The Autograph

My son, Dylan, was ten when I took him to a baseball card show. Stan
Musial was scheduled to be the Guest of honor. Yeah, "The Man." Stan's
as much an icon in St. Louis as Davy Crockett is in Tennessee; a legend
in a town that takes its baseball as seriously as New Orleans its jazz,
Boston its culture or Washington D.C. its politics. Dylan and I took
our places in the long autograph line, impatient as two felons waiting
for a bureaucrat to finish filling out their parole papers. To us the
line was moving as slow as a Friday creeps toward the weekend. We were
excited though as we eagerly awaited our audience with perhaps the
greatest of all Cardinals.

As Dylan leafed through our autograph scrapbook, my thoughts sprinted
off like a hitter would at the crack of the bat, toward the first base
of adolescence; baseball and Walter Kwiecinski. Walt was my best
friend's six foot four father. He was a lean, weathered telephone pole
of a man; soft spoken, as quiet as a home dugout when its pitcher is
taking a no-hit game into the top of the ninth. The scent of
enamel and fiberglass always clung to him like an olfactory business
card; that identified him with his auto body shop as surely as a
pinstriped uniform is a hallmark of a New York Yankee.  During the
summer his repair shop would resound with the voices of Halsey Hall and
Herb Carneal, the play by play announcers of the Minnesota Twins radio
network.

Walt was a survivor of the Bataan "Death March." After the surrender at
Corregidor, the Japs marched their prisoners through the Phillippine
jungle to where they would be imprisoned. He watched many of his
comrades collapse with hunger or exhaustion only to be kicked, prodded
with a bayonet or dispatched with a bullet if they couldn't keep up
with the column. Walt always credited baseball with keeping him
alive.

"I'd try to replay all the games that I'd ever watched or listened to
in my mind," he explained. "It took my thoughts away from the hunger,
the pain, the stench of rotting jungle and the death that could spring
out suddenly at one like a howling monkey out of the jungle. It kept me from fixating on
the brutality of the Japanese guards; those callous umpires who were
deciding our fates with a toothy sneer or the butt of a rifle."

To Walt, his son Steve and I were excuses to go to a ballgame. When
we'd go to Wade Stadium, that magnificent old structure built by WPA
labor during the Depression that preceeded Walt's war, my old man would
keep a tight rein on us. If we were with Walt though, he would set us
free to roam the stands, to chase foul balls as if they were the pot of
gold at the end of the rainbow, to bother the players and to hassle the
young vendors.

They'd bellow "Ice cold pop!"

We'd holler, "tastes like slop, sugar on the bottom and water on top."

Yeah, we were proud of our ten year old wit, and Walt would let us
flaunt it as loudly as we wished to.

His eyes would rarely waver from the ballfield or his scorebook as he
watched the kids who would be Tigers, Detroit's single A franchise, the
Duluth Dukes. It can get awfully cold watching baseball on a Northern
Minnesota evening, and Walt would have a blanket wrapped around him,
trying to banish the chill with a cup of hot chocolate as he followed
the game. We kids, of course, were impervious to the cold.

We discovered that the way to Walt's wallet was to get him to reminisce
about the game that he so passionately loved;  he'd share his heroes with us
 as though they were treasured possessions.  "DiMaggio was flawless,"
he'd marvel. "Cinema perfect, caviar and Hollywood. Did you boys know
that he was married to Marilyn Monroe?  Man, it was something to watch
 him range the outfield with the grace of a gazelle."

"Then there was Ted Williams, the God of Hitting. He played
the game as though it was a war, seeing enemies everywhere, from the
pitcher's mound to the pressbox to the stands. If the good Lord ever
would have returned and reached down to pick up a ball near the mound,
Teddy Ballgame would've had the steel to pick up a bat and try to face
him down with a glare as well."

Stan Musial, though, was the most wonderful diety in Walt's baseball
pantheon.

"You kids should've seen him," Walt would exclaim with admiration.
"DiMag may have been vintage wine, and Williams champagne, but Stan was
one of us. More of a "beer and a bump" kind of guy. Before the Twins
came to Minnesota I was a Cardinal fan, and I watched him carry the
team for quite a few seasons. Old Stan, he was a three time MVP, and
had a lifetime batting average of .331. He was durable too. He holds
the National League record for games played, hits and runs. Yet, I'll
bet you could sit next to him in a bar, and I'll bet he'd shake your
hand and act as if it was HIS pleasure to meet YOU. Stan would be the
kind of guy that you'd like to have on your bowling team, or that you'd
like to go fishing with."

The Kwiecinskis were a devout Catholic family. Many was the night I
waited for Steve on their front porch while they counted their beads.
They always had to do the rosary right after supper. Now that I'm at an age
where I have a bit more insight into human frailties, I can envision
Walt's mind wandering to the diamond during that Holy time as well.

But here we were now, at "The Man's" table.
My son swapped smiles with him, then the Hall of Famer offered him his
hand, which Dylan accepted with the nonchalant aplomb of a parking
attendant taking one's keys. Watching my boy with him, I thought of how
much it would've meant to Walt to have gotten the same opportunity, to
have gotten to meet and shake hands with Stan "The Man" Musial.

Dylan picked up the autographed postcard of Musial's Hall of Fame
plaque at Cooperstown and held it up triumphantly, as though he was a
corporate raider holding the proxy vote that he needed to take control
of a rival company. As we were leaving the building he whispered "His
autograph will be worth lots of money when he dies, won't it,
Dad?"