Cardboard Gods

Days up and down they come
Like rain on a conga drum
Forget most, remember some
But don’t turn none away
-Townes Van Zandt, “To Live’s To Fly”

I’ve let a lot of life slip through my hands. Turned away days? Try years. And even now when I finally get that I’m here for a reason, when I want to be here for my two boys and everyone else I love and who loves me, even now every given day is at least a partial turning away. I’m always looking for the exit at least just a little, that exit-looking tendency one and the same with the very ache that has accompanied life all along, even as far back as 1978, ten years old, hoping some superstar would appear in a pack of cards along with the brief, fizzling rush of the cheap sugar high from the gum and dissolve the ache. Superstars could fix a day, but most days went without them. But even so, even if I then turned the day away, I at least turned none of these cards away. These I collected.

I remember some, but most at this point are like this Jim Tyrone card from 1978: a tangible remnant of a lifelong forgetting. Yesterday I grabbed it at random from my box of cards and couldn’t remember anything. The image itself reinforces the aura of opacity. You can’t see his face very well, and he seems himself to be passing through a moment of uncertainty. The back of the card also passes this feeling along, communicating Jim Tyrone’s spotty purchase in the majors, his major league career a transient flickering, too much like life itself to be the kind of thing that will ring forever in the mind of a kid holding the card.

What was the day when I got this card? Was it hot, sunny? Did I ride my bike down to the general store to buy a pack or two or did I walk? That day did I throw a tennis ball off our roof for hours? Did I play catch with my brother? I would like to think so.

I don’t get to see my brother but once a year these days, but yesterday I saw him in my mind, thanks to my father mentioning him. I had called my mother and father to say hello. I talked with my mom first, and then she handed the phone off to my father. He told me he has enjoyed my recent writing on this site.

“I like that you’re thinking about philosophers and, uh, fascism. I’m thinking about that too.”

My father spends most of his day reading, his mind still sharp at age 91. He was a young man when fascism last came this way on a global scale. He signed up to fight this evil, serving in the Navy, and meanwhile his mother, my grandma, continued working furiously to try to get relatives in Europe out of grave danger. She kept doing what she could after the war too. When my father came home from the Navy and resumed living in a small Lower East Side apartment with my grandma, he shared a bedroom for a while with a previously unknown cousin from Europe, Joe, a concentration camp survivor. You can call it fear mongering if some thoughts leak out of me about fascism. You might be right. I hope you’re right. And I can certainly understand your disappointment if you came here under the assumption that this would be about baseball, only baseball, or even mostly baseball. I’m just trying always to understand where I am in the world, and these cards as always are among the only things I feel like I can hold onto. Anyway, yesterday as I was talking to my dad I asked him about some new treatments he’s been trying for his foot. He has always liked going on walks, but his foot has been a problem recently. He and my mom have been trying whatever they can.

“How do you like the acupuncture?” I asked him. I said it loud because his hearing is not great.

“What?” he said. “You’re doing agriculture?”

I tried again, a little louder, and he laughed, realizing his error. He then talked about the Christmas lights going up all over his neighborhood and how he liked them. He said he was looking forward to my brother, who lives nearby them, bringing over his family’s tree. Every year my brother and his family have a tree at their house until they go up to visit my brother’s in-laws. Just before they leave, my brother brings over the tree.

My brother lugging over a used tree to brighten up my parents’ house! It makes me happy to think of it.

Before my mom handed the phone over to my dad, my younger son Exley talked to her a little, saying “hi” and “bye” as she also said “hi” and “bye.” Later, that night, as I was trying to get Exley to go to sleep, he said, “Phone. Hi. Bye.”

“Yes, we talked to grandma today. You said hi and bye.”

“Me? Come?”

“Yes,” I said. “I wish we could come over more often. They live so far away.”

“Dog,” Exley said.

“Yes! You walked grandma’s dog the last time you were there!”

Exley then lifted his leg.

“Pee,” he said.

“Yes, Shaggy lifted his leg to pee.”

How much of this will I remember? I love so much this little passage, with Exley still just learning words but already telling stories. But it’s already hard for me to remember when my other son, Jack, was at this stage. Having two young kids throws me into an obliterating present the likes of which I haven’t seen since my own childhood. But I remember yesterday, at least for now. There were several rough spots, Jack and Exley battling over various things, Exley loosing blood-curdling screams, Jack crying, Exley crying, me losing my shit and adding to the maelstrom by shouting, which of course was followed by more crying.

Am I ever going to circle this back to Jim Tyrone?

Well, I do remember that yesterday for a long stretch I pitched a big yellow rubber ball to Jack, who smashed it with a foam bat, rocketing line drives all over the basement (and occasionally off my face). That was fun. Exley wasn’t participating much—instead he was putting CDs into the CD player and blasting them at top volume. I am of course hoping that someday both boys will play baseball and play it together. This is probably a hope rooted in the hope I have for any day from childhood lost to memory—that it included me and my brother playing baseball together. Any day that had me playing catch with my brother was a day I didn’t fully turn away.

Jim Tyrone traveled through pro ball with his brother Wayne trailing behind. Both were in the Cubs system, but while Jim made it to the big leagues with the Cubs in 1972, 1974, and 1975, he didn’t spend any time with the big club in 1976, Wayne’s only year in the majors. The two did play together a bit on the Cub’s triple A squad that year, and while Jim had a good year there, it’s easy to see why the Cubs decided to roll the dice with the younger brother, as 1976 saw Wayne smashing 8 home runs in 84 at bats at triple A.

As it turned out, Wayne wasn’t able to stick in the majors beyond that one season, and he never got a baseball card. He and Jim did reunite in the short-lived Inter-American League with the Miami Amigos, where Jim led the league in batting average and Wayne led in homers. Jim went on to star in Japan for a couple of seasons, while Wayne played in Mexico. Both brothers were elected to the University of Texas Pan American Hall of Fame, along with their younger brother, Leonard, who passed away. I’d like to dedicate these ramblings to him. And I’d like to end with some information that I tried and failed to verify last night, the last thing I did yesterday. According to some sources Wayne Tyrone won a car on the Price Is Right in 1983.

I don’t know what to make of any of this.