A night in Havana, long ago.

This weekend, this busy Thanksgiving weekend, amid family, festivities, fun and, of course, the concomitant bickering that such weekends bring, the landline rang.

That surprised me for two reasons. For one, Uncle Slappy and Aunt Sylvie were already over. And two, there are no politicians currently running for anything. Landlines, after all, are used only by ancient relatives and by politicians—for whom conventional laws like ‘do not call’ rulings do not apply.

“Jorge,” a raspy voice said through the crackle of distance. “Jorge Navidad.”

No one has called me Jorge Navidad in over forty years, save for one account guy I used to work with about a decade ago whose father knew something of my Mexican Baseball League exploits.

“Si,” I answered, dusting off just about the only Spanish I still knew. 

“Tu viejo amigo, estupido, Gulliermo Sisto.”

We chattered for a moment or two in what is known in New York as Spanglish.

“You have escuchado las nocitias?”

“What news?”

“El Jefe esta muerto.”

“El Jefe?”

“Fidel is dead.”

And that’s how I learned of the Cuban leader’s demise. From a phone call with Gulliermo Sisto, a team-mate of mine—the oldest guy on the Seraperos when I was just 17 and the youngest.

Sisto was 43 when I knew him—and in his 26 years in the Mexican Baseball League he had played for a total of 50 different teams. He and my manager, Hector Quesadilla had been team-mates some years before and in Hector’s capacious mind, Sisto was exactly what the Seraperos needed as we mediocred our way through our long and doleful season.

Sisto was a wise man on the bench, a guy who could come in and advance a runner or scratch a base hit, and a guy who could field any position without hurting you and maybe even pitch an inning hurting you only a little.

Sisto had the locker next to mine, and in short order he and I became the Mutt and Jeff of the team—our disparity being age, not height. And now, a lifetime after we played together for my one sad but glorious season, Sisto was calling.

I went into my bedroom—away from the cacophony of visitors in the rest of my apartment. I shut the bedroom door against the noise and sat in my worn leather arm-chair.

“Many years ago, when I played for the Rojos Diablos we flew to Havana to play a series of exhibition games against the Havana Sugar Kings.”

“The Sugar Kings were a team.”

“It was the best of Cuba against the best of Mexico. And of course, at such a series of juegos, it was only natural that El Lider would be there with the rest of his Barbudos.”

“The Bearded Ones. Fidel’s team. He was the pitcher, yes? And their best hitter.”

Sisto laughed into the phone.

“If El Lider says it, it must be true. But his pitch had lost its fire and his bat was soft like a noodle of vermicelli.”

“The man and the myth,” I said nonsensically.

“After we lost our games to the Sugar Kings—the best team I have ever played against, we played against El Commandante’s squad. A ragtag game in the twilight with no lights in Estadio.”

“So you played against Fidel?”

“Si, yes. Each of their nine—the Barbudos—the Bearded Ones played while smoking a foot-long cigar which they did not even while they were batting or running the bases or even pitching remove from their mouths.

“They played with the vigor and the laughter of young boys and you could not help but like them, even with machine gun soldiers guarding every move.”

“And how was Fidel? I had heard he was drafted by the Yankees of New York,” I said as if I were Hemingway’s Old Man.

“Fidel pitched well. Though a double off him I hit. Stand-up straight down the leftfield line.”

“You wounded the Barbudos.”

“Yes, and I scored a run a moment later, sliding into home and a cloud of dirty cigar smoke.”

We talked for a few moments—in a desultory fashion.

Then Sisto grew quiet.

“But Fidel, Jorge Navidad, Fidel was the last batter that day. The last batter for the Barbudos.

“I forget who was on the mound for us—maybe it was Triste, perhaps it was El Lacrimosa—the teary one, Estaban Portugal, who cried as he pitched. Maybe it was the Fat One.

“Whoever it was he threw El Lider a corkball, twisting the ball out of his throwing hand like a corkscrew. The ball, like a top to El Commandante flew.”

“The corkball,” I said. “A notorious pitch.”

“The worst. Three men on the Rojos Diablos could throw it—maybe once, maybe twice a game. After that, your arm would fly off like an old branch in a windstorm.”

“Three men could throw it. And no man could hit it.”

“But Fidel hit it.”

We paused.

“He let out from his cigar a puff of smoke like steam from a locomotive. And he swung heavy from his heels.”

“He was a big man,” I said, adding nothing.

“Yes. Taller even than Jorge Navidad.

“Fidel hit the ball straight into the sky. 1000 feet up, through the cigar smoke, through the trees, through the sky, and through the clouds. And we, the Rojos Diablos looked up, looked up for the ball in the estratofera. We looked, we looked, we looked and we waited and waited some more.”

I was on the edge of my leather seat.

“And then?”

“It never came down the ball. Fidel said ‘It has gone to Heaven to be kissed by the gods.’ And no one, to tell you the truth, no one that day had a better explanation.”

Sisto stopped now. He’s 85 and he seemed out of breath from telling his story.

“You’re ok, Sissy?”

“Yes, mi amigo. Si. But I know one thing.”

I gave him the courtesy of a pause.

“That corkball that Fidel hit. It is rising still. It is rising through the heavens to be kissed by the gods.”

The old man hung up the horn.

And I went into the living-room, giving everyone there, my kids, my wife, my niece, Uncle Slappy and Aunt Sylvie, a kiss.

A memory of Fidel.

A repost.

El Pollo Cubano.

Years ago I did some freelance work for a local fast-food chain called El Pollo Cubano (the Cuban chicken.) 

My partner and I were charged with introducing an addition to their menu, El Pollo Cubano's fish sandwich. Having a lot of competition in their marketplace and not a lot of money, we named El Pollo Cubano's fish sandwich the "Fidel o' Fish." Both a tribute to the now-retired Cuban president and a play on McDonald's Fillet o' Fish.

I suppose I hardly have to tell you that El Pollo Cubano could hardly make enough Fidel o' Fish sandwiches. They were practically flying (fish) off the shelves. The commercials I helped create earned me the first of my many international awards. You can imagine my surprise a couple weeks after the campaign launched that a small package arrived at my desk with my name and address handwritten. I opened the package figuring it was some swag from yet another production company. 

Instead, it was a box of 24 Corona-Corona's, a signed glossy head-shot and a personal note from the famed dictator. In that note he asked for a half-dozen of his namesake sandwiches. Custom regulations being what they were, I was unable to comply with the bearded one's request. I did start a correspondence with Fidel and we became fast-amigos.

I'll miss you big guy. Eat well, mi amigo, eat well.

Kim Jong Il. Some memories.

This happened 25 or 26 years ago, yet I remember it like it happened yesterday. I was sitting with my partner, Craig, in my office. We were just coming off the high of winning a raft of awards for a small fast-food chain called El Pollo Cubano in which we named their new fish sandwich "the Fidel o' Fish." The sandwich was a huge hit and Craig and I were riding high. I wrote about it some years ago and you can read it here: http://adaged.blogspot.com/search?q=Fidel

Now we were charged with bringing El Pollo Cubano's new Korean BBQ fish sandwich out of the test kitchen and right into the very fabric of American culture. This was to be more than the introduction of just another sandwich. We knew we needed to start a movement. We needed to synch with and have an impact on popular culture.

Craig was flipping pencils up at the ceiling when the phone rang. I picked up the Ameche and heard a crackling on the other end of the line. "Hold please for the great and exalted leader of all Koreas."

I snickered and just about put down the blower when I heard a heavily-accented voice on the line.

"This is Kim-Jong-Il. It would do me a great honor to have, like my comrade Fidel, a sandwich named after me."

Apparently having an eponymous sandwich was now a mark of honor among the world's dictators. I could see Tito Taters. Noriega Nachos. And of course, fish and Gorbachips.

I put the phone on speaker. Craig took over.

"We shall do our best, Exalted One" my partner intoned.

Then we heard a peremptory click from Pyongyang.

I think I was the one who said it, though Craig swears it was him.

"The Kim Jong. The Il-lest Korean Barbecued Chicken."

We ran that up the client's flagpole and in a few short weeks, we had a hit on our hands.

We tried phoning the Exalted One, but could never get through to the North.

I'll miss you, Big Guy. I'll miss you.

El Pollo Cubano.

Years ago I did some freelance work for a local fast-food chain called El Pollo Cubano (the Cuban chicken.) My partner and I were charged with introducing an addition to their menu, El Pollo Cubano's fish sandwich. Having a lot of competition in their marketplace and not a lot of money, we named El Pollo Cubano's fish sandwich the "Fidel o' Fish." Both a tribute to the now-retired Cuban president and a play on McDonald's Fillet o' Fish.

I suppose I hardly have to tell you that El Pollo Loco could hardly make enough Fidel o' Fish sandwiches. They were practically flying (fish) off the shelves. The commercials I helped create earned me the first of my many international awards. You can imagine my surprise a couple weeks after the campaign launched that a small package arrived at my desk with my name and address handwritten. I opened the package figuring it was some swag from yet another production company. Instead, it was a box of 24 Corona-Corona's, a signed glossy head-shot and a personal note from the famed dictator. In that note he asked for a half-dozen of his namesake sandwiches. Custom regulations being what they were, I was unable to comply with the bearded one's request. I did start a correspondence with Fidel and we became fast-amigos.

I'll miss you big guy. Eat well, mi amigo, eat well.

Eight Things I Learned from Someone You Should Learn From.

Early on in my career, I went to work for a mid-sized agency that was led by two advertising Hall-of-Famers, Ron Rosenfeld--who at one time was the youngest copywriter ever elected--and Len Sirowitz, an art director who did many of my favorite ads when he was a star at DDB.

For whatever reason, I left that agency for a better agency. Again, that agency was run by two advertising Hall-of-Famers. Mike Tesch--who was the ECD of the place (when that was the top creative title) and Amil Gargano, whose name was on the door and who was the conscience of the agency.

Eventually, I made my way to Ogilvy where I got to work with Steve Hayden, Chris Wall, Steve Simpson and, though she's not a 'creative,' Shelly Lazarus. While there, I also shot a good bit with Joe Pytka and Errol Morris.

When I started at Ogilvy I got tossed into a maelstrom named Brian Collins. In fact, when we first worked together, I very nearly got into a fracas--a genuine Pier Six Brawl--with Brian's account partner. You know those veins at your temples? Mine almost exploded.

The thing about working with the names I dropped above is simple. You observe them like an ornithologist spotting a rare migratory yellow-bellied pupick. You work with them, sure. But if you're really on top of things, when you head back to your desk, you take notes about what you learned. Some of those things are techniques. More often, they're approaches, or behaviors or ways at getting to problems, or most often of all, gaining the confidence to believe in yourself so you can be yourself.

When you write a blog with the <er> perspicacity that I write this blog, you're always on the look out for annuities. Not an annuity like a financial instrument that pays you monthly, but a creative annuity that you can keep coming back to. 

I've been lucky enough to work, still, with many of the names I listed above. I've been lucky enough to have Chinese food with them, or a beer, or kibbitz by phone or e. I'm lucky enough to count a lot of these people as my friends.

In the interest of annuity-izing some of these relationships, I thought I'd write down in this 83,000 readers/week-space some of what I learned from some of these people. Some of this is self-aggrandizement on my part. Swagger that comes from having worked with a veritable Pantheon.

Like the time I wrote a commercial for Gorton's original-style fish sticks and I got Federico Fellini to shoot it (he was $11 million over budget and 22 weeks late.) Or when I was working on the El Pollo Cubano restaurant chain and I persuaded Fidel Castro to help us promote a sandwich I named after him, the Fidel O' Fish. Or more recently, shooting a 150-minute film on the origin story of Peeps marshmallow treats with "Peep" Davidson.

Working with these luminaries is like hanging out with the Bloomsbury Group or drinking 19 dry martinis at the Algonquin. But writing down my learnings is more than just ego gratification on my part.

It's an attempt at a corrective to an industry gone awry. An industry that trains no more, that treats the past like it's as stinky as yesterday's Bouillabaisse, and has forgotten the truths that made it a) a great way to make a living and b) the greatest driver of brand value and capital appreciation in the history of the world. Phew.

All that to say, here are eight things I learned from having worked with, for, alongside and at loggerheads with Brian Collins for more than a quarter of a century. [Working with Brian includes working with Katya, Lee, Nick Ace and his wonderful crew. All of whom are, always, relentlessly on brief.]

I marked down just eight things I learned, though I just as easily could write 18 or even 81. But Collins has helped teach me economy, too.

The things I've learned from Collins have helped GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company grow more, get bigger, do better work and have bigger, better clients than I ever imagined I'd have when I got tossed out on my keister at the Ancient Mariner age of 62.

I happen to think the things I've learned from Collins could help any agency in the world that wants to do good work and treat people well. And make money. Any agency in the world that wants to help clients, respect itself and its people and be different. And make money.

If I were a little smarter and had better art-direction skills, I'd put three black dots equidistant from top to bottom alongside the left hand margin of my eight things list. That would be my semiotic way of saying, "This shit is smart. You should save it."

I bet the people at Collins would like that "design" idea.

But I leave it to you to do what you want with it.

Gabriel Marquez Garcia. A memory.

Years ago my partner Craig and I had enjoyed an amazing string of advertising success in the fast-food category.

For a fast-feeder called El Pollo Cubano, we created and introduced the chain's first fish sandwich. We named it after El Capitan himself, Fidel Castro, and called it the "Fidel o' Fish." Not only did that effort win us gold from a variety of shows, we each received a box of Corona Corona cigars from the great man.

Some years later, we introduced the chain's Korean BBQ sandwich with a tribute to Kim Jung Il. That effort was launched with the line "The Kim Jung. The Il-est Korean Barbecue Sandwich." It won us award after award and a free pass anytime we wanted to visit Pyongyang.

The next meal we introduced for El Pollo Cubano was their Mexican Taco sandwich. Craig came into the office with one of his typical brainstorms.

Without a word he started working the phones. He was bent on getting through to Gabriel Marquez Garcia. With the stamina of a seasoned marathoner, he got through after a few hours.

"Yes, your eminence," I heard Craig say, "we want to promote El Pollo Cubano's new Mexican Taco sandwich in your honor."

Craig held onto the blower and withstood an onslaught of rapid-fire Spanish. Fortunately, Craig's high-school knowledge of that language carried the day.

"It's a simple line, Gabe," I heard him say. "100 Years of Salsa-tude."

I heard through the phone the old man chortle, then guffaw, and then issue a vociferous "si, si!"

We ran it up the flagpole with the client at El Pollo Cubano, and before long, we had yet another hit on our hands.

Marxism in the Tempus Fugit.

"You look worn out," the bartender said to me as I crushed the leather of my usual bar stool.

"Well," I answered "it is three in the morning."

He attended to Whiskey, my year-and-a-half-old golden retriever who was already curled at the foot of my stool. He parabolaed around the bar and lay a small wooden bowl of ice-water by her head. In a second or two he was back behind the bar.

He slid over a bowl of salted Spanish peanuts which I pushed aside with my usual demurral, "A pound in every nut," I said. And then he asked, "Pike's?"

"What else?" I answered.

In just a few moments he pulled me a Pike's, the ALE that won for YALE, and placed a juice-glass of the amber nectar in front on me. I drank immediately, long. And the moment after my glass had settled back onto the mahogany, he scooped it up and refilled me.

I drank again, long and full, like a hungry man in a soup kitchen.

"I'll try again," he said. "You look worn out."

"I'll keep this macro," I answered. "It's my employer."

"Careful," he said, "you're supposed to be keeping this macro."

"Right. Macro. I'm tired of capital treating me like a capital resource, not like labor. I am merely a machine to be optimized with the least amount of capital expenditure as possible."

"You sound a little Red this evening."

"Marx may be out of favor," I pushed back, "but he was no slouch."

"Perverted by Stalin, Lenin, Mao, and the Kim family I suppose, not to mention Fidel. But I agree, no slouch. I'll take him over Milton Friedman any day."

"There's no thanks, no gratitude, to quid pro quo. No recompense. You're supposed to be glad you haven't been outsourced. The rich are getting. The top 1% have seen 95% of the income gains since 2009. The top 1/10th of 1% have seen 60% of those gains."

"Stay macro," he said. He took my glass and dipped it in soapy water, then rinsed it, then wiped it clean. He filled me again with another Pike's.

"Class warfare has ended," he muttered. "The rich have won."

I pushed to twenties at him across the bar to him.

He looked at me, deep into my eyes. He picked up the bills, then placed them down onto the bar and smoothed them flat. He pushed the bills back my way.

"Keep your capital," he said. "You labored for it."

A young man and the sea.

"I will tell you a story," Hector said. "A sad and happy story."

It was about 100-degrees in the dugout and we were waiting out a rainstorm. We were in Merida, Yucatan, Quintana Roo and were two innings into a game against el Leones de Yucatan. We were up three-nothing or down by the same when the blue-grey clouds broke and rain with drops the size of peso coins began assaulting the earth.

The stadium was small and open, maybe there were three-thousands fans that day. Some had brought umbrellas and were determined to wait it out. Some ran for cover. Others had had enough after two innings and left for home or for a nearby bar. 

Merida was a nice, old ancient city. There were plenty of bars. And tired crooked streets that three waves of Spanish conquistadors could not straighten to conformity. The richness of the city--it was once home to more millionaires, it is said, than any other city on earth, was due to the henequen plant which grows in the hills and can be turned into fiber, rope and mescal. 

The city grew rich. But that was eighty years ago, and by the summer of 1975 when I was there, the richness of the city had been covered with dust, decay and despair. 

"When I was thirty I was playing for los Diablos. It was 1957 or 1958," Hector said. 

"Around the time I was born."

Hector continued. "We had four games against el Leones. Most unusual we had two games, a full-day off, then two more games."

"A day off during the season?"

"Yes. One of the scrubs, a utility man named Federico was from a small seaside village, Progreso, about twelve miles or fifteen from Merida. Federico obtained permission to visit his brothers and his sisters and his father. His mother was dead already."

Most of the other boys had left the dugout for the locker-room. The rain pelted the corrugated metal of the roof. Hector and I sat side-by-side watching rivulets and puddles form in the red dirt in front of the dugout. The heavy flow of water would, every so often, carry two sunflower seed shells down a little stream.

"The far one is the faster," Hector would say.

I would root for the closer. Just to make the game interesting.

"Federico wanted to fish when he got home. But not his father nor his brothers nor his sisters nor his friends wanted to fish with him. So he loaded a small boat with a small engine with a cooler of beers, some sandwiches, his fishing gear and an old rifle in case he was to hook a too-big shark."

"To shoot the shark," I asked.

"As he must, if the shark was larger than his boat."

The rain continued. The umpires showed no signs, however, of calling off the game.

"In about one hour, Federico told me this himself, the current shifted away from shore and the old one and a half horsepower engine of the boat stopped working."

"And there was no Gordo Batista to fix it." Batista was our third-string catcher and first-string bus driver. He spent more time under the hood of our team bus than crouching behind the plate.

"Federico had one oar, but the current and wind pulling his boat into the sea was too powerful. Before he knew it, Federico was twenty miles or thirty miles out to sea."

Another small armada of sunflower seed shells flowed by in the littered brown water.

"It was dark. And Federico was out of food and drink. And there was no way he could get back to Progreso. He tried for a second day but the oar was useless against the current and the waves. By day three, Federico with his rifle shot a seagull for food, but he could not paddle to get it."

Two Seraperos came over to Hector, their spikes clinking against the concrete floor of the dugout.

"What you think, Skip? We play."

Hector looked up at the rain. 

"It is an unknown sky. We could drown here or in ten minutes it could be sunny."

"After four days, Federico told me this, he saw his mother. He woke up and he was back near the pier in Progreso and his mother was there. Federico almost climbed out of his small boat to meet her. But it was just a fever dream."

"He almost drowned?"

"Yes, almost. But he came to his senses soon enough. He was starving now. And had no way home. Federico passed out and left fate to the little boat and the waves."

Hector walked out onto the field. The rain seemed to be slowing. He tried to catch the eye of the umpires--to hasten a decision, should we play or not. But he had no luck.

"He fell deep to sleep. We don't know how long. But then Federico's boat landed in Cuba."

"Cuba?"

"Yes, to Americans it seems far. But it is only seventy miles. Cortes many times made the trip. Cuba was his base to conquer our land."

The rain had slowed to a drizzle. I could see small patches of blue in the sky beyond the outfield fences.

"The Batistas took Federico and they asked for ID. They were afraid he was a spy from Fidel. A Barbudos down from the mountains looking to cause trouble.

"'I have no identification. I am a baseball player from Mexico and was fishing when a storm came. Who takes identification with them when they are looking for fish?' 

"The Batistas did not believe him, of course. Worse, by this time, his family had given Federico up for dead. They had for him a funeral and cast flowers into the sea."

The umpires were standing by the pitcher's mound. One had his hand out feeling for the rain. One looked at the sky, and looked for a sign. The grounds' crew came out and began raking the infield dirt. The game would soon begin.

"Federico finally after two months--one month after his funeral-- returned to Progreso. I'm not sure how,  if the Mexican government got involved and he returned to his family."

"They were happy to see him."

"He was a ghost who returned."

"Did he play for los Diablos again?"

The umpires called the managers out, then called 'play ball.' Hector returned just a minute later.

"We will play ball today," Hector said. The dugout was filling up. Issy Buentello our catcher began strapping on his gear. I tightened my spikes, grabbed my glove and waited on the top step of the dugout.

"Did he play for los Diablos again?"

"Federico was not much of a ballplayer, Jorge."

I took that as Hector's answer and began to trot to my position at third.

"But he was even worse as a fisherman."

Writing. Writhing.

Some years ago when I was playing ball, I ran into a bad stretch where I couldn't hit a grapefruit with a tennis racket. As a ballplayer might write, I think the start of my miasma is that for two consecutive days in a row, I was dusted off with a couple or four fastballs, all of which made me eat dirt and had me more than a bit fearful of the steady discord of chin-music.

Of late, I've been working on pulling together the hundred-or-so Saltillo stories I've written, and laying them out in book-form. A friend of mine, a literary editor whom I asked for help, gave me the title, Born on Third, though I'm not sure that will stick. 

The phrase implies being birthed with a certain degree of privilege, and that wasn't me. I was born in a six-story hospital building in Yonkers, New York--abutting the Bronx, and if I'm not mistaken my mother had me walk home from the jernt given as I had ink on my feet and all and she didn't want to muss the vinyl upholstery in her Plymouth.

On the other hand, I was in a sense, born on third, in that I came to life as seventeen-year-old manning la Esquina Caliente--the hot corner--for the Seraperos de Saltillo in the Mexican Baseball League (AA) for my manager, Hector Quetzacoatl Padillia, Hector Quesadilla, having run away from my parents' home so I could play a season of ball before matriculating into Columbia University just a semester late, but gained command of passably fluent gutter-Spanish. I'm your man if you're ever having a conversation with a Spanish gutter.

Running away from the sonic-boom silence of my parents' crucible and Greyhound busing, running like the dogs of hell, to a small Mexican city in Coahuila state, Saltillo, primarily because they were the newest team in the league and had the smallest stadium, so I figured, and wasn't entirely wrong, they'd be the worst team in the league and, therefore, the easiest to win a spot on.

So now, in between the demands of running my own small business in the bird-chirp wilds of the Gingham Coast in Connecticut, where my wife and I moved to flee the unknown ravages of Covid-stricken New York, I am collecting the top-most of my hundred Saltillo stories and seeing if I can form them into some sort of book, or as we might pompousify in advertising, my profession, some sort of book-like-object.

Mostly, I view the world as a pay-as-you-go place, and I'm not looking to feed my vanity by publishing something. I'll be as clear about this as the ice in a dry martini, I won't bother if someone somewhere doesn't think it could make me rich and I could wind up like some latter-day Eudora Welty, with all the welts to prove it, not to mention maybe a television mini-series or some prime-time post-Salinger ethnography about growing up dead in the dead-from-the-neck-up mall-scape of Vietnammed amerika.

Organizing doesn't come naturally to me, I am much better, and always have been at leaving places than in sticking around and making them work. Because of that, and because the internet saves everything, I have millions of words scattered in digital shoeboxes with as much shape and form and a pile of windblown autumn leaves. Who's had the time to make sense of them all--and why should I? Nothing I know, in-or or or-ganic has a semblance of order, why should I be any different. Why should I form a chronology when my whole life was out of sequence, being born old and dying while never once having had the chance to be young.

What prompted all this perseveration was a phone call I got just the other night from Dr. Jesus Verduzco. Verduzco, whom we all called Doc, was a scrub utility infielder, mostly shortstop, who was 24 when I knew him and the sole college graduate on the squad. In the off-season he was a medical student at Tecnológico de Monterrey. 

Now, nearly 50 years later, Verduzco is retired a retired doctor--a cardiologist--and living in a pricey Monterrey suburb with views of both Cerro de las Mitras and Cerro del Topo Chico mountains, a fat wife and a dog he named Hector, after our old manager.

"Jorge," he began, "I have been reading your blog. As a ballplayer, you played like an English professor. And as a author, you write like a ballplayer."

I laughed at that. Even back when we were on the Saraperos, I knew better than to go against the good doctor's advice. 

"Send me what you have. And loosen it up a little. You should write like you used to hit. Relax at the plate."

"Relax at the keyboard," I clarified. "That's harder. The fastballs aimed to your head come from all angles."

And so, with Verduzco as a spur, I clipped two-hundred-and twenty-five single spaced pages together and mailed them off, including the following, my latest, written just now, because the ink on something, I believe, should always be wet if you're really working.

Thanks to those heaters aimed at my head because I had gone five-for-seven in the previous night's doubleheader, at once I something happen to me that had never happened before. 

For the first time I was afraid. 

Afraid of being clobberated by a ninety-mile-per fastball, right in the spot where the ballistic plastic of my batting helmet ended and my maxilla began. I was never afraid before of a ball aimed at my head, but now, having french-kissed four-times the Mexican dust and crusted the inside of my sinus with the fine-mist of infield dirt, I developed a tic, a nervousness, a shell-shock, a fear of life itself. Because what is life if not a baseball aimed temple-high with a license to kill?

My batting average fell like the mercury in the desert night in the thermometer screwed to the doorway outside the front door of the small cinderblock house I lived in that summer with Hector, my manager, Teresa, his wife, and Karmen, my summer's inamorata and my first.

I went two games, then three without so much as a tickle on the horsehide from my Louisville ash. I stood in the dust of the batter's box frozen like a Mykonos bronze, still like Dorothy's Tin Man, holding my ash as his axe, without the oil, unable to move.

When plummets happen, as they do, as they often do, along with them comes advice, like Verduzco's "relax" advice above. One man suggests I choke up on the bat and smack at the ball, just to make contact. Because good things happen on contact.

Garibay, the best batter on the team, he had a cup of coffee with the Royals in the early 80s, had me moving back in the box. Adame had me crowding the plate. Salome Rojas, who swatted 22 home runs that season gave me a lighter bat and suggested dropping my back elbow closer to my rib cage. "Brutus" Cesar, who on a good day could barely hit his way out of a paper sack, suggested nearly the opposite, heavier lumber and a higher elbow.

Like some Newtonian codicil, for every bit of advice I received there was equal and opposite counsel from someone else. After a time, it wasn't the afraidness that had me froze, it was the cognitive cacophony, which was even worse. 

I sat on the bench, motionless, on my way to another oh-fer, my fourth in a row or maybe fifth. Hector, with a ratty towel, wiped the pine beside me and parked his Aboriginal ass along side my Cossack-raped model.

"It is not the baseballs that have brought upon you a ringing in your ears. It is not the clunk-cussion."

"No. I wasn't clunked at all. They missed me each time."

"It is the voice-cussion."

"Voice-cussion."

"A concussion of voices. It is the worst of things that can befall a human. Once I heard from a utility man, Federico, a story. When I played for Los Diablos--he played for el Leones. We had an off-day between two double-headers and he got permission to go to his village, twelve miles or fifteen from Merida, to take out his uncle's boat and go fishing."

"An off-day during the season? I would sleep like an accident victim."

"Alone he took out the small palapa with a one-and-a-half horsepower engine. He was in the current when the engine died. Then he almost died. The sea taking him seventy miles over four days to Batista's Cuba. This was 1957, I believe."

"The year I was born, I believe."

"Federico had passed out in the boat from the sun and he had no water or food only a rifle against the sharks and the afraid. The voices he heard out at sea, the Selkies and the Sirens became a voice-cussion. All the things he did and even louder he heard the voices of the things he didn't do."

"More than missing a relay?"

"Yes. Much more. When he washed ashore, the Batistas took Federico and they asked for his identification. They were afraid he was a spy from Fidel. A Barbudos down from the mountains looking to cause trouble.

"'I have no identification,' Federico cried. 'I am a baseball player from Mexico and was fishing when a storm came and blew me to here. Who takes identification with them when they are looking for fish?' 

"The Batistas did not believe him, of course. Worse, by this time, his family had given Federico up for dead. They had for him a funeral and cast flowers into the sea. Red bougainvillea which grew wild in the dirt alongside the half-built homes."

"I think," I answered somberly, "there have been funerals for me since I ran to play baseball here."

Hector knew.

"Maybe also funerals for my hitting ability which has vanished like smoke from a fire in the wind when those balls came at my head with tombstone markings on them."

"You are hearing still those baseballs, Jorge. You are hearing the voice-cussions, Jorge Navidad. Each red cross-stitch wants to see you dead on the ground in the dust in a heap like a pile of old clothing."

He kicked at the dust in front of the bench like he was kicking at that pile of clothing. 

"But you are not a heap in the dust. Do not kick at yourself."

We sat in silence as our side was went down. I creaked to a standing position and began up the dugout steps.

"Let me tell you something about managing a team of 25-man-boys. When it is inning eight and you are winning eleven runs to two, it is easy being a manager.

"But when the short stop stops stopping, your pitchers stop pitching and every man-boy hates every other man-boy on the team, and they all hate you, and you have seven games in five nights, all on the road, that is when you become a manager."

Hector again kicked at the imaginary heap.

"It is the same with being a hitter. When you are hitting, there is not much to being a hitter. It's when you stop hitting that you become a great hitter. Because then you have to become again a hitter. Then you have to decide if you are or aren't."

Hector looked up at me. He gave me a 200,000 word pep talkin the form of a simple nod.

"Go back now to la Esquina Caliente. Go back now to la Esquina Caliente. Say, 'hit to me the ball. Hit to me the ball like it has been shot from the cannon of Porfirio Diaz, firing cannons at the people because they clamored for the bread stolen from them by the rich. Do not worry about the killing or the velocidad or the force of the afraid. Do only what you have always done. Stand up and be not afraid of the afraid. You have to love the afraid and say to the afraid I am not afraid of the afraid."

I ran out to my place, arriving the same time as a slow warmup grounder. I hopped, stooped, hopped and zinged it to Salome Rojas at first. The ball stung his hand through his old glove.

"Be not afraid," I repeated, catching the iambics of Hector's words. "Be not afraid of the afraid." I caught also the bouncings of another infield-warmup grounder. "I am not afraid of the afraid. I am not afraid of the afraid. I am not afraid of the afraid."

How'd I do, Doc?

--