king of the sandlot (chapter one) « Letters from Grenada

king of the sandlot (chapter one)

Billy Joe Danforth had his heart set on baseball ever since the 2001 All-Star game, when he witnessed Alex Rodriguez offer his place to Cal Ripken. As the crowd went wild, stood up in ovation, Daddy turned to him and said, “Now you see that, son? That is respect.” Then he upended his can of beer, sucked it down in one noisy slurp and got up and went to the kitchen to get another. Also to hide his moist eyes. He never cried in front of Billy Joe, not even that time he lost the tip of his middle finger to the threshing machine.

The glove Daddy gave Billy Joe was old and worn. It had belonged to some cousin, he wasn’t even sure which one, but that was OK because Billy Joe was used to hand-me-downs. And, like Daddy said, who wants a stiff new glove anyway? This glove was broken in just right. The leather was well softened and when he flexed his hand the glove moved right along with his fingers. That first day they played catch for hours. Daddy could throw all right but they didn’t have a bat. It didn’t matter. Billy Joe was happy.

Momma watched them from the kitchen window. She smiled as her little boy scrunched up his face, squinting against the late afternoon sun. His cheeks and nose were drenched in freckles. Billy Joe hated those freckles. Freckles, he said, were for girls. Momma loved them, even though she never said so. She indulged herself by kissing those cheeks. Billy Joe didn’t like that much either – the kissing, that is – but he loved Momma so he only squirmed a little bit.

The truth was, Billy Joe soon figured, that Daddy didn’t know an awful lot about baseball. Oh, he knew the names of the players and that kind of thing, but he had never played himself. So he could tell you what a bunt looked like, but he couldn’t tell you why you’d want to do it. You could ask him why this base was stolen but that one wasn’t, and he’d answer, but his answers didn’t make a whole lot of sense and pretty soon Billy Joe stopped asking.

He stopped asking and he started listening real hard to whatall the announcers on the TV had to say. That’s how he learned that you never ever walk the pitcher, that Cubans are always at least five years older than they say they are and that catchers make the best managers. He also learned that it was possible to talk and talk and talk without really saying much of anything at all.

Suddenly he wanted his own library card. Momma had tried – and failed – to interest him a couple of years earlier. Better late than never, she said to herself. Matter of fact, she thought, it’s better this way. Better now when he thinks it’s his idea. Sure enough, he washed his face and combed his hair without being told and by the time she found her purse he was standing on the porch tapping his foot. They drove to town in Daddy’s pickup truck and returned triumphant with Billy Joe’s card, a short stack of books and glass bottle Cokes, one for each of them.

And he read. In the afternoons when his chores were done. Under the covers late at night, with a flashlight. That’s how Billy Joe met Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris and Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente and Sandy Koufax and Joe Jackson. Tragic or heroic or in between, it didn’t matter. He wanted to know all their stories.

He played too. By the time he was 14 he was the uncontested king of the sandlot. The one in town, next to the Presbyterian Church? He played first base most of the time and he pitched the rest of the time but either way he was a star. Afterward he’d walk home, sunburnt and sore and smiling.

For a while it seemed that summer might last forever. But it didn’t, and suddenly it was September. It was September, which meant a long bus ride to the big regional high school. It meant endless hallways and a different teacher for every class and hundreds of kids he’d never even seen before.

None of that mattered to Billy Joe. Only one thing mattered to him, and that was varsity baseball tryouts. A real team? Real uniforms? It was the stuff of dreams. And it was all he wanted.

(originally published at toomanycooks.tumblr.com)