It is July first nineteen sixty-eight

A Monday afternoon

I’m ten and I’m playing

Catch with a friend on the

Lawn of the apartments my

Father owns

The day air is still,

the air

heavy against the skin

An L.A. summer day

My oldest brother Eddie

is cleaning his white ’64 Thunderbird

The driver’s side door is open

The radio tuned to the Dodger’s game

Vin Scully is calling the game

Bob Gibson and the Cardinals

against Don Drysdale

Gibson has pitched 47 scoreless Innings

Drysdale has the record at 58

Something has to give

My brother has been out of the Navy

four years, and he’s sharing a room

with me and my other brother Claudio

I’m the youngest Eddie the oldest

Eddie still wakes

at 4 or is it 5 a.m. and begins

spit shinning his shoes.

He just got a job at

McDonald Douglas

Putting rivets in the engine’s of

turbines

some of his friends are in Vietnam

I watch him detailing the

Dashboard of the car

Drysdale strikes out Edwards looking

It‘s the bottom of the first

and Gibson is taking the mound

My dad and brother Claudio

are not into sports

but Eddie and I can’t get

enough

Eddie played baseball at

Centennial High

He played with Reggie Smith

who later would become the right fielder for the

Dodgers

Willie Davis comes to the plate

Eddie stops rubbing the dash

and I keep the ball in my

glove, turning it slowly feeling the

stitching and waxed leather hide

Davis grounds out

and we go back to what

we were doing

Scully’s words

go out of the chrome and

white car and

linger in the air

He’s telling a story now

and I listen and he takes me back

to before I was born

I hear names like DiMaggio

and Warren Spahn, Dizzy

and Duke Snider, and Pee Wee Reese

The names dance in the still

air all around me

Polo Grounds and Ebbets Field

I can see these places

see the crowds and

see the players hitting and

running

The Dodgers have runners

on the corner

I don’t want Gibson to

break Drysdale’s record

Not long after Eddie returned

from overseas we are

at the kitchen table

a yellow Formica top

and all chrome

he has the sports page

spread across the table

he has a toothpick in his

mouth

I am kneeling on a chair

With my elbows on the table

That was the day he taught

Me how to read a box score

Soon I was reading every word of

The sports page, I would read

The Herald and the Times

The Herald and the Times Sports writer’s

Bud Furillo, Jim Murray,

Became my writing teachers

My brother is seventy this weekend

and in bad health

could be the bottom of the ninth for

him but he is still

swinging away

No bigger Dodger fan

than my brother

His birthday last week was

Dodger themed, his cake

Dodger stadium of course

The Thunderbird gleams in the

Sun and it’s reflection off the chrome

blinds me temporarily and I

lose track of the ball

It rolls to the Date palm

Home plate when we play with a plastic bat and ball

Real games are played across Willowbrook street

Along the train tracks

Beside the wooden warehouse

Scully’s voice leaps from the

car

the ball gets by the catcher

Gabrielson is coming home from third

And Vin Scully says

and that’s it folks 47 innings

Drysdale’s streak is safe for

Now

there’s no cheering from

us, maybe, just relief

I have a little more pep

on my throw

Eddie is at the rear fender

with a cloth wiping quickly

putting that final shine

on

like he does with

his shoes in the morning

I don’t know how much time

I have with my brother

But I will always have that summer day.