Jimmy Baseball — Chapter 7

The legend of a Little League phenom

7.

I finally discovered the mystery on Jimmy’s back. A benign tumor removed before the season started. While I fumed over our bleak chances, this kid traveled through X-ray and scanning machines to read the graffiti on his inner walls.

More spots, concerns, and tumors resumed their invasion of Jimmy’s body. Small blobs that broke his surface were removed, as others dove further down, burrowed between his bones and organs.

I could only imagine how frightened Jimmy was. Yet, no different from the ball fields, he never showed it. The son of a gun never let on how deep, dark, and cold this crazy world had become.

Most of Jimmy’s bumps were no different than a big cyst. Divots pitted his skin where all the nasties were dugout. More pink patches where the scabs formed. Blotches covered Jimmy’s body, like the tiles on a giraffe.

Jimmy soldiered on through his up and down July. The trials, tests, and shots of high-tech medicine. No idea if the asteroids would crash and flame or decide to fly away. In the meantime, the doctors did their best.

The summertime blues and blah days began to roll in and hug July. Once August started and summer recreation ended, the home stretch and vacation time. For the Canizios, and long before Snooki and her chooches, we raided Seaside Heights on the Jersey Shore.

No more bus rides to Shea Stadium and the water parks. No baseball except for TV and radio. I missed my game and friends. The Astros, Jimmy, and Coach Banta. The next meet-up at the awards dinner. The big social where all the trophies would be handed out. The Astros to get ours for winning the National League, the Twins for the American, and their bonus hardware for beating us in the knockout game.

We’d still meet for a tennis ball and belly-flops at the Pool, but even that stuff started to fracture with all our family plans breaking up the fab five. The week before school starts meant the summer had officially reached fumes. That’s when my parents told me that Jimmy’s condition had worsened. They meant really sick.

Bummed to hell over the whole thing. Some kid’s disease the doctors were trying to figure out, as Jimmy began to bunk full-time at the hospital. That move made it all the more serious to me. Meanwhile, they still wouldn’t say when he could go home.

I felt scared seeing most of that ginger mop gone from his head. He looked like an older man with a kid’s mug. Patches of hair remained, like tiny balls of tumbleweed.

The tumors that started to come around, now deep and evil. Whenever those arrived, Jimmy would have to undergo rounds of chemo and radiation therapy. Fighting the flames, another surgery, and more high-powered relief.

Sitting on a bench reading the box scores when Ducky, Eddie, and Mike approached. We agreed to meet on our way to the bus stop, making plans to venture to the hospital and visit our buddy and teammate.

On our way to the bus stop, we passed a strip mall. Stuck in the middle of a nail salon and a dry cleaner, stood Val’s House Of Style. We mosied over to Val’s barbershop. Val was one of those old school guys with the coke-bottle glasses and big barber chairs.

Outside the place, he had one of those poles that twirled with the red and white barber colors. We didn’t say anything and didn’t have to. We all took turns climbing aboard one of Val’s super-sized chairs, ordering up crew cuts.

The closest thing to Jimmy’s new style. He was our pal, and we’d battle this thing together. At Val’s feet was a pile of hair like that opening scene in Full Metal Jacket. We settled with Val and proceeded to the bus stop. We flagged the next one and rode over to the hospital.

“You guys are something else,” Jimmy said in between the giggles. He always seemed to get a kick from his Astro brothers.

School started that week, and I could only see Jimmy on weekends. Cool stuff since it looked all good that he might be coming home after all. The big comeback had gained steam, and Jimmy improved nicely. I made plans to visit with Jimmy on Saturday to watch the Fox game together.

Being September, the bigs were loading up the rockets for the pennant races. I hoped it would be the final weekend in this jail and time to grab those walking papers.

On the way to the bus stop, I hit the magazine rack at the candy store. Going right to the baseball weekly’s, I picked out some mags for Jimmy and me to devour while we waited for the ballgame to start.

On the bus ride over, I dreamed of all the things we would be able to do together. Hanging out and going to movies and the batting cages. Next year, we would be moving up to Babe Ruth League, and big boy ball fields.

So glad he’d be okay, but the Fisters might be moving back to the midwest. Mr. Fister’s job was the reason they arrived in the first place. An executive with a chemical company on a temporary assignment. That’s the reason they rented the house in Maple Valley instead of buying it. I knew Jimmy and his kid sister Beth liked it here, as did Mrs. Fister. I didn’t know about Mr. Fister. He seemed to be working a lot but always made it to the games.

When I reached Jimmy’s floor, I cradled all our mags. I couldn’t wait to dig in and talk baseball. The time of year where everything ramps up.

The season seems so long and far away from the World Series at Opening Day. Then the roller coaster starts. All the favorites, as well as the underdogs, begin that dipsey-doodle stuff. Flavors of the month pop up to grab the standings, and you wonder if they’re going to keep flying.

Certain teams get hot, gain ground, or even leap from the pack. Some start to cool off and begin to lose the ground they seemed to own. Then September rolls around, pushing in the walls.

All those games, all that schedule. The season that looks like it will go on forever. And before you know it, everybody’s running out of gas, time, and games. What a thing.

When I reached Jimmy’s room, I saw my father in the hallway. Next to him, Father Tom from Saint Matthew’s, our local parish.

“We can’t stay too long,” my father said to me as I approached.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Jimmy’s not feeling well.”

“Could I at least say hello?”

My father said I could and followed me into Jimmy’s room. I heard Dad pause as I stepped closer to Jimmy. His parents were there too.

Jimmy’s father looked like he had his heart ripped out. Mrs. Fister had cried all week, now dabbing her eyes with a rolled-up tissue. She feigned a smile when she saw me. Beth wore a confused frown, staring into space while clutching a stuffed animal.

The Fisters stepped from the area, providing ample privacy with Jimmy. A child’s wheelchair sat parked next to his bed. Too small for my size, yet a mammoth carriage for the frail boy in the bed who didn’t seem to have the strength and ability to use it on his own.

Jimmy’s eyes were closed, and his head looked straight up as if fielding his cosmos. His skin had turned pale and his cheekbones sunken. From what I could see, his arms had too. The bones reaching the surface of the skin like an old guy. Not the pipes of a slugger and put-out man of our Astro catcher.

“Jerry?” Jimmy asked as I stepped closer.

“Yeah, pal,” I told him.

I didn’t know what to say, afraid whatever it was, would be wrong. This looked a lot more serious than I ever imagined while riding the elevator, just minutes ago.

The last thing on my mind, was baseball, the Fox game, and the pennant races. Buried at school all week, Jimmy took a bad detour. Whatever they called this disease, roared back to savage my friend.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, right?” I asked. I didn’t know what else to say.

“I won’t be here,” he answered.

“What do you mean? Where are you going?” I asked. He started to whisper as if he only wanted me to hear what he needed to say.

“I have to go. They’re going to move me from my room,” he told me.

“I don’t get it. What’s wrong with this room?” I asked.

Something inside me started to swell, and I tried my best to fight it off. If the Fisters were going back to the heartland, they would have left by now.

“Nothing,” he said, and that’s when it hit me. I started to shake, as a black tide engulfed my body and swam in my eyes. I fought like a demon to hold it in, even clamping my eyelids. That’s when a few tears leaked and raced down my cheeks.

“Don’t be sad, Jerry. It’s okay,” he said. My insides continued to rumble while Jimmy remained calm as if it were a pitcher’s mound instead of a cancer ward.

“This doesn’t make sense,” I pleaded.

“Thanks for being my friend,” Jimmy said.

His eyes remained closed. That’s when I felt the grip of a grown-up, as my father wrapped his arms around me, and led us from the room.

On the ride home, I sat silent and stared through the passenger window. Dad didn’t want to upset me, holding back the bad news. By now, too numb to protest. I always hate it when they treat me like a kid. Boy, talk about a sucker punch.

My parents didn’t know too much else about Jimmy and his condition. All they would say was that it looked pretty bad, and he would have to have another surgery. The bigger fear, would Jimmy muster the strength to challenge another collapse of cell walls, surgery, and rounds of chemo and radiation therapy?

Polishing desert when my father got pissed off at my mother. Mom did her best to sugarcoat the dilemma swarming Jimmy, drumming in the Kumbayah pitch. Dad wanted to be a bit more upfront this time around.

“Stop it, Sandra. Don’t tell him that,” Dad said.

“What do you mean, Dad?” I asked. There were pauses and deep breaths.

“What we mean, is we’re not sure, Jerry. Jimmy’s very sick,” Dad said. He had it with burning down junior with baby talk. He paused again and eyed Mom. She gifted her best smile.

“It’s okay. I know,” I told them.

Later that night, I tried to read the magazines and keep my mind off of stuff. I knew it wasn’t good. My father told me they didn’t know if there was anything left to do. At this point, the doctors still couldn’t name Jimmy’s disease, despite working their best magic around the clock to stem its onslaught.

A great funk washed in when I hit the rack that night. As if my head and body had been injected with helium, the bunk felt more like a raft than a bed. I knew it looked bleak and may only get worse.

When I woke up the next morning, I learned it did. Jimmy died in his sleep at the hospital.