My Most Excellent Year (21 page)

Then I nodded to Mr. Disharoon, took a deep breath, and began to sing “So in Love With You Am I.”

KISS ME, KATE

Cast List

REHEARSALS MONDAYS, WEDNESDAYS, AND
THURSDAYS AT 4:00 P.M. SHARP;
SATURDAYS AT 10:00 A.M.

Not much I wasn’t.

And that was the
second
move.

Fondly,

Alejandra

by Colleen Wilson

I
n September 1920, the sports world in general and Chicago in particular were shocked to discover that eight members of the Chicago White Sox—arguably the best team in baseball—had deliberately thrown the 1919 World Series in the most notorious gambling fix of its time. Though a jury acquitted all eight players—Swede Risberg, Chick Gandil, Eddie Cicotte, Joe Jackson, Buck Weaver, Happy Felsch, Lefty Williams, and Fred McMullin—the newly named Commissioner of Baseball, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, declared that “no player who throws a ball game will ever play professional
baseball” and banned all eight Black Sox players for life.

Third baseman Buck Weaver had played his heart out through the entire World Series of 1919. His only “crime,” as it were, was flat-out rejecting an offer from Gandil to participate in the double-cross. However, since he had, according to Landis, “sat in conference with a bunch of crooked ballplayers” and not ratted on his teammates, he was banished under the same cloud of shame that forever shadowed the remaining seven.

Like many others since 1920, ninth grader Anthony Conigliaro Keller believes that Weaver was handed a bum rap. But he’s doing something about it. His “Free Buck Weaver” website has attracted fan support from all across the United States, and it will only be a matter of time before Major League Baseball is forced to take notice.

We recently caught up with Anthony (who prefers to be called “T.C.”) at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, in order to ask him a few questions about Weaver, loyalty, believing in the impossible with all your heart, and—inevitably—the Boston Red Sox.

Dear Mama,

Boy, would you be proud of me.
SportsAmerica
hit the stands yesterday, and my interview about Buck Weaver is four pages long (including a picture of me and Pop in our 1918 World Champion sweatshirts and one of me and Nehi playing catch). Pop bought 50 copies to mail to all our relatives and friends, Aunt Babe is having it Perma-Plaqued for one of my second-level Xmas presents, and we’ve gotten over 20,000 hits and 6,400 new signatures on our website. I just wish Buck Weaver was around to see how many people believe in him.

It made me a superstar at school too, even though I’m not in
Kiss
Me, Kate
. Mrs. Fitzpatrick bought the magazine for the class to see, and then she passed around Xeroxes of the interview for everybody to take turns reading the T.C. parts out loud. Augie had my voice down perfect (like he shouldn’t by now?), and Lee Meyerhoff hit one over the wall when she decided to work the body language too—she sat back in her chair with her legs sticking straight out and her feet crisscrossed over each other while she ran her fingers through her hair. (Do I
do
that??) The only ugly part came around when Andy Wexler read the section about my family and got to the line that said “my dad and my brother Augie and my cocker spaniel Nehi and my girlfriend Alé” (which they spelled wrong). Every eyeball in the classroom turned to Alé, and meanwhile all I wanted to do was stick my head in the trash can. How come whenever I start to make progress, something happens to end the inning?? Kind of like what Bucky F. Dent did to the Red Sox—only I keep doing it to myself. First I get her to dance with me, and then I blab to Augie about the “um.” Then she calls me her good luck charm, and I get snaked by my own words in
SportsAmerica
. I’ll be lucky if she talks to me before 2010 (partly because I said she was my girlfriend, and partly because she got billing after a dog).

Oh, yeah. At the
Kiss Me, Kate
auditions, she sang a love song to me for three solid minutes and then said it didn’t mean anything because she’d have sung it to a horseshoe too. Does she think I was born yesterday? I know exactly what she’s trying to do. She’s trying to make me crazy on purpose. The only problem is that it’s working.

I love you,

T.C.

Dear Mama,

After 14 times through
Mary Poppins
, I now know the words better than Augie knows
All About Eve
. Hucky and I even began signing parts of it to each other, usually after he deliberately lets his bottom jaw drop open and hang there.

Tuesdays are when we always to go to Amory Park and re-play Game 3 of the 1918 World Series (unless it’s snowing, and then we just sit in The Word Shop Café and draw pictures of it). I’m Wally Schang, Hucky is Stuffy McInnis, and I get to single him home from third. But today Hucky had other ideas. Once we’d hit the sidewalk in front of the Deaf Institute, he grabbed my hand and began yanking me in the opposite direction, while Nehi pulled the bottom of my pants leg toward the park. (I felt like Play-Doh.) I should have known better. Nobody argues with Hucky when his mind is made up. So we followed his lead all the way down Sewall Street, through an outside fruit market, past Brookline Hardware, right up to the
double glass doors in front of Toy Mart. That’s when I had to put on the brakes.
Uh-oh. Look at that face. He’s wearing “cute and hopeful” all of a sudden. Remember, T.C.—you’re the grown-up. If you have to play Bad Cop, it comes with the turf.

“Sorry, dude,” I said, yanking him away from the red wagon display in the window. “Christmas isn’t for another two weeks. No toys till then, all right? Peace out.” I turned us back toward Amory Park, but Hucky had already squiggled his way out of my grip.

“
This is different,”
he signed furiously. “
And I have my own money—look!”
He pulled a chocolate-covered hand out of his pocket and showed me two nickels and a penny. Holy crap—I didn’t realize he was loaded. So I glanced down at Nehi for a second opinion before I changed my mind.

“Should we?” I asked.
Double-bark and a tail wag.
Like he’d ever say no. Hucky’s the one who feeds him potato chips.

Even though it was a pretty gray day and the leaves were gone from all of the trees, fifteen minutes later we found ourselves sitting in the middle of a walkway in Emerson Garden. Hucky was opening up his brand-new box of colored chalk—which I let him pay for with one of his pennies and 116 of mine—and I was feeling like a pretty cheap gink (who knew that all he wanted was
chalk
?). I probably should have guessed what he was up to, but when you’re busy watching your dog to make sure he doesn’t pee on a wheelchair with an old lady in it, you’re not always in peak form. So by the time I turned back to the pavement, Hucky had already drawn a picture of a park, a stream, a bridge, and a red-and-white-striped merry-go-round right there on the sidewalk. (Reminder: Teach him how to finger-spell “vandalism.”) Once he’d added a blue and orange frame
around the whole thing, he pulled back to make sure it looked just the way he wanted—and then he stood up and jumped right into the middle of it, both feet first. For a second he just kept staring down with half a smile on his face like something was supposed to happen—and when it didn’t, he turned his head to me with hurt little question marks in his eyes, as if he was saying “Hey, you. What gives here?”

Suddenly it made sense.
Oh, duh.
Mary Poppins
.
The part where Bert draws a chalk pavement picture and the kids and the nanny hop into it with him.
But figuring it out didn’t mean I had an easy answer for him—it just meant it was time for the man-to-man talk I’ve been afraid of ever since the eighth time we watched that movie together. (It’s still a little hard to have a whole conversation with Hucky when I only know how to sign every other word—but our imaginations help us understand most of the rest, and this time it was especially important.)

“Come here, dude,” I said, pulling him down beside me. “You can’t get pissed off at a chalk pavement picture. It has the home field advantage.”

“
Oh, no? Watch me!”
He struggled to stand up and jump into it again, but I held on tight.

“Hey! Look at me,” I ordered, turning his face in my direction. He looked. He wasn’t happy about it, but he looked. “Remember when you were afraid of the dragon in
Shrek
?”

“
So?
”

“What did we learn?”

“
It’s only a movie.
”

“What about the kid with donkey ears in
Pinocchio
?”

“
Only a movie.
”

“Right. So isn’t
Mary Poppins
only a movie too?” Hucky pulled away from me like I’d just grown Lampwick’s ass ears myself. I mean, he was
scared
.

“
No! She’s magic! Why are you asking me that?
”

Mama, as soon as I saw the panic start and the tears happen, I forgot all about the man-to-man thing and went right back to boy-to-boy again. I’m too young for this gig anyway. If somebody has to play Bad Cop or tell him the truth, they’d better pick a different hoser because it sure isn’t going to be me. “T.C.! Come quick! Look who’s here! Your balloon came back!” I believed that until I was ten, didn’t I? Then why can’t Hucky have Mary Poppins for as long as he needs her?!

So instead, I told him he was right—
Mary Poppins
couldn’t possibly be a movie like
Pinocchio
and
Shrek
, because they were cartoons and she wasn’t. And the only reason we wouldn’t be able to jump into the chalk picture ourselves is because nobody but Mary Poppins knew how to take us there. Which wasn’t exactly the greatest news Hucky’d ever heard, but at least we were back on the right track.

“
You mean we can’t ride on my merry-go-round?”
he signed, staring down at his feet glumly.

“Not today,” I blurted, hoping I wasn’t about to lie as bad as I thought I was. “But we can draw a couple of other pictures instead so that she’ll have lots of different places to take us when she gets here.”
T.C., you’re like SUCH a low-life! What if he believes you??

He believed me. Before we left, there were eight more chalk drawings on the sidewalk.

On the way back home, I watched Hucky and Nehi play Got You Last up and down Cypress Street, and I remembered the day I taught it to him. It seems like such a long time ago. Was it really just a
week
? I also noticed how certain things have been adding up a little differently ever since the first time the short little blond kid with frowny eyes told me what pitches to hit.