Little League

The Rossi family lived on the edge of working class Germantown, site of skinny, low white clapboard railroad shacks. Their street was marginally nicer, sporting an embryonic subdivision, tiny two story brick edifices crowded together—one of them the Rossi’s. This setting was one of several reasons young Gino Rossi felt out of place. Others: his schoolmates’ fathers worked in factories or construction while his ran a small luncheonette. His housewife mother lived with the premise that the Rossis were too good for the place and the people they knew. Worse, Gino faced misfortune as the “brain” of his grade school class. His classmates were only enduring school until real life, grinding, boring work, caught up with them. Gino’s actually trying to learn engendered not admiration but hostility.

Reading the local sports pages one morning, Gino noticed that the Germantown Little League was holding open tryouts. Sports fan Gino signed up and surprised himself by playing well. He earned a spot on the Lone Wolf VFW Post team, a middling squad, perennial also rans to the Shelby Shell eleven. He loved wearing his uniform, one of the lucky fifteen, spending hours on the splintered bench at dusty, bald St. Michael’s ball diamond, part of something bigger than himself. Still, alas, an outsider. Most of the Lone Wolfs knew one another otherwise. They came directly from the railroad shacks hard up against the field.

Many were better players than Gino. His enthusiasm did not make up for dismal performance. He achieved good field, no hit status. quickly. That did not stop him from developing a case of hero worship. Tommy Byrd, pitcher for the champion Shelby Avenue Shell team, a year older than Gino, was a lithe tow-headed blond, tall for his age, a rangy lefty with a strong bat and wicked fastball. Enormously self-assured, he wore his uniform well. Like many others, Gino admired Tommy. The superstar ignored insignificant Gino, neglecting even saying “Hi.”

Gino didn’t discard, only laid aside, idolizing Tommy after they aged out of Little League. At fifteen, Gino spent little time playing ball. He rode his no speed bicycle aimlessly around the streets of Germantown. One Saturday afternoon, close by the Shelby Shell, ironically enough, he passed an idling, parked car. He noticed its passengers, Tommy and his longtime girlfriend, Marilyn Cassidy, and another couple, all in suits and dresses. News Gino had half absorbed in neighborhood scuttlebutt flashed into consciousness. Tommy had gotten Marilyn pregnant. This was the day of their shotgun wedding. Tommy was dropping out of school to become a bricklayer.

Gino visualized Tommy muscling hods up wobbly ladders, hands and face gritty, clad in worn Carhartts, gray, smeared with cement dust. No immaculate baseball uniform. Gino felt very young astride his shabby bike on the oily asphalt. He sensed that Tommy’s early prowess would get him nowhere. Gino foresaw problems ahead, but knew he was headed in another direction.