Excerpt from John Galt's autobiographical work
The Pee-Wee Kings - Making the Team
It was on the west side of this large midwestern city on a slow and
balmy summer day where and when little Johnny was discovered. A
baseball league was being organized for the little people left behind by
the annual exodus of city dwellers to their vacations and mostly to
summercamps they'd call up-north. The league organizers needed just one more team to complete the Pee-Wee league of eight teams they had planned and so continued their search for little boys within the age range of eight to ten years.
Now little Johnny's parents were anti-social and so did not participant
with other adults in various programs for little people and so the
baseball organizers would not plan them a visit. And it was just as
well, little Johnny thought, as there would always be something to do,
and knew, too, he'd always come upon new somethings that would peak his interest. He enjoyed the freedom, experimenting with ants and other insects in an omnipotent way, climbing trees and the local grade school building, making pipe bombs, and exploring the small stretch of fields and streams not too far from his home. With the ants, little Johnny would hold a baseball bat vertically over them as they periodically scampered out of the cemented cracks of his home driveway. He would drop the bat to the pavement in regular intervals and in the same location. Some would live and some would die. Johnny had been formulating his ideas on indeterminacy. He was seven years old.
So the league organizers came upon little Johnny hanging upside-down from a high tree limb with only one leg hooked around a thin branch as his only support. And they would have missed him altogether except for that small chestnut little Johnny had dropped on the balding and shining palette of the man who strode underneath and whom little Johnny would soon be referring to as `coach'.
"Aaa-shhhhhhh...", reacted the man as he stopped in his tracks, smacked his head a couple times over with his one good hand and then turned and squinted up into the tall tree against the flaming sun. Little Johnny was a small and slender child clad only in shorts and so blended in well with the bony bends and forked branches of the tree. But Johnny was light skinned with golden hair and deep glimmering blue eyes and he would fancy being dark skinned sometimes, like the color of the branches, and then they would not see him at all. But the man spotted him and talked him down in a manner as if he were a cat.
"Com'n, com'n down. Here boy. Com'n down.", he coaxed while clapping his hands the while whistling and looking up and turning about the tree.
Johnny descended quickly like the little acrobat he was, writhing like
a snake and leaping like a cricket and down the steep branches and then falling to the ground straight up upon his feet. He looked up to see the man who stood high over him with folded arms in a curious but
commanding expression. "Well, what ya've got to say fer yerself, litter
feller?"
Johnny said nothing.
"Ya like dropping things on people's head, do ya?"
Johnny's lips tightened to a smirk.
The man then bent to his knees and took little Johnny's hands into his. "Look son, seeing ya way up ther'in the tree like that, ya can fall and get hurt. Now ya don't want to get hurt, do ya?"
"Other boys do.", Johnny retorted, unmoved by the man's concern.
The man took a deep breath and let out a sigh. He turned his head then back again into Johnny's sparkling blue eyes. "Well, yer just like all the other boys, little one. In fact, you are the `other boys'. Do you
understand me? Ya'll get hurt someday just like little boys always do.
Consider yerself lucky this time, ok?"
Johnny jerked his shoulders up once indicating he did not understand it.
"Mmmmm", the man paused. "What's yer name?"
"John."
"And how old are ya, Johnny?"
"Seven."
"Well now, that's nearly growd up, now, isn't it. And how would ya like
to play baseball?", he asked. "Have ya ever played baseball?"
"No."
"Ya've never played baseball? Do ya know what a bat is?"
"I use them sometimes.", Johnny responded.
"Eh, eh, eh.", the man chuckled while shaking Johnny's hands. He then stood up and began messing Johnny's straight golden hair about. "Never played baseball, uh? Ha, ha, ha...", he continued with laughter rising all the while as if he'd discovered something about Johnny that Johnny did not know.
The man did, however, know Johnny was too young,. And even he was impressed with little Johnny's athletic ability seeing how he handled that chestnut tree and besides he needed badly to complete the final team for the league. He would call the team the Pee Wee Kings. And since there were no wee-wee leagues for youngsters like Johnny, the man would take him in. First, though, he needed his parents' consent.
"Will you take me to yer house, little one?"
Now Johnny had never played baseball unlike all the other boys in the
neighborhood but he always liked to try something new. He said ok and took the man there.
"Tak'em! Tak'em!" Johnny's father bellowed while his mother wailed in
the background. "Tak'em! He's never around when you need him anyway!
Tak'em!" And as they slipped out the loose screen door and beyond the slam, Johnny could easily hear one final burst from his old man.
"...And keep him!"
Things were never easy in the house and so little Johnny had learned not to be around so much and to time his disappearances at his own most convenience. He knew, too, that his old man was sick and so were many other grown men back then in the old blue collar neighborhood. He had heard of a great war and had seen movies of it and they said that those things `really did happen' and so Johnny knew they were all still hurting from that.
And the last time little Johnny had heard his mother wail like that was
just over a year earlier when two tall well-dressed and suited strangers
came into the house and had asked if they could take little Johnny to
California. Now Johnny's mother was always more comfortable not knowing where Johnny was than in knowing he was far away. But she never really knew just how far away Johnny would go at times. Johnny, at first, thought the men came down to take him because he was sick, but he later learned that he was different and that they just wanted to ask him about things. But California was very, very far away and mother wailed and wailed and the two men were never heard from again. Her battle then, was won. But, when it came to the baseball and playing a few distant miles away, she had lost.
So the expected altercation then exploded from out of the house as
little Johnny skipped down the cemented porch steps along with the man whom he now looked upon as coach, and the biggest, heaviest smile broke all over little Johnny's face and the feeling quickly expanded into the rest of him. Johnny knew he had made the baseball team.
Stay tuned for Practice and the Early Games
John Galt |
