bloggedy blog: the personal weblog of a music lover and aging punk wannabe

:: Thursday, April 10, 2003 ::

My dear Alphonse...
Eighty-four years ago today, on April 10, 1919, my father, Alphonso Careaga, was born in Laredo, Texas. He died one month short of his 71st birthday, on March 10, 1990.

Here's a little story/prose-poem influenced by his life and death. It actually won an award and was published in a literary anthology. This essay, about how my father's career path cosmically influenced my decision to go into writing, has never been published anywhere but on the web. "Baseball 1971" was a father-son story based on a Red Sox game my father and I attended when I was 10. It was actually published sometime back in the mid-1990s in a tiny litmag called Fan. A columnist for the local newspaper wrote a nice little blurb about it, starting the piece something like this: What do Bernard Malamud, W.P. Kinsella, Ring Lardner and Andrew Careaga all have in common? They've all written about baseball.

Here's the opening for "Baseball 1971":

He was years away from his three-thousandth hit and the time when the fans of Boston would again cheer him. But today Yaz looked as old and weary as my father. Today the boos were raining down on him, weary old Atlas, adjusting his helmet, digging his cleats into the batter's box, holding his bat aloft, the way only Yaz could do it, high and straight and outstretched, like a club to fend off the catcalls from above.

Mickey Lolich was pitching for the Tigers. He was past his prime too, but today he pitched like it was Game 7 of the 1968 World Series all over again. Read more...

:: Andrew 08:11 + ::
...

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