Chapter 10: O Canto De Esperanca

   "What's up Fast Eddie?" asks our pitching coach skipping over the third base line on the way to the pitcher's mound. "Is that wing still alive?"

"Yeah coach, he'll settle down" soothes Paulino as he strides out from homeplate.

"I got it" nods Cicotte, stepping back to the pitching rubber to end the conference.

_______________

   "I got it" nodded Frankie Grouchowitz to my request for a ride to the DMV over in Piscataway a few towns east. "Get that license and you're halfway to citizenship."

"There's the little problem of a permanent address" I mused, resigned to going back to Brazil after my upcoming graduation from Bound Brook High School.

"Frankie's going into the Army" sighed Mrs. Gouchowitz. "I'll adopt if you'll stay and help with this leaky old house."

"I'll help anytime but couldn't ever impose" I replied.

"She's terrified of the floods" laughed Frankie. "It would help us both if you stayed here after high school."

"I can handle a little water in the house. It ran through our shack in Curitiba with every rain."

  

_______________

   Paulino squats behind their best batter and flashes a single finger down and away from the right-handed hitter, wiggling it upward to indicate a fastball up and away, then positioning the catcher's mitt where he wants the ball. Cicotte steps back from the rubber, turns left into his windup, and lunges forward, propelling a perfect pitch into the upper outer strike zone. The hitter simultaneously steps toward the mound and uncoils his hips and arms, whipping the thirty-five inch Louisville Slugger into a monster swing.

"Thwack" launches the baseball into a tremendous arc up and over the field. All heads turn to watch the disappearing white dot finally drop over the centerfield wall.

   "Couldn't a thrown it better for batting practice" quips a grey haired guy leaning in from a seat beside the dugout.

"Too true Joe" glares Sinclair, waving to the manager at the other side of the dugout to get Cicotte out of the game. "Leave it to a former player to see what I won't. My trainer here tried to warn me. Joao, meet Joe Nossick, senior scout for the Minnesota Twins."