May 1979—Ernie 

And the eighth graders are full of peanut butter sandwiches, no crusts, crushed close in a bus because Cubs v. Cardinals, because some of us come from mixed marriages where Bob Gibson v. Fergie Jenkins could ruin a reunion. Almost empty Wrigley Field unfolds like paradise when we rise up the ramp. Every boy has a glove. Every kid wears a red hat or a blue one. One kid has no hat because he also has only three shirts and we have counted them and called him two dozen shitty names when Ernie Banks opens his Hall of Fame arms. “A  great day, let’s play two!” Then he signs every program, every hat, every lunch bag we push towards him. He shows us to our seats where he sits with us for a while like he has nothing else to do all day.

July 1982—Satchel

August, and we get ourselves to Springfield, barely old enough to drive down 55 to the minor leagues. We are jazzed up on Mountain Dew. We have gloves and a belief in foul balls. We all wear Cub hats, because these are the Springfield Cardinals. We were passed by a bus from Iowa on our way but got here early. Maybe 200 bodies sit in the sun and one of them looks as old as Moses. Black man in our field of small white faces and red caps. A handful of blue shirts. Just before the anthem, the amplified voice asks him to stand and wave: Satchel Paige. The infielders, just a few years older than we are, do not sit down. They’ve never heard that story. A line forms by his seat. His age and his stories are unknowable to us, his hand still as steady on a pen as it was on the seams. He calls me young man. He is not here to reminisce. Whatever’s behind him might be gaining on him, but he doesn’t turn his head. In the sixth inning he stands again, Satchels his way up the stairs. He has somewhere else to be.

November 2016—Ace

My son turns 12 in three days. I have tried to get him to play catch, but he doesn’t care in the nicest way possible. I played no catch with my dad, who didn’t care in the least. At my son’s age,  I threw the ball to a 78 year old man. He wore a leather glove from 1917 or so. He still had an arm like a whip; the sound of his throws was true and painful in the pocket of my glove. He played a little ball in his day, he recalled. His brothers played a little ball.  His head was squared off, solid as a cinder block. Inexplicably, his parents named him Ace. He took me to my first Cubs game, maybe 1973, my dad trailing.  The Dodgers killed us. Most teams killed us that year no matter what Whitey Lockman yelled from the dugout. Yes, we talked about the Cubs as “we” and “us,” though not my dad, not my boy. So tonight we have lived through a cloudburst, me and grandpa. Tonight we have forgotten the billy goats. Tonight I want Ace to tell me again how important it is to wait, to know when to tag and take the next base. I want him to throw me the 1945 ball he says he caught at Wrigley. I want him to bruise my hand blue.

David Wright’s poems and essays have appeared in 32 Poems, Ninth Letter, Ecotone, and Essay Daily, among others. His most recent poetry collection is Local Talent (Purple Flag/Virtual Artists Collective, 2019). He lives in Central Illinois where he teaches writing and literature at Monmouth College.