and the excitement spilled out of him like sunshine spreading across a warm day at Wrigley Field.

Flecks of faint light filtered through the gaps in the tracks, splashing dull rectangular specks below. Shade from the El blanketed the alley and backyards of brick bungalows that soon would be packed with parked cars. Rusted rows of rivets raced up steel girders that shed flakes of peeling white paint. Corroded trash barrels and pigeon droppings dotted the gritty landscape.

A smooth summer breeze rustled through the lush ivy that clung on and covered the outfield brick wall, its thick green leaves fluttering and gently swaying upward. Above the green scoreboard, the American flag, and under it, eight National League team flags hoisted on a nautical-style mast, freely flapped in the direction of Lake Michigan. Soft cotton candy clouds sailed east over the ball game. The wind was blowing out.