24 February 2008

Play Ball


Jack in 1948

The days are getting longer, and the world beneath our feet is responding to the added measure of photons, regardless of the dreary chill.

There was an early meeting on Saturday over in close-in Maryland to focus some volunteer labor on a worthy cause. I rode with Jake, since Big Pink is generally on the way, and we left the session cautiously optimistic about the future, or at least that small part of it. Driving out, we took Pennsylvania Avenue to get to the back of the Suitland Federal Complex. Coming back, to avoid left turns, we took the Parkway.

That route dumps you back into the District on the South Capital Street Bridge, and it is impossible not to be optimistic about change. The area around Half Street, which had been a netherworld of half-licit activity, is thrusting up cranes and new buildings and bustling with the real harbinger of Spring.

The new baseball stadium is a beehive of activity as workers push to have it complete for opening day.

Stuck in the construction, I got a glimmer of the pandemonium to come, when “Play Ball!” starts at 7:05pm, with fans pouring in even as everyone else in town is trying to escape.

Seeing the workers putting the final touches on the stadium convinced me that Seasonal Affective Disorder is going to pass.

I am confident of it, even as I clipped on by black bow-tie and shrugged on my black corduroy jacket to walk up to the Murphy Funeral Home.

Jack Malarky was laying in state, if that is what a box of cremains do, and it was time to say goodbye to the feisty little guy.

The Girls from Big Pink had done a wonderful job. There were easels in the four corners of the solemn reception room, and little tableaus on the side-tables to document his life. Jack had no kids, and his divorced wife had passed away years ago; that is how he came to Big Pink. A small knot of relatives who were tagged with closing out Jack's affairs.

Jack himself was in a small red container the size of a Cheerios box at one end of the room, flanked with the tri-folded flag he earned as a Coast Guardsman. In front of them both, stark, was the pair of wild multi-colored reading glasses he wore at the end of his life to make sense of the world.

I almost did not recognize Peter, the Pool Czar who manages Big Pink's pool. He was out of context. In the summer he looks like the model Fabio, leonine long hair cascading over powerful shoulders and lean brown torso. He is the only guy I know who is doing just about what he wants, but he explained that even he hated the commute to the pools from Fairfax. He wished he could afford to live in Arlington, where he grew up.

Seeing him fully clothed and out of context really threw me for a moment, but once I could synch up the face, there was sudden clarity. It was kind of him to stop by, but it was appropriate, since Jack had been a good companion to him on those slow, endless Spring days on the Big Pink Pool Deck waiting for the summer staff to get out of schools in the Czech Republic and report to work.

Jack would venture down from the eighth floor with his cigar when there was no ballgame to watch on the cable that Mardy I got for him. He would camp out on Big Tony's patio, or come into the enclosure and sit under the big yellow umbrella, spinning stories of his days with the Phone Company, and later as one of the first cable Television installers.

Peter moved on to circulate, but I took the warmth of summer from him, or at least the hint of Spring, since he is already conducting intense negotiations with Mittle Europe on the crop of lifeguards who will soon be winging their way across the Atlantic and onto the pool deck.

An older guy, still powerfully built, was holding the black commemorative Louisville Slugger baseball bat on the side table next to the shamrocks and talismans of Jack's ancestry.

I introduced myself, and met Pucci Negri, one of the Italian kids who played ball with Jack coming up. “From the first Grade!” he said. “I lived on 22nd Street in Georgetown, just east of the Rock Creek Park. Jack and his brothers were over on Olive Street. I think that is where they are going to scatter the ashes”

I wondered it there was a polite way to ask for a bit of Jack to sprinkle at Big Pink, too, or who it was appropriate to ask. Jack had been adamant that he wanted no ceremony and no marker. “He was quite a ballplayer,” I said.

“You bet.” Pucci gestured at the faded gray tones of the team picture on the stand next to the bat. He squinted a bit. “That was the 1948 Marx Jewelers team. City champs that year. We played for May Hardware in '47. Same deal, City champs. Then Jack turned 19 and placed out of the industrial league.”

“That was semi-pro, right?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah. Georgetown was still a real place in those days, Irish and Italian families, and you know who owned the stores. The industrial league was a way for us to keep playing after high school and while we started our real jobs. There wasn't any need to go to college. I was with the Gas Company, and Jack went with the Chesapeake and Potomac Phone Company.”

I looked at the bat in Puci's hands. He held it up for me to see the signatures emblazoned on the fat black. “It was the rotator cuff that did Jack in. He still came back to play in the Alumni games. This bat was from 1973. I think the last game was in 1997.”

He placed the bat back on the table, pointing at the Shamrock. “Yeah, those were some days. Jack played pretty good football, too, but he was a little guy. Baseball is what he was good at. Our coach Joe Branzell won 17 District championships in a row. He was a hell of a coach, and it was a hell of a run. The District was a different place then.”

I told Pucci it was an honor to have met him, and drifted off to talk to Jack's brother, who is a dead ringer for him only friendlier. His kids were taking care of the details of Jack's passing, cleaning out the apartment and getting rid of the debris.

Most of the Big Pink players were there, who were Jack's real family. Carol B had been called away to the office over the latest Serbian crisis. Joel the old President was there, though, even though he moved out, I think over Board politics. He claims to like living in a single family home again, though I don't believe him for a second.

Joel's running mate Henry was there with his girlfriend. He sold me the poolside unit where I first really met Jack. Mary Margaret was there, of course, looking fabulous in black, and she had contributed most of the pictures that transitioned from Jack's youth and vigor to the wizened old man he was at Big Pink.

The whole story was there, from the beaming little kid on the pony to the tough-guy football player. Petty Officer Jack, and Jack the Player in Vegas and in that snappy straw hat with the stingy brim and the drink in his hand.

Mardy I is a greeter at Murphy's, a professional mourner, but was present as a real one that afternoon. She and Mary Margaret had stayed up late, making the picture boards, drinking some wine and talking about the little guy.

Mardy I was the last to talk to Jack. She saw him last Tuesday at the rehab center, and he seemed to be doing pretty well. He was still dishing it out, and he always wanted the last word, and his words echoed down the corridor behind her as she left.

She had to work Wednesday, and told him she would be back to see him on Valentine's day.   She found the phone messages when she got home, two from the Center and one from the Brother, asking if she could take care of the transportation.   She picked him up, not able to believe that he was gone.

He was still warm, and he looked peaceful and relaxed. She stayed with him at the home until he was cold to the touch, and it was apparent that he would not be back.

Jack's fingers had curled into claws from the arthritis he got from years of holding a bat or a screwdriver. She marveled that they had become supple again, completely relaxed.

It was almost like at the end he could have picked up the bat again, and played ball.

Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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