FIRST BASE

My dad loved my mom. And baseball.

He came to Chicago at 14 to attend the Theological Seminary. The got a job selling lemonade at Wrigley Field where he could cheer the Cubs.

His brothers returned to Denver to work at grandpa Max’s Grand Junction Fruit Company.

A couple months after my dad met my mom he told Daddy Max he’d be staying in Chicago to marry her and study medicine.

On summer Saturdays he’d rise early to see the last patients of the week and then fall asleep on the sofa with the game blaring.

Having half a dozen Cubs players as patients may have been the apex of a career abbreviated by leukemia.

In July ’69 he packed my brother and I into his red convertible for a boys a weekend at Wrigley, Giants versus Cubs. We sat along the first base line. It was sunny and we gobbled hot dogs and Crackerjack, drank lemonade. He gave the vendors big tips. We thumbed our baseball cards and he told us stories about the players on them. Gary absconded with the fly ball we caught, which dad had autographed.

Trees were cleared in south Sunset Park for our Little League field. I remember squinting into the glare off home plate, straining in the big blue helmet at the speed of the hardball, shocked at the connection, feeling light-headed and suddenly safe at first base.

A carnival sprang up just beyond left field. Gary and I hid our bicycles behind a tree in the forest as the sky darkened. In the warm humidity, the fuzzy neon halo around the spectacle cast long blue velvet shadows into the forest as we walked out.

A blond girl, vaguely familiar from daunting and crowded high school corridors, caught my eye and smiled. I got nervous as she approached to chat, but soon we were being bolted into the black padded cockpit of the Zipper. She squeezed my arm tightly during the ferocity of the ride. She smelled like lemons. Afterward, we shared a cone of shaved ice and syrup and then wandered into the forest to kiss under a tree on soft grass in blue shadows.