A baseball card I would like to have

There are all kinds of towns – Greek, Italian, and so on with China town probably being the most popular. I’ve never heard of Irish or Sweden town so I guess no one leaves those countries. Anyway, alcoholic is a town too, but alcoholics go to meetings and preach the 12 step higher power where as drunks follow the bible and do like Ecclesiastes and drink and are merry. Can i buy you a drink? What’s your poison or excuse me what’s your pleasure? You wanna dance?

I’ve hid a flask under my pillow on my bed and reached for it and it responded so we were married in a great sense, in that wild kind of love of, singing out loud in the rain all by oneself and when a lonely straggler neared he or she was welcomed in for a swig. That bottle sang to us all like a Christmas Carol or a John Cooper Clarke punk blast and then another sip and gulp and all that mattered was the world, our place, our home and all the vintage 8-pane windows that Walter Johnson played with, throwing balls through, to perfect his aim and….

I worked at the old County Stadium in Milwaukee, as caretaker for the carnival like game called Speed Pitch. It offered fans an opportunity to see how fast they could throw a baseball. We started work three hours before first pitch outside the stadium and it was Milwaukee where tailgating in the parking lot and beer drinking were the euphoric norm so there were a lot of drunks eager to try out their best fastball. My mom always told me that my job at the stadium was a turning point, that it opened me up to others and I think she was right, it opened me up to the joy of drink and camaraderie. And after three hours outside the stadium we moved the contraption to the bleachers and it was a blast and I got paid to boot and even better, we finished our jobs after the fifth inning was completed and so since we were already inside the stadium, we got to watch the last four innings or more and that was the mid to late 1980’s when Teddy Higuera was perhaps the most underrated pitcher in all of baseball and he threw complete games, 15 in 1986 (10 at home) and 14 the following year (8 at home) so I had a chance to see Higuera work, real hard work, and he quickly became one of my favorite pitchers, painting corners with an electric fastball and a big curve ball and plenty of K’s and wins and infectious smile and this card I’ve posted here, a card I would love to get is from where? I wasn’t sure until I asked Mark at RetroSimba and he let me know that …..”Steve, the 2 American League ballparks that had opposing team logos on its outfield walls in that time period were Anaheim Stadium and Toronto’s SkyDome. Because of the grass field, I think the Teddy Higuera card is from Anaheim Stadium, home of the Angels.”

Thanks Mark as I raise up a a flask and make a toast with a drunk sigh.

Unopened Goose Island Ales

The book had everything Eddie liked – highlighted words and sentences, sometimes entire paragraphs in yellow and orange, creased corners, and a busted spine forcing him to hold the book in both hands. He turned each page carefully so they wouldn’t fall out, a great exercise to be in the moment, slowed down time, but his focus didn’t last long because there were too many words he didn’t understand, words like surfeit and tawdry and flotsam and this frustrated him so he put down the book and kind of gave up on reading and instead, considered buying a one way ticket to Tibet to study Buddhism under the rubble of Chinese occupation, but then he learned about a literary pep rally taking place under the Sasquatch bridge the following Sunday afternoon.

The crossing guard beside the elementary school told Eddie about it. Harold was his name. He had seen Eddie staring at a tree, stuck in a gaze as the other kids crossed the street and so Harold thought maybe Eddie was the sort that liked words and because he was so quiet, he figured Eddie preferred to write words rather than speak them.

“People gather under that bridge” explained Harold, “and discuss dangling participles and invent new words that aren’t yet in the dictionary and when they agree on one or two, they slip them subtly into everyday speak. I went last week and there was talk of the words Kash and Vish.”

“What do they mean?” asked a curious Eddie.

“They wouldn’t tell me because I wasn’t exactly invited. I kind of snuck in.”

“How do you get invited?”

“It’s more like a pot luck. You have to bring something and if they like it, they let you in.”

“Bring what?”

“A poem, essay, or if you really get on a roll, a long winded dissertation. Come up with something like that and they might let you in, but watch your grammar.”

Eddie was scared of these literary places, but also super excited and as always, when he got excited, he made horizontal stacks of his baseball cards in no particular order, just a long one that snaked around on the red shag carpet in his bedroom, mostly doubles from the 1978 and 1979 Topps set. At some point, Eddie would remove a card and see where the player was born and then dig out his atlas and find it on the map. That was how he got so good at geography. He knew all the states and capitals and smaller, unknown towns like Muncie, Pennsylvania. That’s where Ed Ott of the Pirates was born. Eddie was really glad to pick the Ott card from the stack for three reasons. One – They sort of had the same name and I say sort of because Eddie’s actual name was Edward and Ed Ott’s actual name was Nathan Edward, but it was close enough and the second reason was because Muncie had less than 3,000 people and that seemed like a place where there would be no fear of the other side of the tracks, and the third reason was because Ott was such a short name. Actually, there was a fourth reason after Eddie told his dad about Ed Ott at the dinner table. His dad mentioned another Ott…..Mel Ott and the way he lifted his front leg during a swing. This gave Eddie an idea. He invented a new word about Mel Ott’s leg lift so he would have something to bring to the literary hoedown that Sunday and maybe be accepted. He called it Clesperating. Lifting one’s front leg was clesperating or to clesper.

The day arrived and no more than 10 minutes into the walk, Eddie was attacked by a bird, a black one with red square on its neck. It flapped its oily wings in his hair and would have probably pecked his neck had Eddie not screamed and shook his head back and forth like a dog shaking water off its body. It got Eddie wondering if there were more birds than humans on the planet and since us humans have ruled over birds for so long with passenger pigeons and killing quail and turkey for food and just shooting birds for fun what would happen if birds joined forces and sought revenge? It might be the end of us humans.

According to a man in a wheelchair who was across the street, Eddie had unintentionally got too close to the bird’s nest threatening the safety of the bird’s home and its babies. Eddie knew the man. It was Lance, a homeless, christ loving, gay, heroine junky. Eddie hadn’t seen him in a long time, a year, maybe more. He figured he’d died or moved to the west cost to permanently get out of the cold, but it was Lance, skinny Lance, with the overbite, the lisp, the love of men, and still panhandling to earn money for his fix and smiling too. Lance was almost always smiling and one time, he was drunk and singing an Amy Winehouse song outside the library, in spring.

Weird thing was that Eddie had dreamt about Lance the night before which wasn’t that weird to Eddie because often times, Eddie would dream about people and then see them the next day. Eddie believed that all of us humans had this kind of clairvoyant capacity. It was wired into us.

Eddie had given Lance 20 dollar bills on different occasions and Lance always asked for more and always said he would pay him back but Eddie knew he wouldn’t. He knew Lance was a junky and the fix was more important. It was natural. His body needed the heroine so Eddie gave with no instructions, just glad to give.

Anyway, in the dream, Lance asked Eddie for 2 thousand dollars, which was way more than he could give him, but the great thing was that Lance wasn’t in a wheel chair. He was standing up.

Eddie told Lance about the dream. “It must mean something,” he said and Lance replied, “of course” and then Eddie added that, “maybe its like trailing in the bottom of the seventh, 10-1 and already being 40 games out of first place, but the manager still having his third baseman guard the line to prevent a double.”

Lance wasn’t a baseball fan, but he took a stab at the symbolism, without ever saying a word. He tried to stand up and failed, falling back in the chair. He tried a few more times to no avail, but the attempt was what mattered, as if he were already standing up. He said with a smile,

“Come on I’ll buy you a beer.”

Lance had a bunch of panhandled change, one dollar coins and two dollar coins. Eddie pushed Lance to Otto’s Liquor and Lance bought two tall aluminum Goose Island Ales and then Eddie wheeled Lance down to the river under a bridge, the Ransackle bridge, about a twenty minute walk from the Sasquatch bridge which is where the literary event was happening. Eddie decided to not go, but he told Lance about his new word, to clesper and that it meant front leg lift. Eddie helped Lance up and out of the wheel chair and positioned him like a batter waiting for a pitch and together, they performed front leg lifts simultaneously.

They still hadn’t opened their beers.