One night when I was eleven I was playing baseball in the alley behind my house. I was batting left-handed when I hit a tremendous home run that rolled all the way to the end of the alley and would have gone into the street but an old man turning the corner picked it up. The old man came walking up the alley toward me and my friends, flipping the baseball up in the air and catching it. When he got to where we stood, the old man asked us who’d hit that ball.
“I did,” I said.
“It was sure a wallop,” said the old man, and he stood there, grinning. “I used to play ball,” he said, and my friends and I looked at each other. “With the Cardinals, and the Cubs.”
My friends and I looked at the ground or down the alley where the cars went by on Rosemont Avenue.
“You don’t believe me,” said the old man. “Well, look here.” And he held out a gold ring in the palm of his hand. “Go on, look at it,” he said. I took it. “Read it,” said the old man.
“World Series, 1931,” I said.
“I was with the Cardinals then,” the old guy said, smiling now. “Was a pitcher. These days I’m just an old bird dog, a scout.”
I looked up at the old man. “What’s your name?” I asked.
“Tony Kaufmann,” he said. I gave him his ring back. “You just keep hitting ’em like that, young fella, and you’ll be a big leaguer.” The old man tossed my friend Billy the ball. “So long,” he said, and walked on up to the end of the alley, where he went in the back door of Beebs and Glen’s Tavern.
“Think he was tellin’ the truth or is he a nut?” one of the kids asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said, “let’s go ask my grandfather. He’d remember him if he really played.”
Billy and I ran into my house and found Pops watching TV in his room.
“Do you remember a guy named Tony Kaufmann?” I asked him. “An old guy in the alley just told us he pitched in the World Series.”
“He showed us his ring,” said Billy.
My grandfather raised his eyebrows. “Tony Kaufmann? In the alley? I remember him. Sure, he used to pitch for the Cubs.”
Billy and I looked at each other.
“Where’s he now?” asked my grandfather.
“We saw him go into Beebs and Glen’s,” said Billy.
“Well,” said Pops, getting out of his chair, “let’s go see what the old-timer has to say.”
“You mean you’ll take us in the tavern with you?” I asked.
“Come on,” said Pops, not even bothering to put on his hat, “never knew a pitcher who could hold his liquor.”