hear him.q to see,be,
When the screen went blank he got up and disappeared into his bedroom. My mother went back to try and comfort him. Even so, he didn’t come out of his room the rest of the night. She told me later that he wasn’t upset because the pitcher was murdered or that it happened at the World Series or even that it was on live television; it upset him that Andrew and I would never be able to have the same kind of awe he had for the game when he was our age. That shot had signaled the end of any hope that we could have the same life, the same possibilities, afforded to my dad. Everything that was great about America’s game was gone after that.
Police caught the pitcher’s killer later that night. More accurately, he turned himself in after climbing down from the stadium rafters. His job as part of the field crew allowed him to carry an uninspected duffle bag into the stadium. He took it up into the recesses of the ballpark where he assembled his sniper rifle. Reporters were waiting outside the stadium when police escorted him into the backseat of one of their cars. A reporter asked the man why he killed the pitcher. The man turned to the woman holding the microphone and, starting to cry, said he had five children at home, all of whom were Blocks. None of them would ever be able to watch a baseball game, let alone play little league.
“That’s not fair,” the man said as he was ushered into the back seat of the police cruiser.
At first they talked about playing the rest of the game a week later. Then they talked about finishing it at the beginning of the next season. But after the shooting, after hearing the shooter’s motivation, everyone suddenly seemed to notice how old the players were and that with only sixteen teams it wasn’t the same as it had been before. They didn’t bother playing any more games after that.
December 19
The major airlines were all shut down by the time I graduated high school. To get overseas you had to know a pilot who also had a reason to want to fly across the world, or you had to know how to fly a plane yourself, or be crazy enough to give it a shot even if you didn’t know. Private planes were actually more difficult to steal than the giant 747s left at airport terminals because the world’s billionaires locked their planes inside steel hangars while the colossal jumbo jets were left at whatever gate they had last arrived at before the airline and airport both closed. Each closed airport was supposed to have at least one security guard patrolling at all times, but sometimes they didn’t show up, and even if they did arrive forqedspspjo their shift, they really didn’t care about preventing someone from taking a plane.
Every couple of months there was a story on the news of a plane either not taking off correctly and exploding into a nearby field or randomly going down in the ocean when the fuel ran out. These accidents were almost always the result of people wanting to get back to family members living in other parts of the world. You would be surprised how many people attempted to take off from the abandoned airports, having little or no experience actually flying an aircraft, because they thought the plane would basically fly itself.
It was f or this reason that I never went to Europe to see the Eifel Tower or Pantheon, never went to Africa to see the pyramids or Mount Kilimanjaro, never trekked across Asia to see the Great Wall or the Taj Mahal. Never, really, did I go anywhere. Not even up to Canada or down to Mexico. My parents always told me I wasn’t missing much, but their honeymoon had been spent travelling all across England, France, and Italy, so I knew they were only trying to spare my feelings.
The one time I did leave home , other than for senior week or other random trips with my friends, was the two years I spent on the road crew. My time supporting that aspect of the Survival Bill took me all the way out to Washington State, all the way up
When the screen went blank he got up and disappeared into his bedroom. My mother went back to try and comfort him. Even so, he didn’t come out of his room the rest of the night. She told me later that he wasn’t upset because the pitcher was murdered or that it happened at the World Series or even that it was on live television; it upset him that Andrew and I would never be able to have the same kind of awe he had for the game when he was our age. That shot had signaled the end of any hope that we could have the same life, the same possibilities, afforded to my dad. Everything that was great about America’s game was gone after that.
Police caught the pitcher’s killer later that night. More accurately, he turned himself in after climbing down from the stadium rafters. His job as part of the field crew allowed him to carry an uninspected duffle bag into the stadium. He took it up into the recesses of the ballpark where he assembled his sniper rifle. Reporters were waiting outside the stadium when police escorted him into the backseat of one of their cars. A reporter asked the man why he killed the pitcher. The man turned to the woman holding the microphone and, starting to cry, said he had five children at home, all of whom were Blocks. None of them would ever be able to watch a baseball game, let alone play little league.
“That’s not fair,” the man said as he was ushered into the back seat of the police cruiser.
At first they talked about playing the rest of the game a week later. Then they talked about finishing it at the beginning of the next season. But after the shooting, after hearing the shooter’s motivation, everyone suddenly seemed to notice how old the players were and that with only sixteen teams it wasn’t the same as it had been before. They didn’t bother playing any more games after that.
December 19
The major airlines were all shut down by the time I graduated high school. To get overseas you had to know a pilot who also had a reason to want to fly across the world, or you had to know how to fly a plane yourself, or be crazy enough to give it a shot even if you didn’t know. Private planes were actually more difficult to steal than the giant 747s left at airport terminals because the world’s billionaires locked their planes inside steel hangars while the colossal jumbo jets were left at whatever gate they had last arrived at before the airline and airport both closed. Each closed airport was supposed to have at least one security guard patrolling at all times, but sometimes they didn’t show up, and even if they did arrive forqedspspjo their shift, they really didn’t care about preventing someone from taking a plane.
Every couple of months there was a story on the news of a plane either not taking off correctly and exploding into a nearby field or randomly going down in the ocean when the fuel ran out. These accidents were almost always the result of people wanting to get back to family members living in other parts of the world. You would be surprised how many people attempted to take off from the abandoned airports, having little or no experience actually flying an aircraft, because they thought the plane would basically fly itself.
It was f or this reason that I never went to Europe to see the Eifel Tower or Pantheon, never went to Africa to see the pyramids or Mount Kilimanjaro, never trekked across Asia to see the Great Wall or the Taj Mahal. Never, really, did I go anywhere. Not even up to Canada or down to Mexico. My parents always told me I wasn’t missing much, but their honeymoon had been spent travelling all across England, France, and Italy, so I knew they were only trying to spare my feelings.
The one time I did leave home , other than for senior week or other random trips with my friends, was the two years I spent on the road crew. My time supporting that aspect of the Survival Bill took me all the way out to Washington State, all the way up
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