Cooperstown, Here We Come

            “I see that the Frank of Thomas made the Hall of Fame,” Clare said forty minutes after the fact.  “You weren’t going to call me?”  I let the app tell her instead.

            So much like her father and yet so different.  A lover of baseball, a fan of the White Sox but absolutely no sense of the Go-Go Sox with that steal-a-base, pitch-a-shutout mindset of the 1950s and ‘60s.  It’s all boom-boom bam! with Clare.  Believe me, I tried to raise her right.

            A little before Clare turned six, I took her to see the Altoona Rail Kings square off against the Will County Cheetahs in the independent Frontier League.  The idea was to have our picture taken, with the visiting manager, not any of his players.  That’s because the Altoona manager happened to be Walt “No Neck” Williams, my favorite White Sox player of all time.  Clare would grow to be the same height as Walt, 5’ 6”, and she hustles the way he always did in the outfield, on the bases or just going back to the dugout:  This is how I want you to be.  And so it came to pass, the picture taken and the hustle rubbing off.  But you can’t expect a child to go crazy over someone she never saw play.

            So, it is my fault, after all, sitting with a baby on my lap to watch the White Sox of Thomas and Ventura.  The little girl imagined she could be like the giant man.  And now she’s coordinating team lifting and open gyms because, as she says, “Games are won in January.”  Come July, we’ll try to hear The Big Hurt give his induction in the town where Abner Doubleday didn’t quite invent the national pastime.  There are worse ways to spend a summer day.