Take a Little Time

“It’s a beautiful day, no thoughts on my mind. We should have done this sooner,” James said to me as we shared an hour of our lives with one another.

We have lived in the same building for a year. James lives with his wife, who would smile at me when we walked out of the building together, but one of those smiles that you would not remember if you had to identify it in a police lineup. I smiled the same way back. James and I would at least say a few words, something like “How’s it going?” and “Have a good one.” Generic responses for generic conversation.

Until today.

We sat in the backyard and our 180 degree separation of lives and history converged. “You know, when I was growing up on the West Side of Chicago as a black man, we were just hoping to get to age 30. I’m not saying this for sympathy or for any dramatic effect. It was the motha fuckin truth. For a kid with no money, the first time we put our hands on that shit we finally felt like something. How old are you?”

I told him I am twenty three. His face dropped. “You’re only 23!! And you’re already in graduate school? Shit, I can’t believe it. I thought you at least were 30.”

“Maybe it’s my beard,” I told him, not exactly sure how to respond.

“Most 23 year olds are college dropouts where I’m from, if they are lucky. And you made it straight through. Damn, that’s good shit.” He could hardly believe it.

It was one of those humbling yet uncomfortable moments, where there was nothing to apologize for, but nothing that could really explain my situation either. “I was lucky, privileged, supported,” I responded, “I had no other issues to worry about except college. That was it. College was my only option.”

“We all got that shit, and not everybody gets through college like that.”

It is true—the majority of college students do not graduate in four years. In fact, only 28% of Americans hold a degree at all. But it was never a question for me. For whatever reason.

“You know, I had a different kind of schooling, and I wouldn’t want it any other way,” he told me, very proud of where he is at today. “I own a barber shop. Once I saw money for the first time, I wanted it. I graduated high school and started working at a bank. That’s the job. I started in the mail room, and before long I was a teller. You can move up in that business if you work a little at it. I could have been a personal banker in five years!”

“But I always loved cutting hair. It is like an art, and I guess I just had it. And my dad knew it. He saw how good I was at it, and he told me to go for it. It was hard for me to give up my banking job, but I knew I had to do it.”

James and I lived in the same apartment for a year, and I knew nothing about him. We left the same door, lived our own lives, and really, there was no reason that I should know him. Different ages, different upbringing, different friends.

Unless I need a haircut.

That’s how we think. What can my new friend do for me. What can I get out of him. I think it’s an American thing: new friends are people who can help you out in some way. Nothing more, nothing less.

So James could cut my hair.

“Being a barber is a special thing. We are everything: an artist, a businessman, a counselor,” he said to me. “I never know who is going to walk in that door and sit in my chair. It could be a man who just got out of prison, a gangbanger, or a prominent businessman. People tell me everything. They are looking for comfort. If their wife just cheated on them, if they robbed the shit out of a liquor store and have a search warrant against them, you name it. I’ve heard it.”

But he is there for them. Like he was there for me today, chatting it up, having a good time. Enjoying one another’s company. The same company that we could have enjoyed a year earlier, had we simply made the opportunity. As the cliché goes, “Life is full of missed opportunities.”

We grew up in different worlds, with what originally seemed different goals and options. And perhaps that is true. But throughout the whole conversation, we kept looking at each other and saying, “Why didn’t we do this a lot sooner.” We should have.

It’s true, if I need a haircut James could cut my hair. But if I need a friend, James is there for me as well.

Baseball Bangers

“If I got a hundred dollars for every time a teacher would tell me ‘if he doesn’t have baseball he would be a gangbanger,’ I would be a rich man.”

These words drove him crazy.

Its not often you have the chance to meet a man of honesty. A man who dedicates five years of his life to be a volunteer baseball coach, so that he could change lives. Change the game. Use baseball as a means to education.

“You know,” he would tell me. “If these kids want to play baseball, they can get a 2.5. It’s not that hard. You go to class, turn in your assignments, you will get a 2.5.” He sees this as a problem. He gets sick of having college coaches call him up. Ask him what the students grades are, and he tells them that the player is hovering around a 2.1. “Call me when he gets a 2.5,” says the college coach. And slams down the phone. And the conversation ends there. Along with the season.

Welcome to the Chicago innercity baseball league. A lesson of standards and respect.

I met this coach at a local bar. He lived baseball. The season is over, and this coach is still wearing his high school team’s baseball hat and jersey. You could smell the sweat of a long season, a season that ended with a loss. But with pride. Successful. Over.

Tomorrow, the White Sox invited his team to the game versus the Yankees. Front row seats, batting practice with the manager, a chance to meet their idols face to face. Three of these kids may even be there one day. The recent Chicago Magazine article even highlighted this success: three Division one players, staying close to home so that they can play in front of their families. Homegrown in West Chicago. Maybe they will even play for the White Sox one day.

The coach, my new friend, will never forget the legend, who loomed over this team for a devastatingly long 20 years. “I’ll never forget my first year as a coach with this team,” he told me with a subtle hint of nostalgia. “I had been an assistant coach for four games, and we were on the bus, and one of the players started mouthing off about the head coach. ‘This is bullshit,’ the player complained. Another player chimed in, ‘yeah, what the hell.’ The legend overheard, and was clearly annoyed. When the bus pulled up to the field, the team exited the bus. The legend told his assistants to stay put. The team exited the bus, and walked to the field, waiting for their coach—their leader—to lead them. He stayed put, along with his assistants. ‘If they think they know everything, let them coach. Fuck em.’ The team kept looking back, until they realized the coaches weren’t leaving. They were forced to make the lineup on their own. They kept looking back to the bus to see when their leader would finally give in and lead them. He stayed put. The game started, and they were still without a coach. Each inning, they looked back to the bus. Nothing. The game ended. They got killed. ‘I hope they learned their fucking lesson,’ the coach snarled.”

It was a lesson of respect. Of learning from those who know, of questioning an authority that is not supposed to be questioned.

The new coach, my friend, just laughed. “He sure was something,” he said of his old boss.

“I love baseball,” he told me. “I grew up playing the sport, watching it on tv, driving past ball fields and not being able to keep going. I had to stop and watch. It is a part of me. But it’s a game. These kids have to be accountable to their game, their passion, their sport. If I have a student with a 1.9 GPA who can throw, what good is it? They still won’t go to college. They probably won’t make the pros, and what then? We have baseball, we have leverage, and we must use it.”

And he told me the stories. Of how one of his players got an F in his English class. The student went the following day to his teacher, told her that he has a family problem, and she let him redo it. She changed the grade to a C. When my friend the baseball coach went and asked the teacher why she changed the grade, she responded, “He needs to play baseball. Its all he has. If he doesn’t have baseball, he will join a gang.”

He cringed. Again and again.

The coach just instituted a new policy: each player must receive a 2.5 or above to play on the team. The state’s rule is 2.0. There are just too many innercity kids who cannot reach a 2.5, and we don’t want to prevent them from playing baseball. That’s how he says the State sees it, and he’s sick of it. “If they really want to play baseball, they can get a 2.5,” he tells me. “We will help them, support them, but I know they can get a 2.5. These kids are not stupid.” And he had to fight for this rule. Hard. Nobody thought the players could do it.

The low standards drive him crazy. “We are telling these kids that they cannot do it, they cannot make it. Of course if you tell them that, and give them an out, they are not going to succeed. We have baseball, a game of respect. The highest standard they have ever had in their life. Lets use it.”

He tells the story of one of his players. The kid received two Fs in his latest classes and was suspended for the next game. At this game, the player’s father showed up. The father was a prominent preacher in the community. When his son did not take the field, the preacher asked the coach, “Why isn’t my son playing?” “Because he’s been suspended because he got two Fs in his classes,” the coach answered. “He did?” replied the preacher dumbfounded.

The legend built a program based on standards and respect. You didn’t question him, or you worried that he may not lead you and coach your team. So did the new coach, by using baseball as a means to promote higher educational standards and encourage the players to succeed in the classroom. You don’t meet the requirements, you don’t play. If you don’t respect yourself, you can’t lead yourself. Both are lessons in respect.

“Just please don’t tell me they’ll be gangbangers,” said the coach.