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More Than A GameSaturdays we'd play catch in the back yard before dinner. I was 10 standing with my back against the beige concrete ash pit. Toss and catch…toss and catch…toss and catch rhythmic, relaxing hand to glove to hand to glove simple, silent, serene space between throws. Sometimes I'd sense Pop getting wound up: narrowing eyes, subtle twist of lip,Without asking I'd crouch down, fist-smack my glove, make a target, scared, because he always threw harder when he pitched. Afterward he'd reminisce about pitching semi-pro, how to place rosined fingers just so on the stitches, how to release the ball, how his wrist wouldn't withstand twisting because he played First Violin in the orchestra, and piano. " I had to choose," he'd say, voice trailing off, a barely audible note bowed ever so softly. And so he quit baseball. Decades pass. Intermission at the symphony, a seventh inning stretch after a superb concerto, Pop tells me a story about a summer he had a chance to play piano with a dance combo at a Catskills resort. "This is not music befitting my eldest son," his father told him sternly. Pop persisted. "You want to play modern music? You don't want to play violin? Then don't." And he took the instrument and smashed it against my father who never again touched a violin. A calm telling, a telling calm, like an easy toss before a pitched battle. Yet in the stillness - the whoosh and crack of the bat as it swung and struck, the sting penetrating the padded glove of time. And I understood: from a mound of ashes Pop would reach back |
 | Ira Slotkin Autobiographical Note "I was born in Brooklyn in 1950 and thus imprinted initially to be a Dodger fan. I still am. Now I live with my 3-year-old son Luis within walking distance of the Colorado Rockies ballpark. I have worked in Social Work for more than 20 years, been a cab driver, consultant on human-animal bond and pet loss, and a freelance writer and poet. My father was born in New York in 1911 and played semi-pro baseball there against guys like Hank Greenberg. My father died in 1990. I still have the glove that he used in the 20's and 30's, and his piano." |
