By Donald G. Evans

We hated them. I was too young to intellectualize the matter, and nobody else in the neighborhood had enough school to do so. We just hated them. There weren’t any on our street, none that ever went to the park, not even a single one at school. There were a bunch of them on the job, and at dinner Dad griped, “Don’t get me wrong; you get one by himself they’re nice enough people. But you put a group of ‘em together…” He held up a forkful of mashed potatoes and made a vague gesture we took to mean, “TROUBLE.”

At the annual church carnival, there’d be groups of them that would come after dark, and the inevitable trouble that ensued was part of the fun for the older guys in the neighborhood who liked to fight. Finally there was a stabbing and they stopped doing the carnival for a couple of years.

In retrospect, we obviously weren’t an enlightened neighborhood, but we were proud and the way it was was the way it had always been.

One moved next door.

We’d known for a while that the Fazzianos were leaving---Mr. Fazziano’s mom had died and they were keeping her house and selling their own. The block was in a bit of transition. In the past year three of my school friends had moved out to the suburbs, never to be seen from again. In those days, you moved to Wheaton or Westmont or Woodridge, you might as well have gone to Siberia—my friends never returned, and I never visited. Keep in mind, our annual family “vacation” was to Crystal Lake, which was an hour and a half drive, and twice (once when I was four and once when I was ten) we went to the Wisconsin Dells. Mom claims we went to Lamb’s Farm all the time, but I don’t remember that and neither do any of my brothers and sisters.

The time came. Mr. Fazziano got Dad and a few of the other dads to help him load the U-Haul, while Mom helped Mrs. Fazziano clean the house. Two days later, a beat-up Cadillac pulled up in front of our house. This Cadillac was covered in dust, the bumper rattled, the engine wheezed, and rust flecked off it like red confetti. With all the gray duct tape and cardboard and clothes hangers, it looked like a science project on how to avoid the auto parts store. A crack divided the front windshield in half.

Out of the Cadillac came one boy, then another, then another, a fourth boy. They all wore identical close-shaved haircuts we called “baldy cuts”; they all wore raggedy oversized gym shoes with the laces wrapped around the heels; they all had three-quarter length pants rolled up to their knees.

They all wore White Sox jerseys.

Our house went silent—probably the only time, other than maybe the middle of the night, that had ever happened. Two of the boys had loud red pinstriped jerseys, another one had the new navy jersey with a batter silhouetted over the Sox logo, and the oldest kid had a white jersey with CHICAGO written across the front in bold, modern font. Finally, the dad rolled out of the Cadillac—a big, round, sun-burned, paint-speckled man chomping an unlit cigar: he was covered, from head to toe, in White Sox gear. He had a bright red White Sox hat, a green shirt rolled over his shoulders, White Sox wristbands. The shirt…we couldn’t make it all out from the window, but it seemed to champion both the South Side Irish and the White Sox at the same time. He might as well have carried a billboard saying, “Go to Fuck!” which in time we would learn was one of his favorite expressions.

There were five of us kids peeking, along with Mom and Dad. It would have been quite the family portrait, all those shocked, horrified noses pressed against the dirty screen. Mom had baked brownies to welcome the new neighbors; Dad was planning to go over there and see if they needed a hand. Everything just went silent.

“Goddamn motherfucker!” Dad said first, though we were all thinking it.

The dad noticed us piled against our window and saluted us with his cigar, which might as well have been his middle finger.

This was 1977, and both the Cubs and the White Sox, by some miracle that hadn’t happened in any of our life times, were hovering near first place. We all knew, without being told, that we weren’t to play with the new neighbors, which would be tough, given that our houses were so close together our window-unit air conditioners nearly bumped halfway through our shared gangway.

At first a lot of the anger was directed at the Fazzianos, but eventually we got around to cursing the new neighbors, whoever they were and whatever they were called. While the dad unpacked the Cadillac trunk, the new neighbor kids chased each other around—up and down the sidewalk, across the street, between parked cars. It was like they owned the street already.

This was our new reality, and now we had to deal with it.

“I’m going out there,” Dad said. Mom touched his arm, said, “Don’t do this!”

Dad charged out the front door of our brick bungalow without buttoning his shirt or fastening his belt buckle. He got to the porch, cigarette behind his ear, hair disheveled, and glared. He held his glare until it was acknowledged. The new neighbor dad tipped his Sox cap and said, “Jesus fucking Christ! Stopped at a beef joint on the way over here. I get my hot dog: no fries. No fucking fries: that’s some balls. Why not be honest about it? They know and you know: if you’re getting the hot dog you’re getting the fries. You add it all up, this little hot dog gets close to where you coulda got a steak sandwich on the South Side.”

The new neighbor stood behind his open trunk, his head bobbing over it. “I’m Woody,” he ended.

A couple things here. One, this would become a theme—Mr. Woody complaining about the ridiculous prices on the North Side versus the South Side. He seemingly could not buy anything in our neighborhood, which was a blue-collar neighborhood, without making a big deal about what it cost, and citing a litany of places on the South Side where you could get the exact same thing at significantly cheaper prices. The implication seemed clear to all of us, especially given Mr. Woody’s tone, which managed to be both jovial and insulting at the same time: the South Side was better. Second, the Sox roster that summer included an aging, rotund knuckleballer named Wilbur Wood who everybody called Woody. Everybody called Mr. Woodruff Woody. Coincidence, or just a dark foreshadowing of things to come?

Dad nodded in such a way it could not have been interpreted as friendly. We were all still staring out the window, waiting for some sign—a blueprint, perhaps—on what to do, how to act. The new dad shuffled back to his trunk and that’s when we saw the license plate: NO1SOXFAN. As an afterthought, Mr. Woody, unflappable, looked at the window, yelled, “I get the grill going I’ll have yous all over.”

* * *

The 1977 Cubs had Ivan DeJesus and Manny Trillo up the middle, Bill Buckner at first, Bobby Murcer and Jerry Morales in the middle of the order, Big Daddy Rick Reuschel as an ace and Bruce Sutter as its closer. It was not a Hall of Fame cast, exactly, but there were enough good players having good enough years that by the time the Woodruffs moved next door the whole neighborhood was convinced this was our year. We were in first. None of us, to that point, gave much thought to the White Sox, except during the City Series. The Cubs were on WGN and the White Sox on Ch. 44. We didn’t get UHF in our house, and the same was true of most everybody else. I mean, you could get it a little, with a lot of fuzz, if you played endlessly with the rabbit ears on the top of the set, but basically it was futile.

The fact was, the White Sox were in first place, too.

The Woodruffs immediately hung a huge White Sox flag over their front porch, where most of the houses put their American flag or their Cubs flag. The four boys all had the same initials—DAW—and I constantly confused Dave for Donny for Danny for Doug. They all spouted off about Eric Soderholm being better than Ron Santo ever was; building Richie Zisk up to be a Hall of Famer; thanking us for Steve Stone, Don Kessinger and Oscar Gamble; going on and on about Ralph Garr, Jorge Orta and Chet Lemon. It seemed as though the DAW boys were not born into the Woodruff family so much as recruited, much like a gang. As White Sox operatives, they were informed, tough and relentless.

The Woodruffs did not rent a van or truck, but rather Mr. Woodruff made countless trips back and forth from the South to the North side in his falling-apart Cadillac. Nobody was outright mean to the Woodruffs and some of the neighbors were even civil, but it had to be clear to the Woodruffs that they were not wanted. Mr. Woodruff, though, was relentlessly jovial. He seemed unfazed by the neighborhood’s cool reception of he and his family, and continued right on telling his profanity-laced stories and laughing heartily at their conclusion.

Mom took her cues from Dad, and Dad outwardly hated the Woodruffs, so Mom kept her distance from cheery, beer-drinking Mrs. Woodruff. We took our cues from Mom, who was around all the time while Dad spent most of his time at the job or in the local gin mill or sitting with his white socks propped up on the ottoman in front of the TV set. Mom advised us to be nice to the new neighbors, though it was clear to both her and us that there was a line we weren’t to cross.

Danny wound up in Miss Imbergia’s class, and was also in the Robins reading group, and on top of that he sat right in front of me. It was that time at school when the weather had already turned, and everything around us screamed summer, but due to snow days and other nonsense I didn’t understand we were stuck in that stifling classroom months after everybody, including the teachers, it seemed, had ceased to care. The beautiful sunshine, on full parade through ancient, paint-sealed windows, taunted us through long, dreary sweaty days.

When we got together in our reading group, Danny, unlike the rest of us who muttered the words of our reader dutifully, read passages with flourish, like he really enjoyed it. All day long I tried to look past his bristly haircut to the front of the class, but I couldn’t help becoming interested in the frenzy of activities taking place on, in and around his desk. It was strict law in Miss Imbergia’s class that you focused on the lesson, but Danny was constantly lining up spitballs in the pencil groove, or making little army guys out of eraser heads, or pushing a triangular paper football from one end of the desk to the other. Then, at all the right moments, Danny would make things disappear and either answer Miss Imbergia’s question right or miss it in a way that seemed earnest and hopeful. He never got in trouble and it was clear Miss Imbergia, stern though she was, had a soft spot for the new kid.

At home, we never invited the DAW brothers to play softball behind the alley or Kick The Can on the street, and even though everybody cut through everybody else’s yards, with exceptions for The Barneys and their huge German Shepard and Mrs. Ragdale and her wasp spray, we never stepped foot in the Woodruff’s backyard. With the weather turning sultry, Mr. Woody spent every evening after work either out back barbecuing or on the front porch. Either way, the White Sox were on the radio, if they were playing, and the early summer buzz of the neighborhood was punctuated by the long, screeching epitaphs that emitted from Mr. Woody’s foul mouth and the sound of flesh slapping flesh in the unmistakable tones of high fives. The DAW brothers screamed along, too, and they also swore like adults, though not so much around Mr. and Mrs. Woody. On the playground, Danny swore all the time—his favorite phrase was “jagoff motherfucker,” said, ala Mr. Woody, in a tone both insulting and jovial—but had this uncanny adult radar that helped him clean up his language most reverently at all the right times.

As we scurried around our house and yard and alley and street, I found myself thinking about Danny, and sometimes sneaking peaks into his yard, which seemed full of life and fun in ways that I hadn’t quite experienced. What it was, partly, I think, was that Mr. Woody, tough as any other dad at times, seemed to treat his boys with a certain respect that the rest of us kids, second-class citizens all, were not allowed. Like, Mr. Woody would ask the DAW kids a question to which he did not know the answer, fully expecting or at least allowing for the possibility, that his sons knew more than him on that subject. Or when one of the DAW kids messed up, Mr. Woody was more inclined to tease rather than lecture, as adults did with friends they accepted despite their imperfections. I don’t know how I knew or thought all this, given the unofficial ban on all things related to our neighbors, but I did.

We were counting down the days until school let out when I got caught staring dreamily out the window. Mr. Imbergia asked me a math question but I’d lost my place in the text book, plus I hadn’t really done my homework, plus math wasn’t my thing to begin with, and she let me stumble around like a complete idiot before turning it into a lecture on focus to the whole class. All my classmates looked at me disapprovingly during the entire length and breadth of the speech, which seemed to spin endlessly into the sticky horizon. While this was happening, I noticed Danny shuffling something on his lap and as soon the coast was clear I inspected more closely to discover that he had baseball cards arranged on his lap in about six separate piles.

“Dad let me get two packs yesterday for going for cigars,” Danny said later at recess, while he waved to Mr. Schulze, the gym teacher, monitoring proceedings from a distance. “Three more jagoff cocksucking Cubs!”

I didn’t know then that this combination of bitterness and admiration I felt toward Danny amounted to envy, but I could feel his draw.

“Which ones?” I asked.

My baseball card collection was expansive, but I was really only interested in Cubs and stars, that year especially, and frankly Steve Ontiveros excited me more than Pete Rose any day of the week.

“Willie Hernandez, Mick Kelleher, Larry Biittner,” he ticked off.

I had Kelleher, but needed Hernandez and Biittner. “I got some Sox I can trade you,” I said.

“Who do you got?”

“Clay Carroll, Mike Squires, Richie Zisk…I’ll have to check, I’ve got more.”

This exchange seemed innocent enough, but in retrospect it was the first domino. We were logical trade partners not only for Cubs-Sox, but also National League-American League. We started bringing our cards to school, and our recess and lunch time bargaining sessions relieved, like a morphine drip, a little of the relentless pain of those last excruciating days. I organized the cards at night and invented trade scenarios, the possibilities endless since both me and Danny were buying up new packs at a decent rate and I never knew who he’d bring to the trading table next. Meanwhile, the Cubs were winning and I remember, with the fondness one later has for an old girlfriend, the speed at which I’d race home to watch the final innings of those day baseball games.

Meanwhile, the Sox kept winning, too, and I started to pay more attention, in part as research into the value of my bargaining chips. One night, Dad caught me fussing with the rabbit ears to get some kind of picture and he said, “What the hell are you trying to do?” I’d already seen enough: a backup infielder named Jack Brohammer had had a three-hit night, and I knew how Danny thought and knowing how Danny thought I knew, as I thumbed through my shoebox to find my Jack Brohammer card, that Jack Brohammer’s trade value might never be higher than tomorrow at recess.

“Nothing,” I said.

My card collection grew, and as it did so too, I suppose, did my friendship with Danny. The last day of school arrived, finally--a half day, no work, just a bunch of kids celebrating the end of something we all wanted to end, and the official beginning of summer. The outdoor public pools were filled, the beaches sweaty, there were rumors of cookouts and block parties, advertisements for neighborhood festivals and church carnivals, and plans were underway for our Crystal Lake “vacation.” Softball and little league seasons were off and running, big-release movies out in theatres, and the trajectory of the baseball season had angled vibrantly and spectacularly in an upwardly Chicago way. Our days now could be devoted to everything that seemed important.

I was more ambivalent than I should have been. I had wanted more than I’d ever wanted anything, for that school year to be over, but still there was a dead feeling I couldn’t explain. I suppose I knew there’d be little chance to interact with Danny, that though we lived right next door our baseball card trading sessions would necessarily end. I missed that already, and I missed, too, the exposure I’d had to a kid who seemed incredibly sly and genuinely nice at the same time, the time I’d spent with somebody who was a natural complement to my own personality, whatever that was.

The last day of school coincided with the City Series between the Cubs and White Sox, a one-game exhibition contest played, that year, at Comiskey Park, and in all the giddiness of that final half-day celebration, with kids laughing and cleaning blackboards and laughing some more and receiving rare praise from Miss Imbergia, Danny invited me to come with his family to the game and I accepted.

This impending event weighed on me immensely. There wasn’t much time for me to invent a plan and when I saw Danny around the house he, as well as Mr. Woody, took it for granted I was going. There was no conversation between Mr. Woody and Dad; Mr. Woody just took me at my word that I could and would take the last ticket. I’d started to play with Danny some during the day while Dad was at work, and there was a tacit understanding with Mom that it was okay so long as we wrapped it up well before Dad came home. Trading baseball cards had been our way in; soon we were picking each other as teammates for lob league games in the park, rattling our bikes over plywood and brick ramps in the alley, and conspiring to get fireworks for the Fourth of July.

I don’t remember all the details about how it happened that I got permission, except that I put off the awkward request until the night before and that I tried to think as Danny thought, since Danny had such a knack for easily turning things his way, and that I used my final good report card as leverage. The one tactic I’d thought up in those days leading to the conversation with Dad, one that I think worked, was deliberately and only referring to it as The Cubs Game and making no mention of the White Sox whatsoever. I wanted Dad to see it as his son taking advantage of the new neighbors, a son so beholden to the Cubs that he would put up with anything, even that.

Mr. Woody dressed in a Number 28 Wilbur Wood uniform. Not just the jersey: the whole uniform. He had the cap, the jersey, the pants, the stirrups. He had a paunch, just like the real Wilbur Wood. The only difference was that he wore gym shoes with the shoelaces tied around the heels instead of spikes. He looked, depending on your angle, like a Wilbur Wood impersonator or a player suited up for the game. Nobody, including Mr. Woody, found this that remarkable.

The car ride down to Comiskey was like a roller coaster ride. Nobody wore seat belts back then, and I don’t think car seats had been invented, and the four DAW brothers were piled into both the front and back seats, and they played a game, while we were driving, in which they tried to fight their way up or back. DAW bodies were slinging every which way and the danger as we sped down the Dan Ryan seemed intensified by the fact that we could see the highway zip below us through a big hole in the floorboard and, to a lesser extent maybe, that the interior was covered in about 80 percent fur.

I’d never heard of a tailgate party until we pulled into the lot. Mr. Woody, practically a professional griller, made brats, passed out beers and RCs, and talked to everybody around us or even just passing us. Everybody was his friend: that was the way it seemed. He laughed and he teased and he pretty much let the DAW brothers and me do whatever we wanted so long as we didn’t leave the parking lot.

I had a Cubs hat perched on my head. The teasing and cajoling intensified as we got closer to game time and as Mr. Woody got deeper into his cooler of Falstaff. I don’t know who started the movement to douse my hat in lighter fluid and throw it in with the burning charcoals, but I suspect it was one of those situations where Danny instigated the whole mess and got off scot-free. The moment it happened I was horrified, but everybody was so great about it, like a ritual hazing in a kind fraternity, that by the time the red “C” turned to ash I was no longer angry or sad, just resigned.

The fireworks! When that scoreboard exploded, and it did so three times, the raucous night sky, ablaze in red, blue and green, seemed like an embodiment of the perfect Chicago night. As the last colorful streaks of the last colorful explosion fizzled in the night sky, somebody from the tailgate party started a movement to replace my hat and before I really fully comprehended the magnitude of what was happening a navy blue White Sox hat lay askew on the top of my head.

At the end, the crowd swayed in unison, and I swayed along with them, singing, “Na, na, na, na, Na, na, na, na, Hey, Hey, Hey, Kiss Them Goodbye.”

The party continued all the way back across town. We were up to our chins in cotton candy and Cracker Jack, and I felt a part of it all, if only as the good-natured antagonist, and I swear I’d forgotten all about that White Sox hat that sat, still, on my head.

“What the GODDAMNED HELL!”

I immediately understood my error. Dad could not have been more disappointed or irate had I come home with a tattoo or an afro, or wearing gang colors. I think he could more easily have understood if I’d wanted to dress in drag. This, though…it was the ultimate insult to him and everything for which he stood, and the only recourse, in his mind, was to somehow reverse this blight on the family crest. He stormed over to the Woodruffs’ yard, where Mr. Woody, still dressed as Wilbur Wood, was guffawing amidst swirling cigar smoke, and said, “What have you done to my son?”

Mr. Woody chuckled, which was the wrong thing to do. I don’t remember it all, but the part that stands out is Dad and Mr. Woody wrestling but not throwing punches on the Woodruffs back lawn, and me, all this in the deep part of the night, watching from over the fence in our backyard, half-hoping Mr. Woody would win. They trampled a poinsettia plant and toppled a tomato plant, and finally a bag of peanuts, presumably left over from the game, fell to the ground, ruined, it seemed. Mr. Woody stood up, brushed dirt off his pinstriped pants, pulled up his stirrups, and said, “Go to fuck!” He picked up a peanut off the ground, deshelled it, tossed it in the air, then maneuvered his mouth below the descending legume, into which it landed. He announced, “You can stay and have some peanuts and beer or leave, but I’m not going two out of three falls with you.”

Nobody needed to tell me, as glow turned to haze in the pitch-black summer sky, that our neighbors were officially and absolutely the enemy. There would be times, over the ensuing months, when I managed to sneak a few minutes with Danny, but not many. He had a subscription to Sports Illustrated, and when he showed me the cover featuring both the Cubs and White Sox (the headline was, “Chi, oh my!”) it seemed, momentarily, like an olive branch or an omen or an overture, something that meant enemies could live in harmony; but it would never be so without the consent of my dad, and I would never get that.

The Cubs imploded, relinquishing first place in early August and free-falling all the way to .500 and a fourth-place finish. The White Sox clung to first until late August, when Milwaukee wrangled away the prize. I found myself sadden at both demises. It was the Yankees and Dodgers in the World Series, with predictable hero Reggie Jackie standing in the spot we’d dreamed would be occupied, depending on which side of our fence you lived, by Buckner or Zisk.

By the end of that summer, White Sox flight had fully infected the neighborhood. The moves – the Carbonellis went west, the Prichards north, and the Cincinellos east – were often blamed on bad schools or crime or small backyards, but it couldn’t have been a coincidence that in each case the families hated the Woodruffs and were convinced more like them were on the way. The theory was that the Woodruffs had greased the way for more White Sox lovers to congregate, and Dad fully bought into this theory, spouting off at dinner that the bastards always arrived in groups, that they were most comfortable around each other, and that once this happened property values would plummet. By the time we’d moved to Elmwood Park, where, I’d later learn, our neighbors included fringe Mafia players, the For Sale Sign had been posted on the Woodruffs lawn, making, I suppose, the move unnecessary, except that for Dad and others like Dad the plague had descended and the neighborhood would never again be safe from it.

I of course never saw Danny again, as I never saw any of my friends from the place I still consider the old neighborhood, and it would be another decade before I openly rooted again for the White Sox. I wonder, to this day, if Danny thinks about me as I sometimes think about him, and whether regret is possible in a world, childhood, in which all the bad decisions are made by others, and in which bad decisions are basically irreversible.

Donald G. Evans, author of Wrigleyville sports gambling novel Good Money After Bad, is the Lovable Losers emcee. His stories have appeared in StoryQuarterly, Pinyon Review, The Journal and Narrative Magazine, among others, and he will soon have a story appearing in the Xavier Review.

By Lynn Voedisch

The sun reflected off Kyra's painted toenails as she wiggled them in the breeze. Kyra had propped up her feet on the railing that separated the bleacher seats from the ivy-covered walls of Wrigley Field. Derek noticed that each toenail was colored a different, iridescent color, giving her small feet a shimmering, rainbow effect.

Scoreboard Fans by Will Byington"Do you think I could have the scorecard back?" Derek asked, watching as Kyra scribbled in the players' names.

"Just let me do this," she said, filling in the batting order for the Cubs and then for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Derek bought the scorecard, as he always did before every baseball game, as a focusing tool. Whenever he went to games, he found his attention wandering -- baseball is a slow game, after all -- and scoring the game forced him to keep his eyes riveted on the field. He hated missing things. Now his date had swiped the card.

"I didn't even know you knew how to fill in a scorecard," Derek said, trying to sound cheerful. "And how did you know the Pirates' batting order? They didn't announce it yet."

"Typical thing for a guy to say," Kyra said, handing back the card to Derek, as if it were a wet napkin. "My brother is a baseball player. Triple A. Anyway, I know their usual lineup. I can always change it if their manager shakes it up a little." She waved the eraser end of her pencil in his face.

"You never told me about your brother."

"You never asked."

When the first pitch shot through the air, snapping hard into the catcher's mitt, Kyra grabbed the scorecard back. One, two, three, the Cubs went down and Kyra penned a large K in each box. She chewed on the pencil’s eraser as she watched each pitch, squinting as she analyzed the flight of each ball, and announcing "sinker," "changeup," "split-finger fastball" more to herself than to Derek.

“It looks like Zambrano is tiring. He must have thrown a hundred pitches,” Kyra said. "But watch Eyre throwing in the bullpen. He's a lefty, they’ll put him on the mound for the left-handed batters coming up and it'll throw the Pirates off for an inning or two. You watch."

"Talk stats to me, baby," Derek said, feeling a wide grin spreading across his face. "This is better than sex."

"Better?"

"Well…"

The Cubs battled on, falling behind by three runs. Kyra was alternately cheering and moaning with each change in baseball fortunes. Derek felt his senses wandering. He heard the beer vendors barking and the organ urging on the calls of "charge!" Peanut shells cracked underfoot, hot dog vendors clacked their metal box lids, and the scent of suntan lotion alerted him to the presence of his new neighbor, a woman in a halter top with an enormous blonde hairdo.

He shifted closer to Kyra and watched her yell as Theriot slugged a fast line drive. She slumped back into her seat when the Pirate's first baseman snagged it with the web of his glove.

"So close," she said, scribbling on her scorecard. Hers because Derek would never get it back.

"Well, that was only the first out, three on base, so we'll do okay," Derek said. He reached over and grabbed her hand. Kyra looked up at him. Her eyes were green flecked with gold. Green like the ivy. Green like the well-tended turn near home plate. She squeezed Derek's hand.

"Thanks for taking me here," she said, her voice losing, just for a second, the sport's announcer's tone of authority.

As Derek returned the squeeze, the crowd inhaled as one great being. It felt as if all available air lifted off the ball field. A tiny, pale baseball lifted off the earth, sailing in an arc that stretched from home plate, over left field, and straight into the blue heaven over Derek's and Kyra's heads. They stretched their necks and gazed as Lee’s perfect homer -- a grand slam in the making -- moved like a shooting star over them. Derek pulled Kyra close, shut his eyes and felt her delighted laughter tickling his ears. He wished for a second, wished on this baseball miracle, that he could always find this moment. No matter the state of the outside world, this moment he could find, slip inside, and make his only, lasting reality.

Lynn Voedisch, journalist, author and freelance writer, covered entertainment and technology for the Chicago Sun-Times. These days she mostly writes fiction when she is not sneaking a peak at the TV to watch her beloved Cubs. She is the author of "Excited Light," a sobering spiritual fantasy about a young boy's attempts to rescue his mother from the clutches of alcoholism.

On Sunday, May 18, 1947, Jackie Robinson played his first game at Wrigley Field. Mike Royko and Bud Selig both attended the game. Here’s the entry from Royko’s diary that day, as I imagine it.

By Jonathan Eig

I went to the Cubs game today with Slats Grobnik and nearly got into a fight. I know what you’re gonna say: So what else is new? But this time was different.

I started to think about the game even before I left the neighborhood.

Way Things Were by Will Byington“Slats,” I said, “Do you think they’re going to let the colored guy play?”

“You mean Jackie Robinson?” Slats asked.

“No, I mean Buckwheat. Of course I mean Jackie Robinson.”

“Lookit,” said Slats, “The way I figure they gotta let him play or else a whole lot of his people coming up from the South Side to see him are gonna make a riot. They ain’t payin’ to see Dixie Walker.”

So we took three trolleys and a bag full of Mrs. Grobnik’s bologna sandwiches and we got to Wrigley just in time for the first pitch. Slats said he was going to buy a scorecard and I went to find a couple of empty seats. We had standing-room tickets, but why stand when you don’t have to? I found a pair in the upper deck, even with first base. Not bad. I grabbed one seat and put the bologna sandwiches on the other to save it.

After about ten minutes, no sign of Slats, but this nerdy-looking kid in a sweater—I think it’s called a Cardigan—came up next to me. He was pretty big, but skinny. I could’ve knocked him over with a good sneeze.

“I believe your bag is on my seat,” he said.

“I believe you’re an idiot,” I told him.

“Will you please move the bag?” he said.

“I’m saving that seat for Slats Grobnik.”

“Is that your imaginary friend?”

“You’ll find out when he gets here and beats you to a pulp for taking his seat.”

“Please move your bag or I’ll be forced to call an usher,” the kid said.

“Your funeral,” I told him.

Then the kid tried to get friendly.

“My name is Allan,” he said. “My friends call me Bud.”

“Nice to meet you, Allan,” I said, as I unwrapped a sandwich.

“I’m here to see Jackie Robinson,” he said.

“You and everybody else,” I answered.

But I’ve got to admit I was getting excited, too. Robinson on the same field as Hack, Cavarretta, Pafko, Merullo. A black man in the big leagues. Mr. Grobnik said he wasn’t sure the game could handle it. He said baseball as a business might collapse if the races mixed. I was more worried about the future of the game if guys in Cardigans like Allan here started taking all the good seats.

Robinson came to bat in the top of the first and you should have heard the roar. It was low and strong and it kept going, like a locomotive. I think Allan might have been scared because for a minute or two he didn’t even move.

Robinson swung at the first pitch and hit a little pop foul that landed behind the Cubs dugout. The crowd cheered as if he had just hit a homer. I don’t remember a lot of the details of the game, but I remember a few things that happened that afternoon.

Slats didn't come back. It turned out he met a girl who was selling Cracker Jack and took her behind the bleachers. He told me later her name was Jenny and that she let him get to second base.

I also remember that Robinson played first base. Early in the game there was a close play and Lennie Merullo ran hard into the bag and knocked Robinson to the ground. Robinson was twice the size of Merullo. He could have destroyed him. But when he got up and brushed the dirt off his uniform, he didn’t even look at Merullo. He didn’t say a word.

“If I were Robinson, I’da killed him,” I said.

“Jackie has to restrain himself,” Allan said. “He promised Branch Rickey he would turn the other cheek.”

“Screw Branch Rickey,” I said. “Somebody hits you, you hit ‘em back—and harder. That’s just common sense.”

“But Branch Rickey has to think about the business of baseball. He has to think about the franchise. He has to think about revenues and salaries and balancing the interests of players and owners and building a solid base of fans in all the major markets.”

I stared at Allan like he was from another planet but I don’t think he noticed. He had a dreamy look on his face.

Later in the game Robinson came to bat again. This time he looped a foul ball high and hard and right toward us. I gave Allan a quick elbow to the kidney and he doubled over in pain. Somebody in front of me got a hand on the ball first, but it glanced off of him and bounced around in the seats. Suddenly, Allan was back on his feet and it was between me and him. I stuck out a leg and tripped him. Then I grabbed the ball and stuffed it in my pocket.

I thought Allan was gonna take a swing at me after that but he didn't. He took his seat and I took mine.

Just then Slats came back.

“Let’s get outta here,” he said. “There’s a security guard lookin’ for me.”

“We gotta go, Allan,” I said. “Nice talkin’ to you.”

Allan put his arm around my shoulder as he said goodbye, which struck me as pretty queer, but I guess it had been an emotional day for everyone.

We were outside the ballpark when I remembered my foul ball.

“Hey, Slats,” I said. “Lookit!”

But when I reached in my pocket all I found was a wad of bologna sandwich.

Guest Loser Jonathan Eig, a senior special writer for the Wall Street Journal and former executive editor of Chicago magazine, will appear at the next Lovable Losers Literary Revue Wednesday, June 4 at El Jardin. Eig is the author of Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season and Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig.

By D.C. Brod

It was the end of an era. It was the beginning of a new one. Every columnist who had anything remotely to do with sports, and many who didn't, had written about it. And almost everyone I talked to those days had an opinion to voice. So there was really very little new to say about the first time the Cubs would play under lights in Wrigley Field. I just knew that taking an afternoon off work to catch a three o'clock game wasn't going to be the same knowing I could go to one in the evening. Progress had robbed me of my favorite guilty pleasure.

Photo by Will ByingtonI was going to watch the game on the wide screen TV in the Tattersall Tavern. I couldn't imagine any other place to be. Sammy MacTavish, the guy who owned the place, was the self proclaimed "world's greatest Cubs fan." And although a lot of people could have contended for that title, Sammy would definitely have been a finalist.

I got there around six that night. They had predicted rain, but you couldn't tell by looking at the sky. It was blue and muggy, the way it had been all summer, trapping in the heat and keeping out the rain. A drop of sweat slid down my back as I stepped into the manufactured coolness of the bar. It felt wonderful.

There weren't any tables for two left, so I took up one for four. Ginny quickly found me and placed a fresh basket of popcorn on the table. "Well, McCauley, is this a scotch or a Guinness night?"

"Guinness. I've gotta go the distance." I looked around the tavern, which was rapidly reaching capacity. "See a lot of new faces tonight."

"Yeah," she said and continued in her mild drawl, "let's hear it for media hype."

"Media hype?" I feigned astonishment. "Media hype? Ginny, this is Americana, pure and simple. Apple pies, hot dogs, Chevrolets. Whatever."

She rolled her eyes. "I just hope we get through this night without someone puking on the floor."

I shook my head. "So young to be so bitter."

"I'm not kiddin'. I hate nights like this. You know, even when it's crowded, I usually know or I've seen most of the people before. And I'm here to tell you, this isn't the usual crowd."

I shrugged. "Just because it's packed?"

When she spoke again it was as though, preoccupied with the birth of her own theory, she hadn't heard me. "I'm not sure what it is. For example—" someone at a table nearby was hollering at Ginny to fill his drink order, and she gestured toward him "—that's rude. I'll get to the son of a bitch when I'm good and ready. And you see that older guy with all the gold chains and the floozy?" I glanced in that direction and noticed that the man she was referring to was apparently infatuated with Ginny's rear end. "That guy keeps putting his hands all over me when he's placin' his order. I'm a waitress, not some billy goat in a petting zoo."

I nodded solemnly, "I'd never confuse you with a goat, Ginny."

Download a PDF file to read the rest of D.C.'s story

D.C. Brod is the author of six mystery novels, including her most recent, Heartstone (Five Star, 2005). This story marks the first time Quint McAuley appeared in print; he went on to star in the novels Murder In Store, Error in Judgement, Masquerade in Blue, Brothers in Blood and Paid in Full. This story first appeared in the July, 1989 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; it was the author’s first published story. D.C. will give a toast and read from her original work Wednesday, June 4 at the next Lovable Losers Literary Revue.