2007 - Vol. 4, Issue 4

Dear Paul,

I have so much to tell you. It's hard to know where to begin. Typing this e–mail on my laptop while the Number 6 rattles down Anacapa Street makes for slow going. But we have some time now  .  .  .  at least I hope we do. I'll start when my life took its second major twist.

I was in the seventh grade then, and the kids called me Coffee Bean because my skin is dark, and they said I smelled funny. But I ran faster than most and was a scrappy little fighter, so they didn't say it to my face. Then I got sick, and they didn't call me anything. By the time Mom pulled me out of school, it was as if I'd already gone. Maybe I should back up.

I was on the junior high baseball team. Played center field. You should have seen me chasing down high flies, like Say–Hey Willie Mays, snatching the ball with a quick swipe of my glove. I could hustle, and that's when I first noticed it. I'd be running the bases when my right ankle would give out, and I'd slam face down into the dirt. Everybody laughed and called me a spaz. Coach ordered me to the bench to rest up and drink water. One day after practice, I was climbing the stairs to our tiny fourth–floor walkup on Valerio Street when my ankle failed. I grabbed for the railing, but my right hand wouldn't close. I bounced ass over teakettle down the stairs, breaking my arm and getting pretty banged up.

At the hospital, they put my arm in a lime–green cast. It became a big hit with my classmates. Then the tests began. Mom wouldn't leave it alone. She kept pestering the doctors to discover what was wrong; you know how she could get. I was content to stay ignorant. For the next month, I took the bus to Cottage Hospital and spent Thursday afternoons sitting alone in a drafty hallway, trying to do homework while waiting for the lab techs to draw my blood. The first time, this barely–out–of–high–school chick stuck me five times in the crook of my arm with what looked like a hollow nail. Finally, she gave up and called her supervisor. He jammed a syringe into the back of my hand. People stare at my hands now, not just because they're crooked but because my veins stand out like blue rivers, like ropes binding this strange–even–to–me body together.

When the test results came back, Mom took time off from waitressing, and we had a long talk with Dr. Spenoza. I can't remember much of the technical stuff. I do remember Mom crying on the drive home and snatches of his low monotone voice, the one they must practice in med school: ".  .  .  still lead a productive life  .  .  .  some cases progress slowly  .  .  .  new advances always being made.  .  .  .  "

At least I wasn't a little tike when I got muscular dystrophy — those kids don't make it past age 10. They said I could survive decades. For a while, I didn't think that was necessarily something good. Mom blamed herself because Dr. Spenoza said MD is passed on through the mother's genes. How the hell could she have known? I was her first and last, was all she had.

After the initial shock and days of crying, she got stronger and charged forth on her last great crusade — making sure I could survive on my own. By the time of my diagnosis, I was lurching around junior high with a steel brace on my right leg. As I lost control of that side of my body, I had to learn to be a lefty. I couldn't write worth a damn, and my leg made it hell getting around school. The vice principal insisted I leave and get special training at the Hidden Valley Academy. I remember playing their baseball team in a practice game. They all seemed to have fun, but they were terrible players. They had retards and crips all mixed together. I was scared of becoming one of them, as if my weakness should make me content to sit drooling on some bus bench, like the old men down at the Vets' Hall with their tin cups and sad eyes. (Sorry, didn't mean to slam old guys; when I was a kid, they looked creepy. Now, they seem, well, lucky.)

Depression hit me hard for a couple of years. Hey, I was way too young to accept a finite existence. I took it out on Mom. Seeing her at night in her soiled waitress uniform and her hair coming undone made my life seem desperate — and remembering you didn't help. More than once I thought about blowing out our stove's pilot light, turning on the burners, and just fading away. I'm not sure what stopped me.

I couldn't climb stairs anymore, so we moved to a studio apartment in that rundown project on Modoc Road. It was full of families and single mothers with kids, some of them crippled like me. Mom said it was cheap, and with her wages and the SSI payments, we got by.

Hidden Valley Academy, now that was a weird–ass place. It seemed like half the students were MD, MS, or Polio sufferers whose bodies were falling apart but whose young minds were just coming alive. The other half never had minds, and were taught how to physically survive. I felt luckier than some. At least I could talk, although the right side of my mouth drooped and I couldn't control the pitch of my voice.

I attended that school for seven years. They taught me the three Rs, how to use an electric typewriter, how to maneuver my wheelchair, to set up our apartment so that essentials were within reach, and to get around Santa Barbara on my own.

I was 24 when Mom died. The flowers you sent were beautiful, but you should have at least called. As usual, I was glued to the TV all that day, soaking up the latest from Vietnam and watching whatever sports were airing. I hadn't noticed that Mom wasn't home at her regular time. The doorbell rang. Two somber police officers greeted me, their leather gun belts squeaking in the damp night air. There'd been an accident. There'd been some asshole who couldn't tell a green light from a red one. Now there was one less mother on God's good earth.

A week later, the County sent out a social worker who decided I could stay in the apartment until they figured things out. The SSI checks kept rolling in, and I lived there for another ten years. Some of the project's other crips reached out to me and we became close. Sally was gorgeous from the waist up, with large breasts and a pretty face. But polio had turned her legs into twisted matchsticks. Leroy was as ugly as me, but couldn't speak as well, and he was older. On summer days when Sal wasn't working at the post office, we three amigos hung out at the picnic area, circled our wagons around a table and played monopoly, with Sal helping Leroy move his race car around the board — he'd always choose the car.

Sally and I would sometimes pool our resources and have dinner together, sometimes fool around. You know, crippled people aren't necessarily incapable of sex — and yeah, it's awkward, but it still can be good. Besides, I never knew anything different, and it made us both happy. Then Sally's aunt freaked out and whisked her off to an OB–GYN to see if she was pregnant. The social workers gave me the lecture about always using rubbers and provided sample packs. I tried explaining how Sal already helped me with that — Jesus, talk about embarrassing! They treated us like children.

Finally, Sal's aunt stole her away. I'd still see her sometimes at the post office if I asked at the window. After a few years she quit and nobody would tell me where she lived. I hate it when people I love just up and disappear. Leaves me wondering what I did wrong, blaming myself. And that whole thing with Sally made me furious. I realized if I wanted to be considered something more than a half–wit, I'd have to get out and do something, and I don't mean begging in front of the Art Museum. I've got a friend who buys his groceries that way. But he can blow a mean harmonica and people will pay for music.

When I wasn't watching TV, I'd read the Times, study the sports pages. Baseball season became the high point of my life. The Dodgers had been in Los Angeles for more than twenty years, and I followed their every move. They'd always sign the best pitchers, and I'd memorize their players' careers: where'd they'd been traded from, their batting averages, favorite pitches, ERAs, annual salaries, and their personal idiosyncrasies — like how they got their nicknames, marriage situations, drinking problems, and later, troubles with drugs and steroids. I have a knack for remembering that stuff and talked about it with Leroy, although by then he was in pretty bad shape. His sister finally moved him to the same nursing home where you've landed. I took the bus out to visit a few times. Near the end he didn't know who I was, and speech had become difficult for both of us.

Right after Leroy died, the public housing people told me I'd have to leave. I couldn't really blame them. I'd lived at the project for twenty–two years and saw whole families grow up and move on. But I guess the county had a long waiting list for apartments. So they moved me to a housekeeping unit at the California Hotel, in the downtown, only a few blocks from Tad's Liquor Store.

After six months of rolling my chair back and forth to Tad's, I knew most of the restaurant managers and never paid for coffee. Even Ed at the Calypso Bar & Grill slipped me bottles of Miller. I hid them under my blanket and snuck sips on hot summer days.

I also rode the bus out to Ridgeway Park to watch our town's AA farm team. After a while the ticket sellers let me in free. I'd sit in back of third base and use my own personal hieroglyphics to record each player's performance. I liked keeping track of these kids and it's exciting to chronicle their progress throughout a season — almost like they're my own short–term children.

After a while I couldn't read my own writing. So I stopped drinking, saved my money, and bought this laptop computer complete with wireless Internet connections and a triple battery pack. I think I could launch the space shuttle with this thing.

I began keeping files on each player, and that's how it got started. I was reading a piece in the Gazette about Pablo Sanchez, our new lefty pitcher. The newspaper had screwed up his ERA, said he was from the Dominican Republic, which was bunk, and that he threw a great curve ball. Everybody knew Pablo's main weapon was his slider. I looked up the sports editor's e–mail address and sent him a nasty–gram full of Sanchez's background info from my file. I about fell out of my chair when Dan Hagerty showed up at my hotel room. When he left, I held a signed contract that said I would cover hometown games and e–mail him copy by the following morning.

Jesus — me a sportswriter? You can believe I was scared shitless. I hadn't done any real writing since school and was up all night piecing together my first story. Took me seven hours to write ten column inches because only two fingers on my left hand are functional.

I'm much faster now, which lets me focus on the particulars of a game, find drama that might be lost among the physical mechanics of hitting, throwing and running. I try to paint a vivid picture for my readers. They're only small stories, but I get fan mail, and more people stop me on the street to talk about whether this or that kid should be kicked upstairs.

For the first time in my life, I feel that I have a stake in something real, something important. I wish you had felt the same way about us — you and me — so many years ago. We should have tried  .  .  .  but there are way too many "should haves" in this world, and I don't want to add more, especially now, with you and the cancer. I just want to make good our remaining time.

Ah Christ, I've got to go. Andy just got on the bus, and I know he'll want to talk. This guy has the Encyclopedia Britannica stored in his brain and every last word wants to come pouring out. I envy him; he can let the words flow between his lips while I have to hunt and peck around this keyboard. Well anyway, this is already way too long an e–mail, especially for only our second. I'm still amazed that you saw my byline, and I'm glad you reached out. There are some good people at your nursing home. Between them and me, you still got a kind of family. Take it easy, Dad, and I'll visit you soon.