UNCLE LEO

My Uncle Leo is a sad man – a good man, but unhappy, cranky, too. My experience is that almost all of the eighty-year olds that I’ve known are cynical about what my Dad used to call “the human condition.” But Leo’s behavior went well beyond run-of-the-mill existential despair. I’m not a psychiatrist, but I would have to say that Leo was deeply depressed.

He lived alone on the top floor of a three flat apartment building on Bell Avenue in the Chicago neighborhood of Rogers Park. Leo, my aunt Millie and their two children, my cousins Larry and Nora, had moved into the three-bedroom/one bathroom apartment in 1958. Aunt Millie died six years ago. Larry is a lawyer in Los Angeles. Nora was killed in an automobile accident when she was eighteen.

Leo complained bitterly about how his neighborhood had gone to hell. How all the “towel heads” made it seem like he was living in Calcutta or Lahore, although he had never been to these places. Still, Leo continued to live in the Rogers Park apartment – continued to plow up the three flights of dimly lighted stairs even though the climb had become increasingly difficult for an old man suffering from arthritis and diabetes.

“One of these days, Max, I’m going to drop dead on these stairs. Or maybe the stink of the Paki cooking will kill me”, he told me.

Leo hadn’t always been this way. I remember that he rarely missed any of my baseball games when I pitched for Senn High School. It was Leo who taught me to throw a curve ball. Leo who took me to at least a half dozen Cub games every season.

My Dad, Sam, Leo’s only sibling, wasn’t much of a sports fan and didn’t have any free time. He worked seven days a week running his Downtown currency exchange. Leo, on the other hand, liked to say that he was his own boss. As an independent representative for three furniture manufacturers, Leo proudly told me that he worked on his own time schedule.

He was a lifelong Cub fan and I suppose that it was inevitable that he passed along that disease to me. If you don’t follow professional baseball, I need to explain that Cub fans are a special breed – reflexively loyal followers of a team that hasn’t won a World Series in over a hundred years.

The truth is that I was Leo’s only friend. Most of his old gang had died or moved somewhere warm so that they could avoid Chicago’s punishing winters. Those few who remained weren’t especially eager to spend time with Leo. Not surprising because, to be fair, Leo wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. Except for his undiminished regard for the Cubs and Israel, he didn’t much care about anything. Somehow though, Leo and I got along. In fact, after my dad died, Leo and I became even closer. Probably because I was his only real family. As for his son, Leo had a long- ago dispute with Larry and they hadn’t seen each other for over ten years. Although Larry had tried to reconcile a couple of times, Leo was stubborn and petulant.

“Look, he’s got his life in L.A. and I’ve got mine. The last time I saw him, he acted like he was doing me a big favor. He kept looking at his watch. So let it be. I don’t need anything from him.”

I made a point of having lunch or dinner with Leo once a week. For lunch, I’d pick him up at his apartment to make sure that his place wasn’t a total mess and that he had enough food on hand. Then, I’d drive us to the Bagel Deli on North Broadway. Leo’s order never changed: half a lean corn beef on rye and a bowl of chicken and matzo ball soup. Once in a while, I persuaded him to get a whole sandwich and to take the uneaten half back home. For dinner, I’d take him to my home in Highland Park where he’d spend a few awkward hours with my wife Janet and my two boys Tommy and Sean. I say ‘awkward’ because my kids were not especially interested in Israeli politics – Leo’s main subject of conversation other than the Cubs, and unfortunately, my sons were into soccer, not baseball and, in spite of my urging, neither had a dot of interest in the Cubs.

“Soccer! Only foreigners play soccer. What’s wrong with baseball?” Leo asked.

Tommy and Sean were polite, but clearly they were convinced that Uncle Leo was pretty weird. Janet just rolled her eyes.

It was early April when I got a phone call from Donny Gordon at my accounting office. Donny is an old friend and an internist. He’s also Leo’s and my primary physician.

“Hey Donny, I already had my annual check up and passed with flying colors. Are you trying to rustle up some more business or did you just misread my test results?”

“You, I’m happy to say, are in excellent health. I’m calling about Leo. I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing telling you, but I’m concerned about him and I think that you should know about it.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Look, he suffers from bad arthritis like a lot of elderly people. He also has diabetes which is pretty much under control. It’s not the physical stuff that worries me. It’s what’s going on in his head.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think he’s suicidal.”

“I know he’s kind of bitter, but suicide?”

“Well, he never said it in so many words, but he says things like, why is he just hanging around – just taking up space?”

“I think maybe he’s just talking. You know, just lonely, not suicidal.”

“Max, he asked me what would happen if he took a whole bunch of his Hydrocodon pills or injected too much insulin.”

“Jesus!”

“Max, you’ve known me a long time. I’m no alarmist. I think you need to be concerned. “

“Did you talk to him about maybe seeing a shrink?”

“I mentioned it and he told me very firmly to forget about it. Then he changed the subject.”

“What do you think I should do?”

“He likes you Max. As far as I can tell, you’re in a group of one, so he might listen to you. Frankly, there’s no one else.”

Leo woke up as usual about three thirty for his first piss of the night. He’d been dreaming again of Milly – of how they used to go to Cub games. How she loved Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks. How they’d sit in the bleachers and how she’d get sunburned even wearing her big floppy hat and applying tons of suntan lotion. He loved those days . . . could almost feel the warm sun on his face. Now he shivered in the early April night and cursed his cheap Paki landlord for shutting down the heat this early in the year.

This was the worst time of the night for him because once he was awake, it was hard for him to get back to sleep. So he lay there – cold and stiff with arthritis. And he worried. Not so much about dying – not the actual end of life. He was pretty much ready to call it a ballgame. What worried him was the prospect of a long, painful death, of wasting away in some nursing home – warehouses for the old and dying he called them. His mother had spent the last two years of her life in one of those dismal and costly dumps. The last year, she didn’t even know who he was. He didn’t want to wind up that way.

Face it, he didn’t have much going for him. He made a mental check list: Health, lousy. Friends, except for Max, zero. Money, running out. Why was he hanging on? He had had his day and now the best thing to do was to leave the scene while he still had all of his marbles – was his own man – not some zombie. Five o’clock – time to piss again.

Donny Gordon’s phone call had a strong impression on me. But I didn’t have any idea of what to do to deter Leo from his suicidal scheme, if that’s what he really had in mind. Confronting him directly wouldn’t work. Leo would just shine me on. He was too wily for a direct approach.

A solution to the Leo dilemma popped up from an unlikely source: the long losing Chicago Cubs started the season by winning their first ten games. That’s right, ten wins, no losses. The media was beating the drums. The pennant-starved fans were already talking World Series. I was even more than a little excited myself. Most important, the Cubs’ strong start had brought some sunshine into Leo’s life. Even the April weather was cooperating with seventy-degree temperatures and no rain.

I scored two tickets for the first game of the Cardinal series. Not cheap. Cub tickets, usually fairly easy to get and not expensive this early in the season were now a hot

commodity. Although Leo tried to act blasé about the Cubs’ great start, I could see

 that he was excited to go to the game and when the Cubs won two to one in the ninth inning, I actually heard my world-weary uncle croak out the Cub’s victory song:

“Go Cub go! Go Cubs go! In Chicago whaddayasay, the Cubs are gonna win today.”

When he caught my amused reaction, Leo gave me an embarrassed smile and said,

“What the hell, Max. They’re eleven and zip.”

By the All-Star break in July, the amazing Cubs were sixty-five and fifteen. I’m not kidding! They were leading the division by ten games and had the best record in all of baseball. Leo and I had already been to six Cub games. Most of all I had never seen Leo so up. He even looked a lot better, his usual gray pallor replaced by a kind of ruddiness. And Donny Gordon informed me that Leo’s last check up was the best he had had in years. And not a word from Leo about the futility of his life. All he could talk about was his Cubs.

“I’m not saying they’ll go all the way, but they got a hell of a team. They’re playing like a real solid ball club. Let’s put it this way, I’m hopeful.”

If this were a fairy tale, the Cubs would win the pennant and the World Series and Leo would become the happiest, friendliest guy in the city – kind of like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. But this story is about the Cubs and Chicago.

In early August, the Cubs dropped nine games in a row. They went from doing everything right to doing about everything wrong. Pitchers couldn’t throw a strike. And when they finally did, the batters crushed the fat pitches they got. Cub batters went from being sluggers to just being slugs. Infielders couldn’t catch a ball and when they did, their throws were rarely in the vicinity of their intended destinations. Outfielders lost fly balls in the sun on cloudy days. The manager, who the media had praised as a genius, they now proclaimed was an idiot. The players all of whom had been the best of pals, now suspected each other of various kinds of personal treachery and plotted revenge. The general reaction among Cub fans was along the lines of that it had all been too good to last – after all, they pointed out, it’s the Cubs. And so it went through the entire month.

Remarkably, Leo would have nothing to do with all the bad mouthing. When I expressed my disillusionment, Leo scolded me.

“Come on Max, don’t quit on them now. Remember, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

“The tough get going? Where did you get that?”

“Don’t be a smart ass. The Cubs have been my team all my life. I’m telling you that they can get the magic back. We all gotta hang in there.”

Frankly, I was so impressed that a big time depressive like Leo wasn’t spiraling back down into a black funk, that I determined not to desert Leo or the Cubs. If Leo could remain optimistic, who was I to lose faith.

And surprise, surprise, the Cubs started to play better. No, they weren’t playing the way they had in the first half of the season, but they got better. At least they were winning more games than they were losing. By Labor Day they were neck and neck

with the Cardinals for the division lead. Then they took two of three from the Cardinals and swept Cincinnati in another three-game series. With about a month of the season to go, the Cubs were on top of the National League Central Division and Leo was a man on a mission.

“I feel it Max. I really do. They can go all the way. I know they always fold but I honest to God believe that this team is different.”

And you know what, maybe they were because they wrapped up their division title the last week of the regular season when they took a two-game series from Houston. The Chicago Cubs were in the playoffs.

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Our winners opened the playoffs against the Los Angeles Dodgers, a powerhouse that had won a hundred and one games during the regular season. The odds makers had the Cubs as an eight to five underdog. Leo and I watched the opener, which was played in Los Angeles, from my home in Highland Park. The Cubs looked nervous and it showed. They lost six to zip.

“It’s just one game, Max.” Leo admonished me. And when they lost the second game, two to one on a wild pitch, Leo was undeterred.

“I’m not bailing out and you better not either sonny. The game coulda gone either way.”

“Coulda gone either way? Come on, Leo, what a cliché.”

“So what! I’ll give you another one. You gotta believe.”

What concerned me most was that, in spite of Leo’s bravado, one more loss would eliminate the Cubs and might have Leo figuring out how many Hydrocodon pills it would take to eliminate him.

I managed to get two tickets to the Cub opener at Wrigley Field from a friend who knew someone who knew someone. The price was about the same as one of my monthly home mortgage payments. Leo was so excited I worried that he would have a stroke before we ever got to the ballpark. We arrived an hour and a half early. The scene around the Wrigley Field was electric. For those of you who don’t know, Wrigley Field, unlike almost all other major league ballparks, is located in a vibrant neighborhood on Chicago’s Northside brimming with a wide variety of restaurants, bars, stores, apartment buildings and condos. Wrigleyville, as it is called today, is kind of upscale. When I was a kid, it was pretty much blue collar. I’ve been to games at some of the new mega ballparks. To me, they feel like those huge shopping malls isolated from the real life of the cities around them. Wrigley is something else altogether. Relatively small and old. Capacity just north of forty-two thousand. The outfield walls are covered in ivy and the field is real grass, the kind that’s planted and grown, not manufactured.

When we climbed the stairs from the artificially lighted area of concession stands under the stadium and emerged into the bright October light, Leo stood still and surveyed the field and the stands already filled with ecstatic fans and shook his head in wonder.

“It’s amazing. I’ve been coming to this place for maybe seventy years, but I still get the shivers every time. It never changes.”

I squeezed my uncle’s shoulder.

“Let’s see some baseball Leo.”

The game turned out to be a slug fest. The Cubs hit four homeruns and the Dodgers two. Final score Cubs ten – Dodgers six. The Cubs were still alive and so very much was Leo; although, by the end of the game, he was so hoarse from screaming, he could barely talk.

“Maxie, we’re still in it. Hell of a game,” he rasped.

The next game was a pitchers’ duel that the Cubs won two to nothing tying the series at two all. The deciding game would be in Los Angeles. Leo and I had lunch on the travel day at the Bagel. Leo couldn’t stop talking to me and to everybody else in the deli including our middle-aged waitress, Brenda. He actually flirted with her.

“What’s with him,” she asked me while Leo was gabbing with another customer.

For years he’s silent Sam and now he’s all of a sudden Mister Personality.”

Leo told me that he wanted to watch the deciding game at his apartment.

“I love your kids and Janet, but I don’t want any distractions. Anyway, when we watched at your house last time, they lost. I’m superstitious.”

“Your place is okay by me.”

I didn’t want any distractions either. Especially if Leo went berserk or dropped dead during the game. Also, Leo had a new, big screen television – the only new thing in his apartment.

The game was one that will be talked about for years. Our Cubs, down five to two in the eight inning, tied it in the ninth and then scored the go ahead run in the eleventh. The Dodgers had the last at bat and when they loaded the bases with only one out, I think I heard my atheist Uncle mumble a prayer. The next Dodger batter hit a sharp ground ball back to the pitcher that the Cubs nimbly turned into a game-ending double play. Leo is not a hugger, but after that final out, he crushed me in an embrace that actually took my breath away.

“What did I tell you, boychek. You gotta believe.”

The Chicago Cubs were Division Champs and would now move on the National League Championship Series.

There was a two-day hiatus before the start of the National League seven-game Championship Series. I was glad because I needed a rest after all the craziness of the Dodgers-Cubs battle. Not Leo. He was like a politician running for office – glad-handing everyone – calling people he hadn’t seen in years, replaying the highlights of the last Cub victory. He even complimented his Pakistani landlord on his landscaping ability. Definitely, Mister Personality.

The Cubs opponent in the League Championship was the Philadelphia Phillies. They were a hot ball club having swept their division series with Atlanta. As a matter of fact, the Phillies had won eighteen of the last twenty games they had played. Worse yet, they had pummeled our boys during the regular season by taking seven of eight games. Vegas made the Cubs a nine to five underdog.

The Cubs and Phillies split the first two games which were played in Philadelphia. Leo was very positive about that result.

“All we gotta do now is win our home games and we’re going to the World Series. No problem.”

But the valiant Cubbies lost the opener in Chicago. It was a well-played game on both sides with the Phillies edging us three to two. Leo cautioned me to remain calm – that this was only a temporary setback.

I had finagled tickets to the second home game. Let’s not talk money. What I will tell you is that Leo pressed five one-hundred dollar bills on me and said,

 “I know this has been costing you an arm and a leg, Max. I want you to know I appreciate it. I’m not a schnorrer. This won’t pay you back for everything, but maybe it’ll help.”

The game – what can I say – it was pure joy – a blowout with the Cubs winning eleven to two. The Cubs never looked better – Leo, too. And the good vibes carried over to the next game which the now confident Northsiders took five to three. Heading back to Philly, our boys were up three games to two and needed only one victory to put them in their first World Series since 1945.

Possibly just about everyone in Chicago was beyond nervous desperately hoping that this would be the magic year that the Cubs would finally win it all, but dreading the wrenching disappointment of a Cub collapse. Could you blame them? Remember this is a ball club with a long, long history of failure. But not this time. They marched into Philadelphia and scored five runs in the first inning and proceeded to beat the hell out of the Phillies. Final score Cubs twelve – Phillies two. The confident Cubs were World Series bound. Their opponent, winner of twenty- seven World Series and the most renowned team in baseball history: the New York Yankees.

I expected Leo to go nuts – like everyone else in the city, the State of Illinois and a good part of the United States, but he was as calm and composed as a general preparing for a great battle. He meticulously reviewed with me each of the Yankees including pitchers and utility players – noting their strengths and weaknesses and comparing them quite objectively to their Cubs’ counterparts. His conclusion: The Yanks were better on paper, but the Cubs had the edge in intangibles.

“We got destiny on our side, Maxie.”

And Leo told me something else that shocked and pleased me. He said that he had phoned his estranged son, Larry, and that he was glad that they had finally talked.

“It’s funny Max. I don’t even remember exactly why we stopped talking. I know . . . sometimes I can be a jerk, but what am I waiting for? I’m eighty. He’s the only kid I have left. It’s time.”

The next day I got a phone call from Larry. He asked me if I could get three tickets for one of the Series games and offered to pay for all the tickets. And he told me not

to tell his father that he was going to fly to Chicago for the game. I told him that I appreciated his generous offer, but that I didn’t expect him to pay for everything.

“Please Max, don’t misunderstand. I don’t want you to think I’m acting like a big shot about the tickets. I know they’re very expensive. I’d just like to do something for Dad and for you, too.”

“I’ll tell you what, Larry. If I can even get tickets, you pay for your ticket and we’ll split the price of Leo’s.”

“That’s very considerate. Let me know the date as soon as you can. Just leave my ticket at Will Call and I’ll meet you both at the seats. But don’t let Dad know I’ll be there”.

“I won’t say a word.”

I pulled every string I could, begged and pleaded and finally was allowed to hand over a small fortune to buy three not so very good tickets far down and high up along the left field line. We had our three World-Series tickets to game number four at Wrigley Field.

I gave Larry the news and he told me that he would arrive in Chicago late the night before the game and would, as planned, meet Leo and me at our seats. Again, he told me not to tell Leo about his coming to the game.

The Cubs played well in the first two games at Yankee Stadium, but the Yanks played

better. The New Yorkers won both games – the first four to two and the second a heartbreaking loss when the Yankees scored two runs in the bottom of the ninth inning to edge us three to two.

Leo and I, as usual, watched both games at his apartment. He remained calm, even strangely subdued, even when the Yankees rallied to win game two. At the end of the game, he spoke to me as a seasoned commander might to one of his officers after losing a skirmish.

“Don’t panic boy. We lost a battle – not the war. This is a seven-game series. We’ve only played two and we got the next three back here.”

“Lose the battle – win the war. What is that? Another saying from the Book of Leo Berns?

Leo allowed me a half smile.

When the Yanks crushed us in the opener at Wrigley Field to take a three to nothing lead in the Series; the mood in the city reflected the dark storm clouds that were forming over Lake Michigan and I was relieved that I had tickets to game four because I feared that there might not be a game five.

Leo, on the other hand, was spouting an anthology of bromides which included: Back to the Wall, Darkest Before the Dawn, Take it One Game at a Time and, the fore mentioned, You Gotta Believe.

“We’re their lucky charm, Max. Remember, we haven’t lost in the Playoffs when you and I are there. And tomorrow, we’re gonna be there and we’re gonna win. Count on it.”

It rained that night – a cold, steady rain and I worried that the game would be called off. But by morning the sun rose on a clear, crisp autumn day.

Although the game wouldn’t start until two, Leo told me to pick him up at noon. When I pulled up to his apartment building, he was already waiting downstairs.

Ordinarily, he wore an old, beaten-up Cub cap, but today he sported a Cub jacket as well.

“I didn’t know you owned a Cub jacket Leo.”

“I’ve had it for years, but I only wear it for special occasions like today. Milly gave it to me.”

“Well, you’re looking good uncle.”

We got to our seats about an hour before the start of the game and the ballpark was already packed and thick with a loud blend of excitement and hope. Even the rooftop stands that lined Wrigley Field along Waveland and Sheffield Avenues across from the ballpark were crowded with noisy fans. I couldn’t help but wonder what they had paid for their long-distance viewing privileges.

It was only ten minutes before game time and I was getting anxious. Larry wasn’t here. Maybe his flight got delayed. Maybe the rain. Maybe there was some kind of screw up at Will Call. Maybe I should phone him. Then, as the announcer instructed the crowd to stand for the singing of the National Anthem, a tall bald guy holding an obviously brand new Cub cap quietly slipped into the space next to Leo and touched his arm.

“Hi Dad.”

If you’re lucky, sometime in your life – maybe for a minute – maybe for an hour – maybe for an entire day – everything comes together and you’re absolutely happy. You feel that the gods have smiled especially on you – that you’ve got it all figured out. No problems. No worries. No fears. Perfect peace and exhilaration all at once. This afternoon was one of those extraordinary times.

The Cubs played flawlessly and humbled the mighty Yankees six to one. The cheering never stopped. High-fivers all around. The stranger sitting next to you was your best pal. You loved the Cubs. You loved everyone in the ballpark and outside, too. And maybe the happiest of the happy was Leo. He laughed. He screamed. He talked non-stop to his son, Larry. By the end of the game, father and son were finishing each other’s sentences, kidding, joking, recounting old family stories. Leo was telling everyone in our vicinity.

“Hey, I got my son here – came in all the way from L.A. to join me. Go Cubs go! I’m gonna spend some time with him out there this winter. Maybe you can introduce me to a movie star, Larry.”

The following night, the three of us gathered at Leo’s to watch game five. I wish that I could tell you that the Cubbies made history by staging the greatest comeback in World Series history. They didn’t. They lost that night. The Yanks were Champs again. But it didn’t matter, Leo told us.

“Wait ‘til next year.”