My wife and I lived in a 28-foot camper. We were parked on a vacant lot on a rundown street. Our neighbors’ homes were mildewed doublewides. Each trailer’s front yard featured a fashionable Pontiac sitting on concrete blocks.
It was raining. And it wasn’t just a storm. This was a West Floridian squall. Hurricane season in Florida lasts from June until the following June. It was June 1, 2016.
Tropical Storm Bonnie was making its way up into Carolinas like a runaway boxcar. We were getting the outer bands of rain.
I looked out our camper windows it was flooding. Our bedroom window was leaking like a screen door on the Titanic. One of our windows had shattered earlier that night, I had fixed it with duct tape and aluminum foil, but a miniature Niagara was spewing in.
The Atlanta Braves were on the TV, locked in a battle against the Padres. The game had gone into extra innings. I am a diligent Braves fan, I rarely miss games.
When I used to work in a
restaurant as a dishwasher, I carried a transistor radio with me. I listened to games while I was elbow deep in hotel pans caked with burnt cheese, scrubbing like a maniac.
When I played music in beer joints for a living, I kept a radio earpiece in my ear, tuned to the games while I played piano for line-dancers who had consumed too many five-dollar pitchers.
On the screen in our camper was Number Five, our first baseman, Frederick Charles Freeman, exiting the dugout. He was everyone’s favorite. He was the all-American poster child of Atlanta. He’d been with the Bravos since before his voice dropped.
“C’mon, Freddie,” I said. “You can do it.”
I always talk to ballplayers on TV. It helps them.
“C’mon, Freddie,” said my wife.
Freddie took strike one.
My wife cussed openly for morale.
Before we were married my…