After an approving nod from Gemma, Caleb, Jinny, Conor, and Lance were dismissed from the afternoon picnic under the sycamore so they could occupy the best seats in the house. The TV soon irradiated over two million pixels and displayed the antics of the crowd, a few of whom were aghast at how much they’d laid out for scalped tickets. At least Boston’s weather was complimentary, and game one of the World Series was nigh at hand.
Three days had passed since the seventh game of the National League Championship Series in St. Louis. On that stormy night Jinny had relinquished her seat halfway through the fifth inning and gone to bed so Conor could lie down on the couch. The grounds crew emerged from hiding and, like army ants, rolled out the tarp and covered the infield just in time. Thunder and lightning rumbled across the Mississippi, seemingly intent on waterlogging the spirit of every fan at Busch Stadium. Then came what the announcer described as a deluge or a gully-washer. It inundated the field for an hour and left puddles, “large enough to host Red Cross swimming lessons.” The Mississippi had risen to the occasion, and fan expectations had sunk to an all-time low; but the inclement weather abated, the fan-faithful squeegeed themselves off, and the game resumed.
By 11:15 p.m., Central Standard Time, the Colorado Rockies—exhausted and cold—had squeezed a run across the plate in the top of tenth. In the bottom half of the inning, the first Cardinal batter hit a line-drive that ricocheted off the center field fence and landed in a puddle, leaving the runner free to dive head-first into third base. The next batter popped into a ground-rules out. The third batter struck out. With a man stranded on third base, Sparky Adams—MVP of the American League—walked to the plate and knocked clay from his cleats with the bat. One hundred thousand Colorado fans back home held their breath, gnawed on their nails, and hoped for a miracle. Again, it started to rain, but the St. Louis faithful closed their umbrellas, rose to their feet, and waved soggy rally flags. All eyes were on the batter. “Strike one. Strike two.” A 97 MPH fast-ball soared toward the outside edge of the plate and left-handed Adams knocked it over the right-centerfield fence.
But wait. Danny Avila, Rocky all-star centerfielder leaped, stretched over the fence, and by the length of a soggy hot dog gobbled up what would have been a walk-off home-run. For the vocal majority the defeat was too much to swallow. They filed out of the ballpark saturated in disappointment. That night, ice tinkled in the shot glasses and a moody saxophone rendered—what else, baby—the St. Louis Blues in B flat; but thunder applauded the Rockies’ win all the way to Denver. That was three days ago.
Aflutter from an offshore breeze, the Stars and Stripes bested thousands of rally flags and breathed freedom into the lungs of fans at home and abroad. The Rockies—clad in purple and black—straddled, pawed the third base-line, and tried to ignore the up-close hand-held camera panning their faces one at a time. Jinny studied the Golden Glove third baseman’s sheepish grin. Caught off guard, Nolan Aleppo gingerly peeled bubblegum from his nose and blushed at the camera.
“Papa, look! Aleppo in living color.”
Fenway Park, major league baseball’s oldest venue, was decked out in all her glory. Jinny took it all in—the red, white, and blue bunting banners draped over the railings, the fans, the managers, the starting lineups, even the gypsy vendors trotting up and down the stairs pitching their wares—often from twenty feet. The monitor relayed the action, but Conor shifted on the couch and inadvertently muted the sound with his bum. Caleb filled in. “Hot Dogs. A loaf of bread, a pound of meat, and all the mustard you can eat. Hot Dogs! No, Mister, I can’t accept Traveling Checks; Hey, you in the red shirt! Catch. Say, lady, I’m passing down your change; keep an eye on the potbellied guy holding a cup of beer.” Caleb chuckled, “I never cease to amuse myself.” Conor ended the recital by unmuting the TV. Hammond organ harmonics hollowed and hushed. The public-address announcer could be heard from as far away as Columbus Avenue in downtown Boston.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to game one of the World Series. We invite you to stand and join in saluting the stars and stripes.” The O’Dwyers leaned forward, arose from the leather couch, and stared at the flag, snarled on the halyard, struggling to be free. Ball players and fans stood at various degrees of attention—or not at all—and unabashed bleary eyes groped the scantily clad soloist as she sashayed to home plate, touched the mike to her frosted lips, and waited for her cue.
“Our National Anthem will be performed by Grammy Award Winner, Gladys Tolabongo-Tate.” Applause. The talented artist nervously twirled the black cord onto her fingers, pushed back a sassy curl, smiled, and without accompaniment sang a-Capella. Her vocal chords warbled like those of a swallow about to crash-land in Capistrano, and crowd clamor irreverently upstaged the last line of the anthem: “. . . o’er the land of the free-h-e-e-e, and the home of the Braves.” Gladys hailed from Macon, Georgia.
Jinny mentally catalogued uniform numbers or names as players jogged, either to their positions or to the dugouts; the honor-guard jogged toward center field; a flurry of fans jogged toward the restrooms. Caleb remained standing and didn’t jog in place. He grabbed the remote and pretended it was a microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to acknowledge in attendance at today’s game one of our own, home on leave from Fort Benning, Georgia—my son, Specialist Conor O’Dwyer.” Jinny clapped. Conor shook his head.
“Good grief.”
Lance asked, “What about me, Papa?”
“You’re important, too. Have you cleaned the bullpen?”
“Bullpen? O yea, I forgot, Papa. Bullpen, that’s a good one.”
“I’ll hold your seat until you get back.” The back door slapped shut, and Caleb tittered, “Maybe I should see if they’ll the delay the first pitch until Lance warms up.” No one laughed, so Caleb hovered over a spot between Jinny and Conor, shut-down his engine, landed hard, and grabbed his left arm.
Conor asked, “Are you alright, Papa?” Caleb tried to mask his discomfort by hitching a hand over Conor’s shoulder and jostling him from side to side.
“I couldn’t be more alright. I’m proud of you, son. You’ve grown up!”
Conor noted Caleb’s paling smile and nodded, “Thanks, Papa, but Georgia sure is a long way from home.” I don’t know if I’ll survive Ranger School, but I’d die before I’d let you down. His evocative epitaph would prove prophetic.
The network broke out in a rash of commercials. To escape the itch to buy or bolt, Jinny reached over and teased the grey hairs on Caleb’s blotched, weathered arm.
“Ouch!”
“I just wanted to know how you’re feeling, Papa. Now we’re even.” Jinny kissed her Papa for the last time.
“EVEN, you say?”
Conor tried to escape a tickling tussle by shying away and throwing up his palms in self-defense. “Come on, you two. Enough is enough. Do you hear me? At ease.” Everyone relaxed. “Finally.” Conor grabbed the remote. “Before the game starts, I have a suggestion. During the first-inning-stretch let’s have desert. I’ll be asleep by the middle of the seventh.”
Caleb threw up his arms defensively. “But surely you’re not suggesting that I’m buying?” He grinned and linked arms with Jinny, adding, “I think it’s Jin’s turn . . . no? Okay, well . . .” He pretended to reach for his wallet, glanced at the screen, and handed Conor the remote. “We’re about to see the slowest change-up in history. The Vice President doesn’t have good stuff.”
Joshua Levenstein had been up all night with the flu, and he looked frazzled. Nicknamed Stump by the press corps, he stood in the dugout fumbling in his pockets for some wire-rimmed sunglasses. No luck, but like many of the Washington elite he often made a spectacle of himself and he, too, was shortsighted.
“Time to go, Sir.”
Levenstein squinted at the Green Monster Wall in left field, shaded his eyes, shuffled up the steps, and jogged toward the mound waving at the fans. His grey, banded ponytail ding-dangled back and forth behind the red Washington Nationals ball cap and triggered curses from several dozen fans who clung like caged monkeys to the heavy chain-link behind home plate.
Caleb’s offspring, more intrigued by the Secret Service detail than by the fans or the lonely Vice President, watched heads bob and weave like courtside spectators at a Wimbledon match—or a leery pheasant about to bolt. Half-zipped black jackets bulged. One agent, more agitated than the rest, kept whispering to her wrist, prompting Conor to comment, “No wonder White House security got breached last week.”
The back door slammed. Lance hurried into the room, sat, and sounded off: “Did I miss anything? Oh yeah, cool. Papa, can I join the Secret Servants when I grow up.”
“Why?”
“They take good care of our President.”
Caleb laid his veined, weathered hand on Lance’s leg and silently sought wisdom. “Son, the Lord gave you agency so you could choose what to do with your own life. I chose to farm. Jinny and Conor have chosen to join the army. You chose to be obedient and clean the corral.” He tapped Lance’s leg three times for emphasis: “All good choices, right?”
Lance shrugged.
“What? Don’t you feel good about what you accomplished?”
“Not really.”
“Why?”
“Roscoe almost glored me.”
“How’d he get loose?”
“I untied the rope.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I felt sorry for him, I guess. He was bawling.”
“Okay, you untied the rope. That was a choice.”
“The rope was a choice?”
“No, untying the bull was a choice. Then what did the bull do?”
“He snotted on hisself and chased me under the fence.”
“That’s called a consequence. Understand?”
“I understand Roscoe don’t like little kids.”
“Doesn’t like.”
“Doesn’t like what?”
Caleb soaked up Jinny’s smile, leaned forward, and flexed his shoulders, hoping she’d scratch his back. She took the sign. “Ah, thank you. Oh, you are good. Now I can think straight. Lance, you’re right about the bull. Roscoe doesn’t care for me, either. But here’s the thing: When you settle in on what you’re going to do, or think, or feel, or even on what’s worth fighting for, choices always come with consequences.” He nodded at the flat screen TV. “For example, the consequence of a base on balls in the first inning—whether anticipated or not—will show up on the scoreboard, sometimes not until the ninth inning. On the other hand, your Mama and Papa’s job, like the baseball manager, is to help you learn to make good choices and stand accountable for them.”
“Okay, I have two questions. Do I have to stand up to be accoundable?
“No, Lance, you may sit right here on my lap.”
“Last question: Why do baseballs have to have managers?”
Caleb chuckled. “My boy, you never cease to amuse me. We’re like two peas in a pod. How’s about we hunker down and watch the game together?” Caleb’s sermonette and Lance’s vocabulary gently overlapped, and their arms entwined in a hug.
Conor leaned toward the TV and steadied his elbows against his knees. “Play ball.”
Television cameras swapped shots of the folding chairs atop The Green Monster, the windowed scoreboard, the lines at the food court, and the Vice President—poised three steps in front of the mound, waiting for a sign. Any sign. Leaning in toward home plate he was anxious to toss the ceremonial first-pitch and be done with it. I’m glad Bunny stayed in the hotel. She hates the game as much as I do. Pushing his normally glib tongue to the inside of his cheek, he spat, pretended to shake off a sign, and yelled, “I’M READY JOSE. GIVE ME A SIGN I CAN READ.”
The catcher’s name was Henny, and the temptation was too great. He re-adjusting his mask, squatted, and mercilessly pounded his glove—digging in like a FedEx employee about to catch a package thrown off the conveyor belt at 100 miles an hour—then he flipped his favorite sign. Viewers gasped and watched Levenstein hesitate, register alarm, and shake off the sign. A glib-tongued cable network color-commentator munched nachos and chuckled aloud. “Wo, Stan, I think Henny’s gonna get tagged with a big fine for that stunt.”
“Hush, we’re on the air, and get your feet off the counter. So, here we go folks. The Vice President goes into the stretch and here comes the . . . what the . . .? Oh no, hit the deck Harry!” The centerfield camera zoomed in tight. The video feed hiccuped.
“Did someone toss a string of firecrackers on the field?”