Guest writer

Death of a friend

Winder wonderland’s life snuffed

— We watched it die.

It was not at all like watching a death scene in the movies, where John Wayne shoots some bad varmint through the chest, head, stomach, legs and arms and the guy slowly falls over. No mess, no wild flailing about, no blood. Just a quiet collapse choreographed more to save the costume than to add even a trifle of truism. Watching something die in real life is so much more graphic. Tear your guts out and hang them on a fence graphic.

They tried to do their best to keep it a secret. It was like they realized that what they were up to had no honor. Just knock it down, kill it, haul it off and move on. But we saw it. It wasn’t pretty. We didn’t really plan to watch. Didn’t want to. It just sort of happened.

Barney, Leo and I were watching Leo’s beloved Cubs play the Cardinals one Monday night in Leo’s dude den. The Cubs were being cremated by the Cardinals. It is our custom at Leo’s, during our seventh-inning stretch, that we retreat to the kitchen for our seventh-inning beer float, a concoction Leo created when he was an irresponsible emptyheaded teenager. Back then, someone dared him to fill a beer mug with double-dutch chocolate ice cream, pour it full of beer and down it. Leo, never known to dodge a dare (or a beer), thought it tasted awesome, and the taste for it stayed with him as he grew into an irresponsible emptyheaded adult.

The Cubs rallied in the ninth inning of the second game and somehow managed to tie, forcing it into overtime. The scoreless extra innings stretched well into the wee hours as we slumped in the glow of Leo’s flatscreen, barely watching as we conjured up many of the minor-league baseball memories we’d shared before they killed it.

We started going to Ray Winder Field back in the 1970s. Travelers’ home games were always our boys’ night out. Joanne and Barbie (Barney’s wife) would get together at our house with whatever wife Leo had at the time and play three-way bingo. (Don’t ask.) We always sat in our favorite flop-down, green wooden bleachers on the top row, high above first base. The view was incredible. But more importantly, it was only a few steps to the men’s room with its 32-foot stainless steel trough with perpetually cascading water.

Bill Valentine, the Travs’ genius general manager, was a master showman if ever there was one. He dreamed up countless promotional pranks just to put fans’ fannies in the seats. One of his most popular was giving away several two-gallon buckets of ice cream (with a dozen plastic spoons stuck in the top). Rarely did a game go by that Leo did not win a plastic pail of ice cream. Barney would run to the beer concession and wobble back with three 24-ounce cups of warm PBR precariously balanced on a floppy cardboard tray. We’d scoop them full of ice cream and enjoy several of Leo’s concoctions.

This was just one of the wistful memories we shared that night halfwatching the Cubs. Finally, at 2:19 a.m., the Cubs pitcher walked four in a row, one of the most ignominious endings to a game ever witnessed by either of the two faithful fans still remaining at Wrigley when the winning run didn’t run at all, but shamefully walked over the plate.

The next day, Barbie called from the VA hospital where Barney was admitted after complaining of severe abdominal pains. The doctors studied him for days, unwilling to open him up until they could identify his never-before-seen symptoms. And that is where we witnessed the death of our old friend—from Barney’s topfloor window at the VA.

Our fusillade of memories is now gone forever: wooden bleachers banging to attention when their occupants jumped to their feet as some high school a cappella chorus did its best to hit the impossibly high notes of the national anthem, the deafening drone of the 5-foot industrial-grade cooling fans drowned out by the deafening drone of the play-by-play guy over the 5-foot loudspeakers, the incessant booing at the incessant bad calls made by biased umpires who probably rode in the all-night bus with the opponents, the nachos and cheese with the self-serve all-youcan-eat jalapenos, a wobbling Captain Dynamite surviving yet another pop-your-eardrums-and-make-thembleed detonation, mighty midget wrestlers thumbing their noses at political correctness and giving the fans pure entertainment, free cheap T-shirts shot from a modified mortar launcher bolted in the back of a built-in-Detroit ’73 Ford pickup with the $6,500 dealership window sticker proudly displayed, starry-eyed gazes from Little League hopefuls as they looked into the starry-eyed gazes of Travs hopefuls dreaming of going to “the show,” and buzz-cut Bill Valentine adroitly trotting to the top row along the first-base side with Leo’s two-gallon bucket of double-dutch chocolate ice cream with plastic spoons stuck in the top.

Barney was discharged the very morning that we watched the final lethal assault on Ray Winder’s iconic outfield wall that over the decades had ricocheted thousands of homerun balls back to frustrated outfielders, saving yet another I-630 windshield. Turns out that Barney (and his gut) were out of practice, and the ninth beer float during the Cubs’ 15th inning was probably what did it.

We took him home the long way around.

—–––––

Bill Rausch is a freelance writer from Little Rock. Email him at williamrausch25@yahoo. com.

Editorial, Pages 17 on 09/22/2012

Upcoming Events