Non-Commissioned

So maybe Kenny Davis and I would be Best Men at each other's teenage weddings, rather than go to Vietnam, but that was in the future.

In the present was the issue of team captaincy.

About halfway through the season, coach announced that he would name a captain. To formalize leadership, recognize ability - maybe acknowledge valor; I don't remember. Easy to make fun of (it's only Little League), but there it was, a real thing, status conferred, so you had to take it seriously.

Or I did, as that kind of kid.

Coach was going to wait a while to decide. He hadn't yet, he said. We would each have the chance to step up and earn it for ourselves, he said, or to lobby for someone else.

"What do you think?," I said to Kenny. "Should it be you, or me?"

"What do you think?," Kenny said. "We either have a chance?" His look said No.

"What do you mean?," I said, responding to that look. "Of course we do. Who plays harder than us?"

"We get dirty," he acknowledged. "But, come on. Konnie is the boy."

"Konnie" was Tommy Konwinski, our star pitcher. Big and strong, he also had a mean streak that intimidated foes.

The trouble was, it affected teammates just as much, if not more. Make a bad play and he might show you up on the field. Make a key out at bat and he'd rank you out on the bench.

"Konnie," I said derisively. "He don't lead, he - ", and I stopped, lost for words, for once.

"He leads the way coach sees it," Kenny said.

"Me and you are out here every week early and late, helping other kids with their game," I said.

"I'm not saying me or you don't deserve it. I'm saying we're not going to get it."

I frowned. No words.

"And me," Kenny said. "I got an even extra reason." He touched his fingers to his face.

"Oh, man," I said. We had never discussed race before. This was a hard place to start.

"Come on, man," he said. "It's like your grandmama said about wishing."

Huh. I had told him once how our grandmother helped raise us. And when we'd say, as kids will, that I wish this, or I wish that, she would scowl, comically, and glare, and bark in her brogue, so heavy with native - or immigrant - fatalism, "Well, wish in one hand and shit in the other, and see which one fills up first."

It surprised me that it stuck with him - enough to remember it, now?

"Kenny, she didn't mean that. She was just being funny."

"Well, it is funny. It's funny because it's true."

I got the feeling he was telling me something, that he knew more about than I did.

Fathers To The Men

Kenny Davis's father worked for the Transit Authority. "Not a driver or engineer," he said, as if expecting the question. I didn't ask. I knew better, as my father worked for Pan Am, but in an office, not a plane.

Likewise, Kenny's father worked in an office, he said, but doing exactly what, he didn't know. "He sure gets up early, though," he said.

He was proud of his father, as I was of mine. About military service, too. Kenny's father had been in the Air Force; mine was a Marine.

"Never would I be a Marine," Kenny said. "They make you dig holes, and if you don't do it fast enough? They hit you in the head with a shovel. Then they make you hold up big bags of sand 'til you cry." We both laughed. "I swear, I saw it in a movie."

"That's what's good about the Air Force, I guess," I said. "They can't make you dig holes in a plane."

"My father told me he ate good in the Air Force," he said.

"My father said in the Marines, if they didn't eat fast enough, they got hit in the head with a pan." More laughs.

"I don't know about the army, now, though," I said. I meant the military in general. "You know about Vietnam?"

"Mmm," Kenny said, which could have meant yes or no.

I followed politics. I wrote in the streets in chalk for LBJ in 1964. I was in the crowd when he campaigned in our neighborhood, driving through in a huge flatbed truck.

I read the News and the Post every day, cover to cover. I watched talk shows on Sunday mornings - and took notes. Oh, yes I did. Aged 7. I knew about Vietnam.

"It's supposed to be a war," I said. "But it's not a war."

"Nobody attacked us, right," Kenny said.

"Yeah," I said. "It's a little country with and jungles and swamps. Steaming hot. People wear pajamas and flip-flops. There's Communists and not-Communists. But nobody has anything.

"It's a million miles from here. We have soldiers over there. They don't even know who we are. But we're killing them, so they're killing us back. They have, like, bayonets. We have bombers, bombing everything. It's insane. It's a sin, even, I think."

That slowed the talk a bit. Kenny was Catholic, too. Sin is serious.

"Why are we doing it?"

"To show who's boss." I paused. "Even to ourselves. They're making kids go. Go over and kill people, and get killed, maybe, because we said so. If you don't, you go to jail.

"But if you go to college, you don't have to go. That's for rich people. Although I'll go to college, some way."

"Me, too," Kenny said, bouncing a ball on the ground. "I mean, I want to go anyway."

"Or if you're married? Then you don't go."

"Shit, I'll do both," he said. We both laughed. We generally didn't swear. This was for comic effect, as I think we were starting to scare ourselves. "I know two girls to get married to. Three."

"That's good odds," I said. We were back to joking, I thought; but Kenny said,

"You talk to your father about this?"

"No," I said. "My mother."

"What's she say?"

"We talked all about it. I told her I ain't going to no Vietnam. She said she don't intend to let us. Me and my two brothers."

"It's good to have your mom on your side," he said.

I nodded. "Best," I said.

Team Depth And New Vernacular

Not to discount our coaches, but it is pretty easy putting together a Little League baseball team.

You make the most athletic kid the pitcher. He is your workhorse, in the parlance. He will have to throw and move the most.

The catcher is basically a target. So is the first baseman; so you put big kids there.

The outfielders don't do much, at least in Little League. Not many kids hit soaring rockets out there. Basically, it is helpful if outfielders do not sit down while playing, do not wear their gloves on their heads, and have the presence of mind and the ability to throw balls hit to them back to the infield.

The infielders - second and third base, and shortstop - must be nimble. Most balls will be hit to the shortstop, who is also part of most double plays and relay throws, so he must have a brain, to anticipate moves.

Second base will see less action, as will third; but the third-baseman plays closest to the batter, and will get hard-hit shots, so needs quick reflexes.

Coach noticed, although how could you not, that my reflexes were cat-like, practically supernatural, and I was installed at third base.

I would have been disappointed at not being shortstop - the star position - had the post not gone to Kenny Davis.

He was better, and we had rapport, so I was happy to play next to him.

The level of skill at this level of play was not high, so you mostly just had to pay attention to play well. Kenny and I were set, with laser-like intensity. But we also liked to laugh, and did. We started to emerge as team leaders, in tandem, and became friends.

We talked a lot. I remember him asking me once about errant throws. I made very few. He asked if I had a secret or something.

In fact, I did.

"I don't want to make an error."

"Yeah?," he said, wide-eyed and wagging his head: sarcastic.

I laughed. "Yeah," I said. "But I don't want the other kid to make an error, either. So I think about that when I throw. Make it so he can get it. Help him make a good play. Help the pitcher, too, with the out. If I was doing it just for me, I might mess up. But it's harder to mess up if you're doing it for other people too."

He looked out at the field, then at me.

"You really think like that?"

"Sure," I said.

"That's deep," he said.

I shrugged, one-shoulder. We stopped talking a while. Kenny was looking at the field again. I was thinking about what he said; new vernacular to me.