The 2012 Collected Works of Joseph Shaw

By Joseph Shaw

Joseph Shaw's clever and often poignant insights into human society in 2012 are collected together as they are written in this constantly updated anthology.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bard and Book
• Release date: Jan 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465741257

Book preview

The 2012 Collected Works of Joseph Shaw

By Joseph Shaw

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Copyright Joseph Shaw 2012. All Rights Reserved

Published by Bard and Book Publishing.

Cover by Julius Broqueza.

Table of Contents

How Bard and Book Publishing's Collected Works Anthologies Work

This One Belongs to the Reds

Big News

Light and Song

Act 1 Scene 1

Act 1 Scene 2

Act 1 Scene 3

Act 1 Scene 4

Act 1 Scene 5

Act 1 Scene 6

Act 2 Scene 1

Act 2 Scene 2

Act 2 Scene 3

Act 2 Scene 4

Act 2 Scene 5

Act 2 Scene 6

Act 3 Scene 1

Swing

How Bard and Book Publishing's Collected Works Anthologies Work:

Bard and Book Publishing offers authors' short stories for free to reader-subscribers. Each time an author releases a new completed work, this anthology is updated to reflect the new content. Content can include short stories, poems, plays, or full length novels. To obtain an updated edition, you merely need to go back to the original Smashword's page, and provided you have already purchased the work, Smashwords will allow you to re-download the new version. This applies even if you have 'purchased' the book via coupons issued only to Bard and Book reader-subscribers. For more information visit: http://www.bardandbook.com.

This One Belongs to the Reds

The funny thing about tennis, my Grandpa used to tell me, is that no matter how hard you work, no matter how good you get, you'll never be as good as a wall.

My Grandpa didn't like most sports. Football players, he said, are nothing but drunks in training. Golf is what rich people do when they don't want anyone to call them lazy. And soccer? Well, I'm a civilized person so I'll refrain from sharing his thoughts on that.

For my Grandpa, there was only ever one sport in the American landscape worthy of attention and that sport, of course, was baseball. We used to sit on his porch in the summer, listening late into the evening as Marty Brenneman and Joe Nuxhall called the games on 700 WLW, the big AM talker in Cincinnati. Marty with his sharp wit and Joe with his everyman charm made for more pleasant evenings than I can count. I always enjoyed just being there, grandpa with his leathery skin and tick glasses, me with my short arms reaching up for the rests, wishing I could be just a little bigger so I could rest my head in my hand the way he always did.

Don't worry, Joe, he told me. You'll grow up one of these days.

Nuh uh, I said. I'm gonna be little forever.

Grandpa was more than just your average fan, though. He knew all the statistics, he'd read every baseball book our small library had to offer and he devoured the morning box scores like a Baptist reading his Bible. The man had an encyclopedic knowledge of the game, and he relished the chance to share it.

Do you know who has the most career doubles? he asked.

No, Grandpa.

Tris Speaker. 792. Do you know who they called 'The Sultan of Swat'?

Babe Ruth?

That's right. He hit so many homeruns they called Yankee Stadium 'The House that Ruth Built.'

What's Yankee Stadium? I asked.

So he told me everything he knew. He told me about Lou Gehrig, the Iron Horse, who played over two thousand straight games without resting. He told me about Cool Papa Bell, who ran the bases faster than Jessie Owens could run the same distance in a straight line. He told me about his favorite player, Johnny Vander Meer, who threw two no hitters in a row and how, for that week, he was the greatest pitcher ever to play the game.

He gave me a ride home from the ballpark once, Grandpa said. I was fifteen years old, and I was waiting for the bus with my friends when one of those big, black Fords pulled up next to us. He hung his head out the window, said, 'Hey guys. Need a lift?' Of course we said yes. And he drove us all the way home.

What was he like? I asked.

Don't know. We was all too scared to talk so none of us said anything the whole way.

While he was fond of the majors, Grandpa's love of the game was born out of a childhood spent playing it in the neighborhood alleys and parks with his friends. They'd run a game at any time of the day, in any season, as long as there was an empty field and enough people willing to put up with whatever atrocities Ohio's manic weather had in store. These were his best stories.

There was the time he got thrown out of a game for tackling the catcher on a close play at home. There was the summer it rained every day for a week and the local creeks spilled over their banks, washing out baseball for nearly a month. And there was the city championship of 1935 when, in the bottom of the ninth with the game on the line, Grandpa threw a ball ten feet wide of first base. The ball went into the stands, hitting a fat woman directly in the face.

What happened? I asked, desperate to know the outcome.

She started screaming at me, that's what happened. It really hurts when you break your nose. Didn't your mother ever tell you that?

I mean what happened in the game? Did you win?

No, he said. There were men on second and third. Both scored on the error.

How come your team always loses when you tell a story, Grandpa?

All the good baseball stories end that way, he said, smiling a crooked grin.

We'd sit like that for hours, telling stories, listening to the game, watching the sun set and willing the bullpen to hold the lead so at the end of the night we could celebrate a victory with Marty Brenneman's signature phrase, …and this one belongs to the Reds!

It was a good way to spend a summer. It was a good way to spend a childhood.

Like my grandpa, I jumped at the chance to play ball whenever I could, and when I was old enough I joined an official Little League team. Where grandpa was the speedy second baseman with a heart of gold, I was the token fat kid, manning first base defiantly, smacking the ball to all corners of the field, and denouncing the abilities of everyone as I went. My teammates returned the favor by intentionally throwing the ball over my head in practice just to watch me jump and everyone laughed when, after watching me leg out a useless infield grounder, the coach said I ran so slow he had to time me with a calendar instead of a stopwatch.

I made the All Star team my second year, but it didn't have anything to do ability. There was this rule about All Stars. Each team had a representative, no matter how bad they were.