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Baseball Fiction

Two days before Thanksgiving, Duffy went to the mall to buy socks. He liked the stretchy black ones with gold toes. His wife, May, who died the previous spring, had tried for nearly fifty years to get him to buy something else, like white ones with little stripes around the top for the summertime, or argyles for winter. But Duffy wouldn’t be persuaded, and even on the hottest summer days, when May succeeded in getting him into a pair of Bermuda shorts, he sat there on the back porch in his dress shoes with his black socks pulled up almost to his knees.


His mission accomplished, a six-month supply of gold-toed black socks in a plastic Sears bag dangling from his right hand, Duffy found himself in a computer store. His son, Jack, who was always doing things that baffled him, had bought him a computer for his birthday. Duffy remembered the day, barely three weeks after May died. He’d stood in the living room and watched Jack carrying the boxes up the walk.


“What’s this?” Duffy asked when Jack had all the boxes inside.


“It’s your birthday present.”


Duffy looked down at the boxes, then looked at his son.


“What am I going to do with a computer?” he said.


Jack reeled off a list of activities: he could do his taxes, balance his checkbook, write letters, play games.


“Games?” Duffy said. “Your teenager plays games with computers when he should be out in the sun.” Duffy’s grandson, a pasty, bug-eyed boy of thirteen, was rarely seen without an electronic device of some kind beeping or wailing in his hands. Duffy had taken to calling the boy “your teenager” or “that teenager.” His real name was John Duffy the Third.


“So don’t play games,” Jack said. “It’s got a spreadsheet program on it. It’ll help you with your taxes.”


“You should return it,” Duffy said. “Get your money back.”


“Dad,” Jack said. Then they just stood there, looking at each other. They hadn’t even said “hello” and they were in a standoff. It had been pretty much that way, Duffy knew, for more than thirty years, ever since Duffy first realized that his son had ideas of his own. Duffy went to the kitchen and read the newspaper while Jack lugged the boxes up the stairs and assembled the computer in Duffy’s den. Later, Duffy allowed Jack to give him some rudimentary lessons. The machine was impressive, no doubt about it. Duffy just couldn’t see how it could ever fit into his life.

A clerk, a boy not much older than Duffy’s grandson, approached him.


“Can I help you, sir?” He looked doubtful.


“Just browsing,” Duffy said. He stood in the middle of the store and glanced around warily, like a man who has accidentally wandered into a bad neighborhood. On the shelves were hundreds of devices Duffy would never understand, tools of a strange religion. Working computers were arranged on a shelf along one wall. Other computers displayed bizarre shifting patterns of color. Duffy was about to turn and go when he spotted a sign that said “Games.” He decided to see what kind of game a person could play on a computer.


— To read the rest of this story, click here to order a copy of the Summer 1999 issue.

JOSEPH CONNOLLY is a Bloomington, Illinis, native and St. Louis Cardinals fan. He now lives near Boston, where he is foced to make do with American League baseball

© 1999 Joseph Connolly