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Superheroes Playing Pepper

Memoir by Dan Spinella

When the yellow and red Rheingold truck was parked outside of the apartment, we knew that Dad was home and we were going to a ballgame.

We’d pile into the truck, the smell of beer permeated the cab, and drive to Brooklyn and Ebbets Field. It seemed like a ride that went on forever. From wherever we parked, we could see the Ebbets Field rotunda.

We’d run ahead of Dad, who’d buy grandstand tickets, then we’d walk into the green afternoon at the ballpark. Down below, but not too far away, were Reese and Campanella, Snider and Hodges, and most strikingly Jackie Robinson. Playing pepper.

We knew it was possible to have heroes and witness their feats of small greatness tucked away in our seats in our baseball home.

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Life Lessons for a Cleveland Fan

Memoir by Stan Klein

growing up in a city with a marginally competitive baseball team prepares one for life.

finances are always a problem, a constant lack of supportive friends, and a lifetime of consistent doubt.

the team can never afford the ideal of standard stars, so they have rosters full of talented problem players or those with curious issues with daily living, along with the majority of eager faces with spotty talent, filled in with aged players hoping to qualify for a pension.

mostly people like the ones you will end up working with in your day-to-day existence.

the experience gives you keys to understanding and eventually finding a humorous acceptance of disappointment.

have your championships, give me more vern fullers, duke simms, and joe charboneaus. no wins just smiles at our own shortcomings.

 

Stan Klein is an artist, gallery director, and former Little League umpire.

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The Wrigleyville Monkey’s Paw

Fiction by James Finn Garner

A stranger approaches a Cub fan in a bar, carrying a strange relic….

I was sitting at the bar at Yak-zie’s on Clark. The season hadn’t started yet, so the place was nice and peaceful, full of locals. The expectations, the intensity, the slobbery emotions of the regular season were still off in the distance, so I was soaking in the serenity of things that currently were and the things that could in the future be. In short, I enjoyed being near my favorite ballpark with a cold one in my hand, without having to share the place with hordes of drunk account managers from River North and Schaumburg.

I was just about to ask for my tab when a certain smell stung the air, a smell like the floor of the Grand Avenue Red Line station. I turned to my left and was confronted with a haunted face staring intently at me. The man wasn’t a bum, but he wasn’t quite normal either. His scraggly beard was dusted with gray, and his full head of hair was slicked back. His eyes were brown and lit from the inside, surrounded by cracked circles of skin like pale dried mud.

Hey, I said.

You need to do me a favor, he said.

Sure I do.

You do.

Well, you have such a sweet way of asking someone, I said, how could anyone refuse?

Don’t laugh. This isn’t a joke.

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Lefty Righty

Fiction by Jim Siergey

A young pitcher’s career is shaped by politics and zoology….

Baseball season is upon us and I find my thoughts drifting back to a forgotten ballplayer from the 1970s.

I don’t recall his name. It was Daltry or Daugherty or Delancey — something like that. But I do remember his nickname.

It was Dart.

He was a pitcher, and the epithet was hung on him because he threw so hard that the ball flew by the batter like a dart, nestling in the bull’s-eye of the catcher’s mitt.

Dart was one of those rocket-armed phenoms, signed out of high school and on the mound for his major league debut before he was 19 years of age. An auspicious debut it was, because he threw a one-hit shutout. It was a great beginning for what many baseball insiders predicted would be a Hall of Fame career.

Unfortunately, his sudden notoriety also piqued the interest of the Draft Board.

The Vietnam War was still going on, and Dart had wanted no part of it. When he received his induction papers into the United States Army, he simply ignored them.

When the authorities finally came sniffing around for him, Dart hightailed it to Canada. He officially became a “draft dodger.”

Despite his ignominious retreat, the kid was so talented that it was hard for at least one major league owner to ignore it. He wasn’t in Canada very long before he was signed by the Montreal Expos and added to the roster.

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