A Tale of Two Cities

The dichotomy was apparent. During the same weekend; from the same city, great joy and pride and terrible heartache and loss. Chicago. Summer in Chicago. And like so many other summers in that mid-western city, the blood of its youth spills too easily. Black children lying dead. Teenagers gunned down by gun-toting Black teenagers shouting gang slogans. A three year old shoots himself in the head with a gun his paroled felon father – a gun he should not have because of his criminal record – carelessly left out. Five dead. All children. Another weekend in Chicago and it barely registers a mention on the news.

Pennsylvania. Baseball; little league baseball. An all-black team from the Southside of Chicago, “the baddest part of town.” They win the American draw, beating a team from Nevada who five days earlier had knocked them around. It’s Williamsport – idyllic, rural Pennsylvania – where every summer young baseball players from around the world gather and play the greatest game on fields of green grass and manicured infields. Baseball and Pennsylvania are a million miles from Chicago.

For months the talking heads on Sports TV have decried the absence of Black big leaguers. And, by the numbers they are right. Growing up, I remember Mays and Aaron, and Gibson. I wanted to be Willie Mays. Today, less than one in ten ball players are African American. The pundits have a dozen theories. But, I listened as the coach of the all-black squad from Chicago, from the almost all-black “Jackie Robinson Little League” answered the question:

“Baseball is a game passed down by your father. In our league we still have a lot of fathers. It’s not that way for everyone.”

Jackie Robinson. Perhaps no single man’s courage and self-control mattered more in the country’s slow march toward integration than he did. Jackie Robinson, a great man, a hero. And yet today, more young black kids in Chicago can tell you about Jay Z than Jackie. Who really matters? What really matters?

Missouri. Over four thousand people gather for the funeral of a young black man gunned down by a white police officer. No one yet knows what happened. I don’t presume to know what was in the officer’s heart before firing those fateful shots and I choose to believe he is distraught because blood has been spilled. Too many – on both sides – use this tragedy for their own political ends. Blood spilled and a family mourns a son gone too young. And, another family lives with the repercussions.

Here’s what I wonder, how many black children have to die in the street of Chicago at the hands of other black children before someone stands up and says “enough!” Where is the national outrage and national dialog as we watch thousands of young kids turning to gangs and killing each other? Why is “Ferguson” the issue and not just a symptom of something so much larger? And why are we not watching – and listening – to the mothers and fathers of those ballplayers?

A young man I know in here from Richmond told me about the shootings that regularly took place near his home. He was raised in a home with a mom too young to care for herself, let alone three young kids. So “Gramma” became their refuge. “Gramma” fed them, even when it was just mayonnaise on white bread. “Gramma” was responsible. Mom? She was in and out; Dad? He was at “state farm” (Powhatan to those not “in the know” on Virginia’s prisons).

And summers in Richmond, summers in the city’s notorious Gilpin Court, were filled with robberies and drug deals and killings. My young friend whom I tutor in English and Excel and any other class which comes our way, tells me when he was six he was sitting on the front stoop with his brother and sister. “It was loud, like a firecracker. Pop, pop, pop. Then, people across the street started running and that’s when I saw him … bleeding as he fell in the street.” His first seen “body.” Man shot across the street staggers and dies yards from him. And his six-year-old eyes see it all.

A few moments later, the police and an ambulance arrive. The neighbors stand all around but nobody “saw anything,” at least not in Gilpin Court. An ice cream truck approaches and Gramma gets the three kids popsicles, “Red, white, and blue rockets,” he tells me. They stand with the others behind the yellow tape, licking their popsicles as the dead man is loaded up and carted off and the blood, pooled on the ground remains. Gilpin Court, Richmond. Another dead black young man.

I can’t watch the news about Ferguson, Missouri anymore. It seems almost ghoulish and undignified. And, no matter what that young man may – or may not – have done, I can’t help but think it could have been avoided. There are too many dying too young and they look like so many of the young men I care about in here.

I confront race every day in this place. Early on, in my first few weeks in jail when my life was in a complete tailspin, I realized how little I really knew about being black in America. Every opinion I held as fact came from a life almost completely devoid of blackness. Then again, almost every opinion I held as fact came from a life almost completely devoid of contact with poverty, poor education, ignorance, and a whole lot more. My opinions were all forged from my own privileged life. I knew, I soon realized almost nothing about living – and dying – in America. Dylan wrote about such things in “License to Kill,”

Now all he believes are his eyes

And his eyes they just tell him lies

But there’s a woman on my block

Who sits there as the night grows still

She says who’s gonna take away his license to kill?

I hear about my young friend’s life in Richmond, I watch as more families weep over the loss of children cut down for no good reason and I wonder who will take away our license to kill? When will we see beyond color or economic status and mourn, really mourn the incredible waste of life and vow to do better? It seems as if it will overwhelm us, destroy us, condemn us. And then, twenty young black kids in yellow shirts with white pants run across the infield and I see hope.

Two cities. You can take all the pain and death and despair of Chicago, and Ferguson, and Richmond together and weep and lose hope until you see Williamsport, Pennsylvania and grass, and smiles, and baseball. 

You know what gives hope? When all you see and hear is death and anger and you look around your prison housing unit and almost every TV is turned to a team of little leaguers from Chicago and guys, hardened by life and crime and death are pulling for these kids as they play … a game.

There isn’t a black and white; there’s green and there is the sound of a ball coming off a bat and there’s joy. 

First Pitch

Yesterday was opening day and it wasn’t lost on me that the first pitch of the first game of the 2013 baseball season occurred the night before, on Easter Sunday. How appropriate. Easter is the day of hope and renewal. It’s the day we Christians consider “the big one.” It’s the day we know God has final say and nothing is bigger, or more permanent than Him. Simply put, Easter says “God is.” He’s life, love and hope.

            The funny thing is, I see baseball in much the same way. Baseball isn’t merely a game. It’s a metaphor for the ups and downs of life and ultimately for the miracle that is God and what took place on Easter. No matter how bleak and dismal things may appear, when I see that cut diamond and the fielders take their positions, when I watch the pitcher wind up and deliver that very first pitch, I know there is a reason to hope.

            Baseball. I have an aunt who turns sixty-nine this year; she’s eleven years younger than my dad. They are different as can be. Yet, there my dad and I were in 1968, around my ninth birthday, sitting in Shea Stadium with my aunt watching a young New York Mets pitcher named Tom Seaver face Willie Mays and the San Francisco Giants. Forty-four years later and I can still smell the grass; I can still see Seaver’s wind up. That night, I became a Mets fan. Not a season has gone by that I haven’t believed on opening day that my Mets would win the World Series.

            It was easy back then. A season later, 1969, the Mets shocked the sports world by winning the World Series over the vaunted Baltimore Orioles. Earlier that season, a famous Chicago politician scoffed at the Mets chances of even catching his beloved Cubs. “A man will walk on the moon before the Mets ever win a pennant.” July, 1969, I sat transfixed in my living room as astronaut Neil Armstrong uttered the immortal words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” as he stepped onto the lunar surface. The mayor of Chicago was never better at predicting the future.

            The Mets won and a ten year old boy had his faith rewarded. There was no heartache, no lost season. There was only joy. I decided then and there that God was a Mets fan.

            Opening days came and went after the miracle of 1969. And there were more lost seasons, more disappointments, than successes. The Mets only made it to the post-season one more time until I was a married man a few years removed from law school. For most of those years – 1970 until the early 1980s, baseball was disappointment and heartache. Great players arrived too late in their careers to lead the Mets to victory, young players didn’t meet expectations; and I saw – as my heroes like Tom Seaver were traded – that baseball was a business, not a passion. Yet every opening day I believed this was the year.

            I vowed when we had children that they too would love baseball. Sure enough, shortly after our older son was born I came home with a Mets sleeper. A dozen pictures were taken of our little man in that orange and blue striped outfit with “Mr. Met” prominently displayed. Nine years later that “onside” was pulled out of a zip-lock bag and put on our second son.

            Dinners were filled with talk of baseball. It was the Mets, always the Mets, in our house. When our younger son was just over three he sat patiently on the couch as I watched the 2000 Mets get first one, then two, and finally three ninth inning outs to beat the Giants and advance in the playoffs. I lofted my young son over my shoulders and ran through the living room yelling “Mets win! Mets win!” His shrieking shouts of glee, “Daddy’s crazy,” rang through the house.

            Baseball mattered in our house. It was a bond between my sons and me. And, it helped define the seasons of our family. Every spring, every opening day, was met with anticipation and hope. Spring turned to summer and trips to games which had been scheduled back in the heady days of spring when we all believed this was “the year” were upon us. Those road trips: to DC or Baltimore, Atlanta or Philadelphia and yes even New York, became part of the family atlas.

            Summer trips to Seattle included a Mariners game. A business trip to Indianapolis included a triple A game. We’d head into Richmond – or Lynchburg – for minor league action. Visits to my folks in Raleigh would mean a Durham Bulls or Zebulon Mud Cats game. Baseball and summer were woven into our family’s DNA.

            Opening day. I began a family tradition with our first son. He was eight and in third grade. I sent a note into his teacher. “I will pick him up at noon;” simple, declarative words. But, it was opening day. We would get hot dogs, popcorn and chips, and set up stadium chairs in the den. We’d rise for the National anthem, baseball hats over our hearts, then watch the first pitch. It would begin, a new season, as we – just father and son – would watch game after game on opening day. Before dark, we’d have a catch.

            Every year, every opening day, ten years through our older son’s teens and then our younger son’s elementary and middle school days, there we were. Opening day was spring. Opening day was family. But opening day couldn’t survive an arrest. I was wrong. I realized, when I told my son baseball mirrors life. Nothing in baseball compares to divorce or imprisonment. Baseball isn’t life. Life is harsh, and unforgiving, and tear filled. Baseball is always about next spring, next opening day.

            Maybe that’s what draws me back each year. Just before Christmas, the reports start filtering in from the mid-winter baseball owners meeting. It’s hot stove league time and trades, contract extensions, and manager hirings run across ESPN’s sports ticker. It’s cold and drizzling outside, the days dreary and gray. But, the sports network breaks into its broadcast with news from Peter Gammons or Buster Olney on a huge signing. The report always begins with “All-star pitcher,” or “MVP runner up …” and I hold my breath and wait, hoping its news on my Mets.

            Even when it’s not (after all, the Mets owner, Fred Wilpon, with millions owed to the Bernie Madoff trustee, has begun the process of cutting salary and rebuilding the franchise with young ball players), I still listen intently calculating the relative merits of the move. I look at my calendar and smile. I know there are only sixty-one days until pitchers and catchers report, only sixty-one days until the Grapefruit and Cactus leagues rebud into existence.

            Five World Series have come and gone since my life unalterably changed that hot August day in 2008. Five opening days followed each winter. And each time, as each opening day approached, I began to feel more hopeful. That’s opening day, that’s the first pitch; I knew it: hope.

            I used to tell my sons baseball was a metaphor for life. I forgot so much of my rationale for that philosophy as I struggled with the heartbreak of separation and divorce, and the daily battles inside prison as I tried to negotiate my way around violence, ignorance, and filth. Then, spring would draw near. Days would lengthen, Lent would begin and somehow each day my thoughts would go back, back to earlier springs, earlier opening days, earlier first pitches. I hear the words from Psalm 27 about waiting, waiting for the Lord, or Micah telling anyone who would listen he would be lifted out of the darkness. In my mind’s eye I smelled it, the fresh grass from the infield.

            I wasn’t so far off when I told my boys that on the seventh day God created baseball. After all, it’s about hope, and miracles, perseverance and faith. And, it’s about renewal every spring.

            I saw the first pitch yesterday and I knew, this is the year.

86

This October marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 1986 New York Mets World Series win.  That summer, that year, are forever etched in my memory.  I hadn’t planned on writing about that team so early this summer but the other day Hall of Fame catcher Gary “the kid” Carter announced he was being admitted to Duke University Medical Center to have four “small brain tumors” removed.  Later, word came out that the tumors were malignant.  Carter, age 57, has brain cancer.

What does all that have to do with me?  A good deal.  I saw my first pro baseball game live in 1968 at Shea Stadium.  The Mets were playing the Giants with Willie Mays – my boyhood idol – patrolling center field.  My aunt – my dad’s younger sister (eleven years which can seem like a generation) was a Mets fan.  She and her then husband, with my dad and me in tow, headed out to Shea.  Willie Mays had a good game, a couple of hard singles back up the middle.  But it was the Mets that I fell in love with.  From that day forward, I lived each summer following the Mets:  their amazing 1969 upset of the powerhouse Orioles: Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Bud Harrelson – weighing all 120 lbs. of him in s Superman shirt, Art Shamsky, Tommie Agee, Nolan Ryan.  The list of players and the seasons went on and on.  More often than not they broke my heart.  Bad play, bad trades; still, each spring I believed “this is the year”. 

Fast forward to 1986.  I was in my third year of law practice and my fifth year of marriage.  For the prior few seasons I’d watch the Mets slowly rebuild with a combination of young ballplayers like Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry and Lenny Dykstra, and star veterans like Carter, Keith Hernandez and Ray Knight.  In 1986 they tore through the National League winning 108 games.

This team wasn’t like other Mets teams.  They were brash, cocky and damn good.  We spent July 4^th in Atlanta that year and took in the Mets four game series against the Braves.  One evening my wife and I found ourselves in the hotel bar.  There they were, the best players the Mets had, kicking back beers and shots, just hours after throttling the Braves.  They played hard; they partied even harder.  Later that evening we climbed into the hotel elevator to go to our room.  Already on from an earlier floor:  one of the Mets’ starting pitchers and a beautiful young “professional” woman, flaunting her attributes.

Every baseball fan knows what happened in Game Six of the ’86 World Series:  the famous ball through Bill Buckner’s (the hobbled Red Sox first basemen) legs that allowed the Mets to stage the most dramatic two-out comeback in World Series history.

I lived that moment.  Throughout the entire series, no matter how far down New York was, I believed.  As a ten year old watching the ’69 Mets I became convinced God was a Mets fan.  They wouldn’t win every year; Mets fans would learn to be patient.  “Wait on the Lord, be strong and let your heart take courage.”  But, ’86 was different.  They were the best team in baseball and as Game Six progressed, the Mets, down three games to two, were rapidly facing a series loss.  We were at a friend’s house watching the game, just a few short minutes from home.  With the game tied heading into the top of the tenth inning, Boston took a two run lead.  My wife told me we needed to head home.  We made the five minute drive in silence.  Arriving home, I quickly turned the TV on as the bottom of the tenth began.  The first two batters made outs.  New York was one out from elimination.  In the Red Sox clubhouse plastic was draped over lockers to protect clothing from champagne.  NBC announcer Bob Costas was in the clubhouse ready to present the World Series trophy.

In my living room my young wife, trying to be supportive, uttered the following:

“The game’s over honey.  They lost.  You have to accept it.”

To which I replied,

“Baseball is like life.  It’s not over ‘til the last out.”

I then stripped down to my boxers, tying my shirt around my head.  I took our sofa cushions off and lay them out like a baseball diamond.  I stood at my “home plate” and watched as Gary Carter came to bat.  I clapped and prayed and suddenly, Carter had a base hit (Carter, a man known not to swear, told reports later that as he stood at the plate he kept telling himself “I’m not gonna make the last f---in out of the series”).  Kevin Mitchell came up next.  I was now standing on “first” yelling at the top of my lungs as Mitchell lined another hit, this one a double.  Now Carter was at third, Mitchell at second with veteran Ray Knight at bat.

A single!  Knight hit a single and the two runners scored.  The game was tied!  Shea Stadium was literally shaking.  I was yelling as loud as I could, I believed!  And then up stepped Mookie Wilson.  A wild pitch put Knight on second and then, the impossible.  A slow routine ground ball down the first base line.  But Buckner had terrible knees.  He couldn’t get low enough and the ball slid underneath his glove.  Knight rounded third arms thrust upward to the heavens.  I fell to my knees, arms equally held skyward.  Behind me, my lovely, doubting wife who could only smile and mutter, “I was wrong”. 

The series wasn’t decided that night, but in reality, it was.  New York won Game Seven handily.

Twenty-five years later so much has changed.  Life has been difficult for so many of those Mets.  Dwight Gooden, perhaps the best right-hand pitcher since Bob Gibson had his career cut short by drug and alcohol abuse.  He’s been in and out of prison since.  Darryl Strawberry battled drugs and cancer.  Pitcher Bobby Ojeda was in a boating accident that seriously injured him and killed a Cleveland Indian pitcher.  Wally Backman, during a bitter divorce and custody action was arrested for domestic assault.  Lenny Dykstra, “nails” for his aggressive play at all cost approach, had a gambling problem.  Millions of dollars in debt and bankrupt, he was recently jailed and indicted for fraud.  Add Gary Carter’s recent brain cancer and a host of other difficulties and you see the last twenty-five years have been tough on the ’86 Mets.  And the team, they’ve only been to the series once since then.  Their owner is in danger of losing the team (he was an investor in the Madoff schemes).  The Mets now “hover” near 500.

And me?  You know that story:  Successful lawyer, husband and father, now an inmate,  divorced from the only woman I ever loved, estranged from my two beloved sons.

As I read the story of Gary Carter’s battle with cancer I remembered that October night twenty-five years ago.  I remembered the young man who knew in his core that “the game” wasn’t over.

I have struggled mightily with depression these past three years.   There have been more days than I care to admit when I’ve prayed “just let me die, God, I can’t do this”.  As my friend Big S told me two weeks ago “you’ve been in a funk ever since that woman wrote you.”

I’ve questioned everything.  I’ve doubted everyone.  I’ve felt as though the last thirty years were a waste, that I’d invested my heart and soul into a relationship that didn’t matter.  “It was all bullshit”, I’ve thought.  She never loved me; friends really weren’t friends.  But Big S – who has heard more of my stories than I care to remember – reminded me “you aren’t a quitter, Larry”.  And you know, I’m not.  I never gave up on people I love, I never gave up on myself, and I’m not going to start now. 

“The game isn’t over ‘til the last out.”

I think Job was a Mets fan.  I also think that’s what Viktor Frankl meant when he talked about finding meaning in your suffering.  And I also think it’s what James meant when he wrote “consider it a joy when you encounter various trials knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance”.

I’m heartbroken, I’m discouraged, but I’m not ready to give up.  A few of the guys in here have recently thanked me for “not giving up on them” and “believing in them” when no one else did.  I told one of the guys, Todd, he should thank the Mets for that.  Being a Mets fan makes me a hopeless optimist.  And thanks to “the kid”, I remembered I’m not ready “to make the last f---in out”.