Now and Then

When my father took me to a White Sox game, he’d sometimes park at the firehouse on Lowe Avenue, down the street from Mayor Daley’s bungalow. It was a perk of belonging to the Chicago Fire Department. Yesterday, I paid $27 to park for the Sox-Royals’ game at Guaranteed Rate Whatever. Clare treated me to the game for Father’s Day. My father wouldn’t buy hotdogs at Comiskey Park, and that was when they cost in the neighborhood of fifty cents. I can’t imagine what he’d say about the $7 vendors were asking for now. On second thought, I know exactly what he’d say, and a good thing his great-grandson couldn’t hear it. I doubt his take on beer prices would be any different: $10.75, $11.75, $12.75, pick your poison. I had a Coke, but Clare paid, so I don’t know how much that set her back, exactly. What, a father can’t accept a refreshment his daughter wants to buy him? The scorecards used to be the one bargain I could count on, but they’re gone now; I print my own scoresheets off the internet. My sheets say the Sox won, 4-1, behind Lance Lynn (!), to take two out of three. Jose Abreu hit a nice three-run homerun to right center. My daughter is now thirty years old, but she still acts like a kid on occasion. She was able to get seats nineteen rows up from the right-side batter’s box; lots of foul balls, and she was stretching, not ducking, when they headed in our general direction. We both agreed Leo is way too young to take to a game. Why some people take babies to a ballgame is beyond me, and Clare. The Royals started rookie Michael Massey at second base, and he responded with two hits. Massey grew up a Sox fan in the southwest suburbs and had a big cheering section not far from us. Good for him and them. Interesting and odd that the Royals had an all-area double play combination, with Nicky Lopez of Naperville at shortstop. That’s Brother Rice and Naperville Central, by the way. Funny how the Sox and Cubs passed up two local players, again. Or, it would be funny, if funny depended on numbing-regularity. We drove down the side streets of Bridgeport to get onto the Stevenson. Bridgeport is where my father spent the first thirteen years of his life and where we went to visit his mother and other relatives. There were all sorts of ghosts and echoes. You could hear the exploding scoreboard from where my grandmother lived on May Street.