Wages

Clare called me yesterday afternoon. “It sounds like you’re in a tunnel,” I said. “I’m on the bus,” she explained. Those days she’s not working from home, my daughter either has to drive or take the train, plus a bus back and forth to the Gold Coast through lower Wacker Drive. See the action movie of choice to get an idea as to what the route is like. She wanted to talk about the Astros parting ways with James Click, their general manager. “Has this ever happened before?” she wanted to know of a team dumping its GM after winning a World Series. The answer is, Yes, at least once, with the Yankees last doing it in 1947, when they axed Larry MacPhail for George Weiss. This is the kind of stuff a father is expected to know. It looks like Clare is drawing on baseball in the same I have on occasion. Thinking baseball will help her get through a twelve-hour day at work today. “These are the wages of family,” I advised, noting that her job makes possible husband, child and home. Baseball is the sugar that makes the medicine go down in a palatable, if not entirely delightful, way. In the fall of 1980, I was six-months married and between careers, out of journalism and into graduate school. Michele was finishing her master’s and unsure of what she should do next. This gives you an idea as to how much times have changed—neither of us had a job, but we weren’t worried (yet) about making the rent. We even had money to go to two ballgames. I remember that the White Sox beat the Mariners in early September and they played the A’s at the beginning of October. I can still recall Mike Davis, a rookie outfielder for Oakland who looked like a god. I was certain he was destined for greatness, more than the 778 hits he amassed over a ten-year career. I remember other games, at the ballpark or elsewhere. I remember catching the last inning of Mark Buehrle’s perfect game in 2009 in a Maryland hotel room, my daughter woozy from a bad baserunning accident at first base; for a second, we thought she might’ve broken a vertebra. Dewayne Wise makes the catch! Six months later, we watched a replay of that game on the day we buried my sister Betty, who instilled a love of country-and-western in her niece. Dewayne Wise makes the catch! Something like that could be echoing through Clare’s mind at the end of a long Saturday. I hope so.