I was seven when my parents piled us into the station wagon for a ride over the Cascade Mountains to Great Uncle Jim’s for the Apple Blossom Festival. One of Mom’s cousins was supposed to be Parade Grand Marshal.
It was 1965 and, like today, Washington was king of American apple production. Wenatchee was at the center of it all, the Apple Capital, if you will. Apple blossoms are literally a promise of continued prosperity, so the festival was, and still is, a pretty big deal: parades, beauty queens, carnivals, arcade games, Chamber of Commerce speeches.
Yep. A really big deal.
I don’t remember any of that. I can’t even recall which cousin rode at the head of the parade.
My only memory is Uncle Jim. His grin made me feel like I was the only person in the world who mattered. And I got to ride in the front seat of that Chrysler land yacht he drove around town.
“Hey Will, push that button there for me, would ya?” He pointed to a white gadget on the dash as he eased into his driveway. At the touch of a finger, my whole world changed. I watched, shocked, as Uncle Jim’s garage door tilted open while he sat proud, chuckling behind the wheel.
Room 103 is a stage play set on a contemporary college campus. Warning, what follows involves sexual violence, courage, entitlement, narcissism, and the troubling level of privilege we afford student athletes.
Title IX, signed into law over fifty years ago, is well-known for requiring gender equity in college sports. It goes way beyond that, prohibiting discrimination and harassment on the basis of sex among all students in schools that receive federal funds. Sexual assault is a violent form of discrimination and harassment, and is investigated by the school’s Title IX enforcement office separately from any criminal charges that may be filed.
Many thanks to the survivors of sexual violence whose courage is the inspiration for this work.
Room 103 is a stage play set on a contemporary college campus. Warning, what follows involves sexual violence, courage, entitlement, narcissism, and the troubling level of privilege we afford student athletes.
Room 101 – Barbara Woods’ office, untidy, stacks of papers, cheap furniture: desk, conference table, 8 chairs.
Barbara Woods, preparing for an interview, sits at her desk urgently reviewing papers. If stage allows, could show Nancy Doe waiting next door in Room 103, in shadows.
PAULINA NETTLES (knocks, enters, seems harried): What are you doing, Barbara? Aren’t you coming?
BARBARA WOODS (baffled): Coming where?
PN: Barbara… softball stadium. There’s a-
BW: Oh yeah. Can’t. I’m booked. Got an interview waiting in 103. With another in 105 right after.
PN: President Clemons just called. He expects us all there. He’s not gonna be happy.
Room 103 is a stage play set on a contemporary college campus. Warning, what follows involves sexual violence, courage, entitlement, narcissism, and the troubling level of privilege we afford student athletes.
Maybe Mary was joking, or maybe she just didn’t want her picture taken. Or maybe she was serious. Either way, Mary said it would cost us. As well it should. Mary’s a big deal around here.
So we never took her picture.
She plopped down next to us, 2 rows behind the Mariner dugout, in Peoria’s 80-degree heat. Dave and I had beers and brats in hand. I was snapping pics and texting my family when she came down the steps to her seat.
I focused on the brat. That was before we met Mary.
“I’m Bill, this is Dave.”
She reached to shake hands. “My name’s Mary. I’m 90 years old, and I’ve had season tickets to Spring Training since they opened this park 30 years ago.”
The 2020 Ex-Mariner of the Year announcement was all set for February 2021. It was a campaign marked by the deepest dive we’ve ever taken here at Playin’ in the Dirt. We searched MLB postseason rosters… added a Ross Eversoles bracketfor guys still gripped by the game somewhere you’ve never heard of… an offshore bonus bracket for ex-M’s in foreign lands… we even put in a special folksong bracket for Ex-Mariners named Abraham, Martín, and Juan. And Robi.
So there we were, a year ago, ready to unleash the big announcement. Seriously. It was ready to go. No, teacher, the dog didn’t eat our homework. It was something way worse.
Absolutely, totally, unequivocally not the Ex-Mariner of the Year. (Bellevue Breakfast Rotary)
It was #thatman. Kevin Mather. Voldemort.He Who Shouldn’t Even Have Been Named Again here on these pages.
It was just another tweet from a tweeter on the twitter, a quick stop on a casual scroll down the screen. Then I hit the brakes.
“Today when I taught my 8th graders about the Indian Removal Act,” the tweeter tweeted, “one asked why they have to learn sad things, and I would love to hear your gentlest, sincerest responses to the 13-year-old behind that question.”
As my brain scratched around for suitable 280-character wisdom, I read through the replies. And they were gold.
You can find that tweet, with all the beauty and power in those replies, right there on the twitter:
It’s cheesy, really. A whole book of cheese. We love cheese. With baseball in particular, our weepy overwrought technicolor memories of perfection are just… well yeah. Cheese.
But I gave him the book anyway. And now I’ve had it longer than he did. It was Father’s Day 1996 when he got it from me. With love. Says so right there in my red scribble on the title page.
Tonight’s serving with cheddar please.
It was the June after I took him hobbling up the Kingdome steps to the last MLB game he’d ever see in person, the ALCS opener against Cleveland, when Bobby Wolcott, in the only postseason action of his short career, walked the bases full with nobody out in the first inning. Right about then Dad might have said “well shit, let’s go home” before Bobby found himself and worked the next seven frames for the W.
And it was still a few years from those same Indians sending us a special gift in the form of Jose Mesa, whose two seasons in Seattle were defined by an ERA over 5.00 and by my father’s habit of screaming at the TV that goddammit if they were going to pay any random SOB three million plus to just serve that shit up, why the hell didn’t they let him, Kirby Walker, do it for half that much at 82 years old?
Those are just the kind of cheesy stories that fill the pages of Mudville Diaries. Minus my dad’s endearing profanity of course. People’s best and worst memories of baseball. Verbal imagery. Classmates, teachers, teammates, opponents, brothers, sisters, moms, ballparks, balls, gloves, heroes and goats. But the recurring theme, bang, there it is again, is Dad. And again. And again.
And my dad left the bookmark right at the page where I put it, all those years ago. “Dad, read this” it still says, in that same red scribble. It’s the page that stood out from the cheese. The page that held, for me as I read it in that bookstore, what’s real about men and kids and a game that, like Santa Claus, stays magical for only those lucky few who hold on and believe it to be so. My dad was one of those guys.
Still there after 26 years.
And under that bookmark, still there where I left it on Father’s Day 1996, with love, are these words from Gene Carney:
He was bigger and stronger then And you knew he could knock you over If he really wanted to cut loose He lobbed at first And as he threw harder You knew he was testing you Seeing what you were made of today Noticing how you handled the stings Watching how you backpedaled When he tossed infield flies He made you run Firing one wild high or Bouncing it past your dive Maybe so he could rest up some Maybe so you could rest up some So the game could go on Till dinner time or till dark Or till one of you Grew up
Did we really have that game of catch every day? A couple times a week? Once every season? Once, ever? Did we really, ever? …does it matter?
He was 90 when we lost him. It still hurts after fourteen years, a fresh, jagged blade in the ribs whenever I have big news to tell him, advice I need from him, a ballgame I’d like to share with him.
Or when I just need a game of catch. Cheese and all.
It was just Joe Buck and John Smoltz covering the World Series, talking about the amazing Braves and all the adversity they faced on their way to glory. As it happened I was on my way out of the room on an urgent matter when Buck said what he said, so it didn’t quite register as anything more than normal between-pitches blather.
Matter of fact it was this blather right here: season of hardship for the Braves, blah blah here they are poised to win the World Series, blah blah lost this guy to injury, blah blah then Marcel Ozuna suspended for domestic violence, but the hits just kept on coming…
I focused on the brat. That was before we met Mary.
