good game
good game
good game

He said that Thompson could be the fastest to hit five hundred, a first ballot Hall of Famer, but I just nodded and sipped my coffee.

Blessed be the millwrights on the open hearth that awaited him; the nurses and elevator operators; secretaries; plumbers; electricians

Wrigley had put out a study claiming that gum chewing increased performance on assessments and my elementary school took it as gospel, sending letters home asking for us to bring it on test days. Marshall brought Big League Chew. 

The first doctor who called said I couldn’t play. The scan showed stress fractures and the only remedy was rest. It would have been a blessing the diagnosis came between seasons but, for me,

Gaylord Perry toiled for twenty-two seasons in the majors, and the look on his face suggests it was hard toil indeed.

The solitude. In the summer, I dine. On hot dogs. And fast balls. Go Dodgers!

Take your pick. Me, they said I hung my off-speed stuff, lost track of the count, lacked mental toughness. I waved off too many signs.

When I am young I wish I were invisible so that the white boys will stop screaming, “Go back where you came from.”

I joined the crowd and bought an XL.

1. What company made the gum drops called Fancy Nancies after the famous Beantown slugger duo?  

Kinsella, Annie: Cinnamon-haired romantic lead in Field of Dreams. Played with zeal by Amy Madigan. Equal parts romantic and pragmatic, she raised a farm and a daughter, vanquished small-town Nazism, and offered unconditional support to her crazy-ass ghost-loving husband.

The smell of grilled hot dogs is in the near distance. 

And everyone in section ten is standing

After tonight, I’ll be demoted to my parents’ couch and a job at my uncle’s lumberyard.

Everyone was welcome. No one was cut 
in this league.

You cannot think of baseball without thinking of your grandpa. The two forever tangled in each’s DNA.

I practically worship, use
to fill an empty life.

The wonderful thing about teenagers — which is what he is now — is that they are very focused on their own lives and not the least bit interested in what their parents are up to.

Later that evening, Ken Caminiti died alone in a bug infested Bronx drug house.

Then maybe head over to the State Park near Orange City to rent a canoe and paddle gator-infested waters, strafed by black vultures and large, fictional-looking birds, for the chance to see some manatees, large and stationary in the gentle current of a warm, clear river. 

“I’ll be right up,” I said, seeking the comfort of the remaining parental arms. But no, he told me, “wait until morning.”

It tasted like apple cider — apple and something astringent — cinnamon, a strong cinnamon, warming, brown sugar, and sprinkled throughout the loaf, unadvertised, was some kind of dried fruit with a mild taste — raisins, probably — partially rehydrated by the thawing process.

Evan, in a cheap hotel room...

My mother and father are stuck in an optic deadlock, her looking at him like she is trying to solve a puzzle or remember the name of a particular film, him looking like he’s just deciphered answers to both.