very morning of that hot summer I woke up to the same sound, the same thick thunk, thunk, thunk of hard leather hitting shingles. And every morning I'd find the newspaper splayed across the breakfast table, stripped of the sports pages, and every night I would listen to the radio, loud even through two walls, staticy with the night games out of Boston.
The summer he turned nine my little brother Augie decided that he would be a baseball player, a decision at first unremarkable since at various times he had aspired be an astronaut, a lumberjack, and briefly, embarrassingly, a ballerina. He began to memorize statistics, which he called ''stats;'' he read the box scores, tracing the columns with his forefinger and later speaking knowledgeably of ''ribbies.'' He spent a lumpy night sleeping on this baseball glove to break it in. Most mornings he would run outside still in his pajama pants, to throw a baseball up and catch it as it came down, muttering like a sportscaster: ''And Morris goes back, back, back - folks, this is it, this is for the game - and he catches it! Augie Morris catches it. The Sox win the pennant.'' One afternoon I helped him paint a big white rectangle on the windowless side of the garage for a strike zone. He threw at it in those early mornings - thunk, thunk, thunk - until the white paint went gray from the impact and flaked off like dirty snow.
At the end of our street is a squat building which was once an elementary school but is now a cramped public library. Behind it, a vestige of the building's first career, lies a playing field. The old ladies who plant marigolds around the library and who mow the library's lawn do not routinely mow the playing field, nor do they water it. During wet summers it tangles into a knee-deep jungle and during hot ones it dries and cracks into a desert. The field has a chain-link backstop in one corner, but no dugouts and only a dusty trace of a baseball diamond. Nonetheless, every spring the playing fields fill with boys who don't vacate until after Labor Day.
In August, after a summer of throwing a baseball at the garage, my brother Augie ambled down to the library. I watched him go, skinny-legged, graceless as an apology, dragging his aluminum bat and a baseball glove. I was more nervous than he was. Some big kids playing baseball behind the library, kids my age and older, high- schoolers with facial hair and curveballs. I waited an hour before following him.
There were two dozen kids behind the library, half sitting behind the backstop and half scattered unevenly across the field. No one ever sat out in those games, positions were added until everyone played. Sometimes there were eight kids in the outfield. I looked for Augie, and found him squatting behind the backstop, watching the pitcher. I walked over.
''Hey, Augie,'' I said, ''Thought I'd watch you play. Is that OK with you?''
''Yeah, sure,'' he said, ''Thanks. Look, you know that kid, right?'' He pointed to the pitcher, a big kid, 240 pounds lashed to a 5-foot-9-inch frame.
''Sort of,'' I told Augie, not wanting to admit what I knew that Jack Olson had the sophomore class's longest shot put and widest swagger. ''Why?''
''He's on the other team,'' Augie said, still staring at Jack, ''but he's sort of in charge of the whole thing and you never get to play anywhere but right field unless he says you can. Listen, I've been pitching - at home I mean - and I was thinking, couldn't I pitch here? But he'd have to say it was OK. But I don't want to ask. You know?'' I know, of course, I wouldn't relish asking Jack for anything, either, and I wasn't a cowed 9-year-old would-be pitcher. I looked at Augie, still staring at the game, fingers laced into the backstop.
''I'll ask him for you, Augie, if that's what you want,'' I said.
''Strike three. That's the inning.'' He looked away from the game for the first time. ''I owe you.''
Jack was strutting off the field. I looked at the kid he'd struck out, not much older than Augie. I looked at Jack.
''Hey, Jack, that was some inning.''
''Uh huh.''
''Jeez, you must've been pitching for a while, to get so good.'' I waited a beat. ''Well, my brother - he's been pitching a while too, and he was wondering if maybe he could pitch a little during this next inning.'' Jack looked at me. He spat, aiming for a spot an inch away from the tip of my shoe. He was off by an inch.
''One batter. First batter. Only because his team's winning.'' I smiled and nodded, but Jack wasn't interested. He was already swaggering off behind the backstop, the shrill laudations of the littler boys rising to greet him.
I told Augie what Jack had said, and he dashed off to tell his team. He took the mound, bouncing from one leg to the other while the catcher strapped on his pads. There was only one set of pads, and the gap between innings sometimes stretched. After the catcher finally outfitted himself, there was only time for Augie to throw him the ball a few times before Jack announced that it was time for the first batter. Augie looked over at me. I smiled and he nodded, face set.
We both watched Jack Olson approach the plate.
I didn't realize that I had stopped breathing until I felt dizzy and then inhaled sharply, tasting the dust that clouded the field. I looked at Jack Olson, taking his practice swings with a wooden bat he carried like a club and at my little brother, frail in his cutoffs, cradling the ball in his glove. I watched Jack step into the batter's box, inescapable as a nightmare. I watched by brother lean into his windup, watched the tight muscle in his pitching arm as he released the ball, watched the ball cut across the infield toward the catcher's mitt which yawned wide as the side of a garage. I heard the thwack of leather against leather. And only then did I see Jack Olson swing.
My brother had thrown a strike. I could tell that Jack hadn't expected Augie to throw so fast. I hadn't expected him to throw so fast, either. The catcher slung the ball back to Augie, who caught it easily - thwack. Augie looked at the ball for a second, wound up, released it, the whole weight of his wiry body behind it. Jack swung again. Augie and I watched his bat hit the ball; both heard the solid crack. The ball winged above Augie, straight and long as any ball I'd seen hit. Everyone watched it, the half-dozen outfielders turning to follow it as it passed over their heads and their superfluous, suspended gloves. We all watched it hit the library, almost a hundred yards off, and heard the delicate tinkle of breaking glass. Only then did anyone move. The fielders and the kids clutching their bats behind the backstop, all starting to scatter. The librarian hobbled around to the back of the library and headed toward the field, but everyone had already fled.
I met Augie on our street. He carried his bat, and his glove dangled from its handle. I put by arm around his shoulder and squeezed him awkwardly. He looked up at me.
''Did you see him swing on that first pitch?'' he asked. ''Did you see how late he was?''
''Yeah,'' I said. ''He was real late. It was a good pitch.''
''Yeah,'' Augie said, ''I guess it was.''
And the next morning I awoke to the thunk, thunk, thunk of a hardball hitting the garage.
