My Favorite Moments.

Muy contento por la publicación de mi cuento en hardballtimes.com March 22, 2017 by Alfonso Tusa The HardBall Times. hardballtimes.com 1975-topps-1966-rookies-of-the-year-2 At sunset, Miguelin raced through the oak door. “Dad…Dad.. I have a question for you.” He managed to stop a few inches from the wooden rocking chair. Demetrio stood up and tried to push back the rocking chair. “What is it ?” Miguelin waited until his breathing barely rippled the white t-shirt. “It’s about baseball.” Demetrio broadened his eyes…Miguelin generally liked other sports. He said that he only liked baseball to play it, nor for watching, reading or having memorabilia about it. “The physical education teacher said whoever answers this question first will win a guanabana yogurt.” Demetrio opened his hands and shrugged his shoulders waiting to hear. Miguelin looked to the ceiling. “In the Venezuelan baseball league which two ballplayers played in the same season and later won the rookie of the year award” Miguelin added, “in the same year?” Demetrio tapped his forehead. “Haven’t thought about that in a while! That teacher of yours is really tough. Well, if you complete your homework by 8 o’clock tonight, we can talk about those ballplayers.” Miguelin wrinkled his mouth and looked down. Then he jumped into the air after 30 seconds. “All right. But you have to tell me the whole story.” Miguelin went to his bedroom and came back when darkness was sliding through the window. “Dad, I already did the homework, why don’t you tell me about the two rookies?” Demetrio studied Miguelin’s tricky face and Roberta’s serious cheeks. He suspected that Miguelin had barely begun to do the homework. Demetrio tried another strategy to avoid a fight for power. Demetrio said, “Do you like baseball?” Miguelin spun his chin from one shoulder to the other. “Then, why are you so interested in that question? You can get the yogurt if you order your toys.” Miguelin squeezed his hands and stretched them under the table. “I want to know who those rookies were. The teacher thinks that nobody will answer that question. I want to surprise him Dad. Are you sure you know what they are?” Demetrio pressed his lips. “You should say, are you sure you know who they are?” … Miguelin started to read the question about cardinal and ordinal numbers. He followed the first lines of the paragraph which identified the main idea, he pressed his lips, released the pencil. He asked if Demetrio had played as a child, if he had run to meet his friends. Demetrio smiled. “Your grandfather was very strict. When I finished the homework he made me paint the facade’s walls or asked me a lot of questions about the homework. If some of my answers were wrong he took minutes from my playing time and if I complained, he diminished the time even more. I looked at him the same way you look at me right now, with acid in my eyes.” Miguelin rebounded the ball against the wall. “But Grandpa always plays with me. Even if I have a homework to do.” “Grandparents, Grandparents! If only you had seen them when they were parents.” … The race brought scents of notebooks and chalk powder in his hands, Miguelin stopped by a garden’s side. “How does a second baseman perform a doubleplay? Why must a centerfielder be very fast? Demetrio stopped using the drill. The hole in the wall required more depth. “The teacher told us that one of the rookies was a second baseman who later won seven golden gloves and the other a centerfielder who made two spectacular catches in the World Series.” Demetrio blew the hole’s dust and slid the ramplug. “Oh son, that teacher is beginning to sound as an encyclopaedia!” “What do you mean by encyclopaedia?” Demetrio slammed two hammer punches on the ramplug. “He’s getting within the baseball history.” “Dad, talk to me clearly please.” Miguelin pulled a chair and put the backpack at the back of it. He noticed the same facial expression of that sunset of ignited oranges among the cobalt clouds at an atmospheric edge. The veins bubbled in his hands. The guy’s face was completely reddish. The client had ordered a painting with streets flooded in garbage and Demetrio left a corner completely clean. That broke all the sense the client wished in the painting. That sight would show that the town began to change and that wasn’t true, Miguelin looked through the door’s line. Thick threads of sweat burned at Demetrio’s eyes. Miguelin would have liked to come in the office to stand up before that furious guy. He wanted to squeeze the guy’s gaze and tell him to respect Demetrio. Not even at his profession as an artist, Demetrio articulated the tiniest word before the hardest complaints. When Roberta told him that he had to defend himself, Demetrio immersed with the best of his aqualung in the sea of blue traces from his planes. “Why is Dad so hard with me and remains as a scarecrow before those guys that are his clients?” “Hey. What’s the matter? Give me that painting,” said Demetrio. Something in the painting impressed Miguelin and he almost dropped it. “Look out! I’ve spent many hours at my free time and many unpleasant meetings, I don’t want that painting to finish turned into specks.” “Do you want to know what a second baseman is or how he performs the double play?” Demetrio asked from behind the canvas. Miguelin had his eyes glued to the canvas, it showed the same street as the other painting, this time it looked immaculate but there were two banana covers at a corner. “What’s that Dad? That’s the opposite of what the angry man ordered.” Demetrio put the palette at the table to add a little more of red to the mix for the banana’s cover. “Sometimes you have to change the perspective to understand the mysteries of the ground you’re stepping on.” “Don’t look at me like that. It doesn’t mean to give up, or get on your knees. There’s a human condition; yes, I know it’s very few times practiced, it leaves open places to share points of view no matter how opposite they could be” Miguelin looked how the tube with red paint squeezed out. “Dad, do you remember that you have to explain me what a second baseman is?” Demetrio gave two pats on his forehead and raised the palette. “Excuse me son, it’s just that painting and architecture sometimes suffocate me.” “Have you seen how a waiter acts in a restaurant? Most of all when he carries a tray filled with glasses and dishes. If anyone calls him from a table he turns around, listens and gets back on his way with everything untouched in the tray. Right?” Miguelin opened his eyes. Demetrio marked the yellow contrasts over the bananas covers with his index finger. “What does that have to do with a second baseman making a doubleplay?” Miguelin said. Demetrio raised his index finger from the canvas. “Imagine there is a runner at first base and the batter hits a grounder to shortstop, right?” Miguelin got two steps away from the easel. “The shortstop grabs the ball and passes it to the second baseman, he gets it, steps on the base and gets the out, then turns to first base and throws the ball.” “Is it similar for you about what a waiter does in a restaurant?” “Dad, but the shortstop also can do that when the grounder goes to the second baseman.” “Sure son, but the shortstop has the play in front of him, he doesn’t have to turn towards first base.” Miguelin looked at Demetrio wanting to ask him from where he got so many explanations. How had he learned so many ordinary, simple things? Miguelin inserted two Lego blocks to complete the airplane. Dad you haven’t even told me why a centerfielder must be very fast.” “And I won’t until you explain to me what cardinal and ordinal numbers are.” The voice’s tone matched the brutality of the reggaeton vibrating over the neighborhood’s zinc roofs. Miguelin raised his shoulders and moved his feet in half circles. Roberta closed the windows and tried to talk. Miguelín put his index fingers at his ears. “That noise kills thousands of neurons per minute,” said Roberta. Miguelin tilted his face on the table. A mysterious music floated in the room. “What’s that thing, Dad? Demetrio left the compact disc box on the speaker. “It’s Franz Liszt, a Hungarian composer, a great pianist and professor.” Miguelin breathed, touched Demetrio’s shoulder. “Dad, that music made me remember a ball game at school. I was in the same team with the boy who always laughed at me. At the first chance, I put my foot on his way, If the teacher wouldn’t have been aware, he had hit very hard in his face. The teacher sat down besides me and stayed like five minutes explaining me that violence is like a vortex that kills everything.” Later in the game, the teacher brought the boy as a relief pitcher from right field. The first deliveries rebounded on home plate and hit me in the neck. The teacher came out so mad. “What`s the matter with you Demostenes? This is a team sharing an objective for the best harmony.” “His name made me laugh. Then you explained me that Demostenes was a great greek speaker in the age before Christ. The batter got on base on a walk. The next batter hit a line drive to deep right field. The runner on first base scored. When I saw the other runner reaching second base and keep running I suspected it could be an inside the park homer. I advanced two steps to third base. When I saw the right fielder throwing the ball to the second baseman, I shouted, ‘Demostenes, run home!’ When I saw the relay throw went over the third baseman I ran and slid on the grass. I got the ball in the mitt’s webbing. I passed the ball to Demostenes. The runner clashed against him and rolled in the dust. The umpire checked the glove and fisted his right hand. I called Demostenes twice. I hit him twice in his face. When the teacher put the alcamphor tablet under his nose and he opened his eyes, my sadness tears turned into happiness. I talked to Demostenes, I helped him to get up. We had made the out to save the team. I felt a peace like the one from that music you played Dad.” Demetrio scrambled Miguelin’s hair. That was the music where he sheltered while seeing his son burying his chin into the grass when Miguelin went behind third base to stop the second baseman throw. Miguelin raised his body on his chin because of the big impulse from his sprint. Demetrio wrestled with the field’s security guards. He needed to know how Miguelin was feeling. He experienced a thousand boilings on his skin. The blood came back to his veins when he saw Miguelin getting up and throwing the ball. At the music ecstasy, Miguelin opened a dictionary. Are cardinal numbers good to express amounts? To account? Demetrio tuned Liszt with his mouth closed. He said yes with his chin. And ordinal numbers are those to indicate the arriving order in a race or the parts of anything? Miguelin stared at Demetrio`s face and the dictionary’s page. … Another metallic sound raised to the ceiling. Demetrio spun the volume button and opened a color paint tube on the palette. With his eyes fixed on the canvas he began to mix the mustard with the black. When the mound took shape to the side of the banana covers, he added a little of red. Miguelin threw his backpack on a chair and unbuttoned his school shirt. He almost swallow his tongue. “Dad, why do you do so many things I don’t understand? What’s that music that seems like a dog crying? Why are you painting that dog’s excrement there? I thought the banana covers were enough.” The saxophone solo shook the curtains in the room. Demetrio tried to follow the rhythm with an imperceptible whistle. “It’s John Coltrane, one of my favorite sax players. It surprised me to find this Coltrane version of ‘My Favorite Things’ on the internet.” Demetrio’s fingers movements went from the palette to the canvas and then to some dancing steps between the lecter and the desk crowded with papers. “Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels. Doorbells and sleighbells and schnitzel with noodles. Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings. These are a few of my favorite things.. Demetrio diluted a little the color mix with trementine. “Please Miguelin lift that backpack from the magazine box. Could you put it in your closet? How are you doing with the quest about the rookies?” A lightning raised the kid’s tilted face. The teacher had given more clues. He said that the center fielder played for a team called “the miracle” and that the second baseman won six gold glove awards. Demetrio tuned his whistle while moving the brush on the color tone of the dog’s excrement. “Have you seen how is the space behind the infield in a ballpark?” Miguelin’s absent face made Demetrio to leave the brush. He moved to the highest level of the wooden stand. He took out an old calendar. A large savannah displayed through the outfield of a very ancient Estadio Universitario. “Do you see all that mowed and shining grass? What is it like for you?” “It’s like a playing park.” Demetrio stretched his arm to show a better angle of the picture. “Doesn’t it seem to you like a big field? Miguelín smiled. “The biggest portion of that field is centerfield, that’s why the centerfielder has to be very fast, to run everywhere and catch all the lines drives and long flies hit there … Demetrio left for a while his daily journey to the sunset’s silence of orange tonalities, no matter he was very close to discover a new purple gradation at the horizon. Roberta checked Miguelin´s backpack and raised her voice with vehemence. That teacher was asking excessive hard questions to the kids. How is he going to teach trigonometry to fifth-graders? I’m going to complain tomorrow.” Demetrio coughed and a piano solo invaded the house with fresh air from streams and shrub bushes. Roberta tried to follow the rhythm while spreading the pomegranate grains on a mix of lemon juice and ginger ale. She smiled at the ice ringing on the glasses. Miguelin tasted the drink. “Dad. Who’s Pitagoras? The teacher sent us to search about him and about what’s the sine, the cosine and the hypotenuse. And the physical education teacher gave us other clues on the rookies”. Demetrio whistled the piano melody. He had took the Coltrane disc out and put this one with a different kind of jazz. “Dad, what’s the name of that song?” Miguelin took another sip of the pomegranate drink. Demetrio grabbed the compact disc box. “That teacher makes me to recall a scene in the movie Field of Dreams. When Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones go to Fenway Park looking for a signal. In the seventh inning stretch, Costner sees the name of a player at the scoreboard. The guy had played early in the century. Costner broke running to search information about the player. What did that teacher tell you now about the rookies?” Miguelín enjoyed another sip of pomegranate drink following the piano sounds. “He said that one was traded by the Cleveland Indians along with a pitcher named Tommy John and the other was sent along with the first baseman Lee May from the Cincinnati Reds to the Houston Astros for the second baseman Joe Morgan, the pitcher Jack Billingham and the centerfielder Cesar Gerónimo.” Demetrio looked at the picture of the musician in the compact disc box. “That teacher is giving all those clues because he’s for sure that you’ll never find those rookies’ names. But you never know, life has always amazing answers”. “Dad, you haven’t still told me the name of the song”. Demetrio almost closed his eyes while looking at Miguelin’s chin. “What’s that?” Miguelin tried of running away to the living room. Demetrio took him by the forearm. “That…is…a scar…That happened two weeks ago”. Miguelin’s voice almost disappeared into silence. Demetrio sat down and turned the music volume down. “It can have happened a year ago but I need to know about what’s happening to my son. Look at that scar’s color. I know it comes from a very hard punch”. tommie-agee-2Miguelin looked to the ceiling and dropped his head. “It was at school. A boy told the other classmates not to play games with me and fooled on me. I complained and he pushed me. They began to shout me ugly words and I almost started to cry. I raised up and faced him. He threw a very hard punch and I only could partially stop it with my hand. I felt a hammer in my chin”. Demetrio’s voice rebounded at the walls. “What about the teacher? What did she do?” Miguelín buried his gaze at a corner. “She just appeared when I tried to answer his punch back. She called me ‘violent kid’ and I spent the rest of the afternoon at the bottom of the classroom, hearing the laughter of the boy who hit me.” Demetrio went to the kitchen and turned off the arepas cooking fire. Roberta explained that she had talked to the teacher. When she noticed that Roberta went to complain with the school coordinator and they began to investigate, the teacher looked for Roberta. Demetrio turned the arepas cooking fire on again. “Why haven’t you told me anything?” Roberta took her blouse’s sleeve and dried some tear and sweat in her cheek. “I didn’t want to worry you more. I see how you have to deal everyday with the clients. I thought it was not the time to tell you about what happened at school.” Demetrio took a chair from the table and soaked his chin on his hands. Miguelin tried to get Demetrio away from that argument with Roberta. He tilted the blender machine vase squeezing the last pomegranate and ginger ale drops. “Dad Why are pomegranates so tasteful mixed with ginger ale?” Simón Díaz’s voice meshed through the piano sound. “Dad, you still haven’t told me the name of that song.” “It’s one of the main samples of a musical genre created by the maestro Aldemaro Romero. The Onda Nueva is like a Venezuelan answer to the Brazilian Bossa Nova. This song’s name is Carretera. The anecdote says that Aldemaro composed it as a tribute to his friend Simon Díaz when they traveled to Simon’s farmland in the venezuelan plains.” Miguelín tried to follow the lyrics. “Carretera… acortate carretera…que me ahoga la distancia…de que manera…de que manera…” Miguelín got some centimeters away from the table. It looked so different that world of tables, papers, easels and canvas from what he saw daily at his journey to school, pushing, shouts, bad words, tricks, threats, bullying, weapons. “Dad, what’s war?” Demetrio almost breaks his pen on the paper. “How come do you want to know about that?” “That’s what they talk about at the street. ‘It comes, the civil war. The chase of the people who think in a distinct way.’” Demetrio sat down on the floor. “If human beings are incapable of using the words to accomplish agreements, then, what for do we have brain? To bring violence?” What can you do to stop it, Dad? Demetrio almost got asphyxiated in a sigh. “It’s a daily task son. Because all of us make mistakes, thus we have to start by recognizing them.” After school Miguelín always got back home in a rush. That afternoon he came running by the brown bricks’ path through the garden. The sun’s last rays trimmed the bromelia and fidodendron’s plants shadows. “Dad. Where are you?” Roberta raised her index finger from her white kitchen apron and took it to the mouth. A scent of pepper and basil filled the kitchen. “Go silently, he’s over there where you can see those little green spots.” Miguelín almost fell down while running before the emotion of watching those little lights in the sunset shadows. “Dad, why are you looking at those fireflies?” Demetrio’s cheeks looked so large as almost never Miguelin had seen them. “I get very relaxed just by seeing those little green spots in the darkness. They are like a big fragmentary lantern.. … The next afternoon, midday breeze flowing matched the heat in the vineyard pipes. Demetrio had took the easel out to the rooftop. He painted some silver sargassum on a shadowed street. The canvas creaked while the brush transmitted shapes and colors. Miguelín jumped at the stairs three steps at a time. Demetrio wrinkled his mouth. He looked for some particular blue in the sky through the grape leaves. And whistled Coltrane’s sax that came floating from the living room. The music cheered Miguelín. He took his mathematics notebook from his backpack. As Demetrio read a Pitagoras’ biography, he put his fingers at his mouth. Miguelín looked at the canvas. “Dad, the roof line of that Cadillac seems as a hypotenuse. It was painted in a 45 º angle with a seized paint Toyota rustic. Dad, how do you do to portrait that seized paint?” My Favorite Things showed the duet of Coltrane’s sax and Demetrio’s whistle. He marked silver spots on the orange background of the hood. “Where’s the Cadillac driver? He’s parked in the wrong place, Dad. The brush painted some yellow stripes under the Toyota rustic. “It’s a scene from the cheating of a lot of guys. I could title this painting: ‘Two cheaters in action.’ The driver of the Toyota parked on a hydrant zone and the one from the Cadillac parked in double line and crossed.” Miguelin looked behind the Toyota. He wrinkled his forehead. “Dad is it really dangerous to park a car in front of a hydrant?” Demetrio tuned the musical note. “Sure son. It could cost the loss of many lives. If there is a fire and the firefighters need extra water, but a car is obstructing the hydrant, it could mean a very difficult moment and even a catastrophe”. Miguelin breathed close to the Toyota’s tires. Do you think the Toyota driver knows what an hydrant is?” “No. And if he knew about it, he forgot it the same that the Cadillac guy ignores Pitagoras, he wasn’t even capable of parking in parallel line.” … The gallium and chromium compass slipped from the fingers stained with ink. Three ring tones lighted his pants pocket. Demetrio got away from the table in his tiptoes and took out his cell phone. “What happened? Ok, teacher, I’ll be there in just a minute.” He pushed seven times the keyboard and phoned Roberta. “Yes. You have to go to the school. According to the teacher everything is alright. But you have to go for Miguelin.” Roberta checked a hematoma under Miguelin’s left eye. “How is it possible that the teacher says everything is alright and my son’s eye looks like the one of a boxer?” The kid went to the opposite side of the rooftop. Demetrio hid himself behind a drum filled with water. The little stones rebounded from the vine leaves. “Cut it out Dad! I know it’s you.” “Haven’t the teacher given you more clues about the rookies?” “No.” Demetrio put a hand on the drum. “One of them was elected Rookie of the Year while playing at a different position from the one he played for the most time in his career and the other was born in the same state where Willie Mays and Hank Aaron were born.” Miguelin began to forget his hematoma. “Who are Willie Mays and Hank Aaron?” Demetrio leaned on the drum. “They’re two of the best players in the history of baseball.” “Son, what happened at school?” “No. Mom is going to get mad at me.” “I’ll talk with her. She’s not going to get mad.” Miguelin tried a smile. “We were in a line to buy some snack and this girl came and took a place ahead of us, just because her friends called her. I complained that at least she should ask for permission to all of us in the line. It began a big fight and I got a punch at my face. I couldn’t see who hit me because I fell down”. Demetrio stretched his hand and turned down the music. “Dad, why do you see so much to that corner? It seems like if you had a treasure just there.” Miguelín climbed to the top level of the library furniture and moved the portrait of the day at the beach. The shadow of a box came out in the shape of a pile of cardboards. A chewing gum scent impregnated the wood grabbed by Miguelín’s fingers. Demetrio breathed, his breathing brought the square across the bookstore where he bought the baseball cards, some of them had chewing gum as a prize. Once he got the most wanted card but a bigger boy took it from him. Demetrio chased him for about seven blocks. The boy turned and hit him in the chest. Demetrio attacked the boy. They both rolled on the pavement until Demetrio pulled the card back from the boy’s hand. Then Demetrio was a fugitive of that boy and he had to tell it to his father. “Your Grandpa made an ugly sign with his mouth. ‘I’ve told you more than once that violence isn’t good.’ He went to talk with the boy’s father and after some quarreling they agreed that the boy would stop chasing Demetrio, but Demetrio had to apologize for the punches he gave to the boy.” Miguelin took the pack of baseball cards and passed it to Demetrio. “Why did you hit so hard that boy?” “It was the card of one of my favorite ballplayers. I spent several days flattening it. I put it inside a book and the book under the mattress of my bed.” “Who was that ballplayer?” Demetrio delivered some whistles as he emptied equal portions of brown and silver paint over the palette, then he added a little orange. He remarked some scratches on the rustic’s hood. Miguelin forgot about the cards for a while. “You are painting like the painter of that picture of flowers in the kitchen.” “You don’t know what you’re saying son. How am I going to even dream of being at the ankles of Vincent van Gogh? And most of all in The Sunflowers!” Demetrio pressed a card against the wall and let it fall down. “This was the game we most enjoyed.” He did this over and over, letting other cards fall down. Miguelin raised one of the cards. “Is this one of the rookies?” Demetrio smiled. “Dad. You still haven’t told me who was the player in the card the boy took from you.” Demetrio whistled again “My Favorite Things.” “What did you see in the level where the cards were?” Miguelín looked to the library furniture. There were some bottles.”I’m sure those bottles have ships inside.” When Miguelin tried to climb the furniture again, Demetrio took down two transparent bottles. It looked as if he was carrying a baby in his arms. Miguelín jumped between the canvas and the drawing table. “I see, I see! How did you do to put those cards inside the bottles? Tommie Agee…White Sox.” Miguelin looked to the other bottle. “Tommy Helms…Reds. Are these the rookies? Yes Dad!” Miguelin hugged Demetrio and sat down on the bench. “Are these your favorite players?” Demetrio spun the bottles to read the cards’ rear side. “Maybe not so much as in that 1965-1966 season when both came to play for the Magallanes Navigators. What was I going to imagine that the next major league baseball season those two players were going to be the rookies of the year? The day when my brothers came home with the news, I asked them if the players were the same that had come to the Venezuelan winter league. I celebrated for several days. I always kept the cards with me everywhere and as soon as I found the right person I ordered to put the cards inside those bottles.” Miguelín looked at the bottles from every angle. “Now I know why you were so sure about who were those rookies. I’m sure the teacher is going to be astonished when I tell him the name of the rookies.” About Alfonso Tusa Alfonso L. Tusa is a chemical technician and writer from Venezuela. His work has been featured in El Nacional, Norma Editorial and the Society for American Baseball Research, where he has contributed to several books and published several entries for the SABR Bio Project. He has written several novellas and books and contributed to others, including Voces de Beisbol y Ecología and Pensando en tí Venezuela. Una biografía de Dámaso Blanco. Follow him on Twitter @natural30. Leave a Reply