leaving it all behind

May 23, 2024 by Steve Myers 8 Comments

We wasted most of those days back near the old Fenebrooke Barn. Locals were alway saying something about there being “a whole lotta nothing going on inside the barn,” that we best steer clear and that just raised up our curiosity because we were just 12-year olds and we had only recently ventured beyond the sand box.

There was all kinds of billboards surrounding that barn. Looked like one a those photo albums my pops had of old stadiums like Crosley Field and those ads across the home run fence, so many ads and one of them I remembered. It was of Mountain Dew and ever since seeing that ad in the picture I made sure to drink that dew and that got me thinking that I would like to be a big league player one day real soon too and ride planes all over America and hang out with my buddies for six months long and then later on the crossing guard who we called Hutch taught us that Mountain Dew had what coffee had – caffeine and I figured that’s why it got me jumping around like popcorn kernels. All I knew for sure is that I wanted to get older and be a baseball player. I didn’t need a house or wife or children.

One of the signs said Caldwell Real Estate and next to that one was a Doogan’s Bakery and then some kind of meat store. There were all kinds of signs and they were designed to keep strangers like us out, but it was no Great Chinese Wall, not that I’d ever been to the China, but I’d seen it on TV in an old movie my pops made me watch. I forget the name of it. Anyway, that billboard wall was long and kind of intimidating so we did what any 12-year olds would do. We mustered up courage and thought up ways to get over or under that darn wall so we could do some trespassing inside that barn …….trespassing back then felt like moonshine before we ever knew what moonshining was all about. Heck, we just figured it was a romantic notion like the big white pill moon shining down on a couple of sinners while they was kissing.

Chulio was our man, our thinking man. He had all kinds of ideas and kept saying that one day he was gonna be a night man guiding big ships to their berths. None of us knew what he was talking about most of the time, but we trusted him like a jag. That’s what we called ourselves – Jags. We got the name from Mr. Genzlin the neighbor. He saw us taking hits off a bottle of Wild Irish Rose wine one night and walked over, laughing at us. He wasn’t sore at all, no moral, no don’t do this or that or I’m fetching your parents and they’ll give you a beating. No, Mr. Genzlin called us into a circle and said “from now on you guys are Jags because jags is the feeling you get when you drink enough” and he even took a swig and then told us about the first time he got drunk high, burnt on wine, but that’s another story.

We needed to get over the billboard wall and like I said Choulio was a man of ideas. He took a few steps back and then ran up and knocked over one of the signs, simplest trick in the book like the cops knocking in a door of a most wanted criminal. You see what I mean about Choulio. He was always using that old fire making, rub rock and stone logic. Saved us a lot of time did Choulio. I mean he believed in miracles and all that magic stuff, but he also looked up at an evergreen tree and wondered why no one ever had to go and trim it. It was always looking so perfect and symmetrical was the word Choulio used and he had to teach us that word because none of us had ever heard of it, but Choullio was no show off or anything like that with his big words, not at all. He just said some people know big words and some people don’t and that it’s nice when someone who knows them shares the meaning with others so they can learn new words too.

So there we were, a few feet from the off-limits barn. I looked in the window and I heard a voice speaking in some strange language or not strange, just one I had never heard before. There was no dialogue going on, just the one man babbling on and on about god knows what, not that I believe in God or anything like that, but if God did know and I assumed people who believe in God think he does know just about everything…..well, if this God could tell me what this guy inside the barn was saying, I would have no problem dropping down on my knees, praying like they did at St. Pascal’s and asking God to tell me the meaning of this guy’s words. Turned out I didn’t need to ask. None of us did because as soon as we mustered up the courage to go into the barn, I spotted a man with squinted eyes and an olive complexion, definitely Japanese, turned towards us and says, “they play baseball in Japan too.”

It kinda struck me as strange that he’d blurt out something so random at a bunch of us strangers and we weren’t carrying bat and ball or even wearing baseball hats so it was really special because I knew nothing about Japan, especially that they played baseball over there and where was Japan? Near China? Later that day we went to the library and asked that cute Kristen Temperly librarian with the oval glasses if she knew something about Japan and I swear on Pete Rose’s ledger that her eyes bulged with excitement like an owl’s eyes and she never blinked and she went on and on about geishas, sumo wrestling, sushi, samurais and the Nippon Professional Baseball league and it was then right then and there, in that very library named after Lary Doby that my future unraveled like one of those red carpets at the movie awards. I suddenly knew my path like a bee swarming its way back to the hive.

I was leaving it all behind. I made up my mind. I was going to Japan, to revive the old birddog scout prototype. I loved that word prototype. And you probably guessed right that Choulio taught me that one. Anyway I got to wondering if Japan even had birddog scouts in their history, even better if they didn’t. I could become the first and write all about it, but first I would have to learn the Japanese language which I figured wouldn’t be too much of a headache because I already spoke Spanish and Choulio’s father told me that learning a third and fourth language gets easier because your mind gets sharper and notices patterns and what not.

Anyway, I was only 14, but then I was 15 and 16 and life seemed to speed up. Good thing I took Japanese in high school and then university and read all those Robert Whiting books about baseball in Japan because when I arrived in Tokyo after graduating, I had some kind of passion for all things Japanese, a roaring fever! I got a job teaching English or my kind of English anyway and no one complained. I also bought a used Honda Civic and started my journey all over the Japanese island in search of a great baseball player. I didn’t have any interest in recruiting him to play in the United States. I figured it’d be better to just leave him home and let him be an all-star in the Japanese leagues, but I’d leave the decision to him, but one thing is for certain, I rented a room with a kitchen and found a sushi shop and a store selling sake so when I found a player with potential I’d invite him in for some sushi and sake and while I waited for that gold rush day, I drank sake and hired a geisha to dance and read some haikus.