It was the end of the last game of the entire season. The Alpine Cowboys and the Tucson Saguaros were tied four to four at the bottom of the extra inning. The crowd held its collective breath. It was do or die. The stadium was hushed. The Cowboy's batter, Matteo Avallone, from Mahopac, New York, carried the dreams of the Cowboys and fans from Alpine and several not-so-near towns on his shoulders.
Two Cowboys were poised at first and second base, more than ready to race home to break the tie. Matteo delivered a hit that shot the ball high into the night sky. When it sailed down at the edge of the field the Saguaro outfielder caught it but it slipped from his glove. The two Cowboys bounded for home plate and the game became a field of celebration. Players raced to hug, tumble beneath their team, chest bump and drink from champagne bottles. Their championship of the league was complete. Their amazing season of 40 plus wins and single digit losses was over.
The Alpine Cowboy's story is big, but something just as big inside me shifted. I had purposely stayed away from sports and stadiums all my life. What had I been missing all these years? For a while I just let myself roll in the excitement as it swept over us all. There, beside me in this new world I landed on were good-old-boys swigging bottles of beer like water, a young couple with their months-old baby, young professionals, teens on date-night, elder ranch couples with their children and grandkids. I stood among yet-to-be workers, working folk, retired folk, of all sizes, ethnicities, classes and religions. We stood as one, cheering the Cowboys, soaking in the shared glory of their win against the Arizona Saguaros, well-matched competitors. Over only three nights of learning about the sport and watching the play-off games, I had come to recognize and admire the players on both teams for their spirit and dedication to the sport.
As Susie and I left Kokernot Field, built in the 1947, as a replica of Chicago's Wrigley Field, and we drove in the pitch of the desert between Alpine and Fort Davis, I began my mental reckoning of what the nights of baseball had done to me.
We had watched both teams move forward in their fight for a league championship. Why was the experience so full of meaning for me? Here was my first clue. While I am new to baseball, my family history has a fat chapter in it about the sport and my father's love of the game. "You can too, Cantu!!" Adolfo would shout from the stands to cheer the Douglas Copper King's best batter in the 1940's and 50's. Baseball was the man's obsession as my siblings tell it. Though Adolfo died when I was only three, the stories of his love of baseball--and especially since I've come to appreciate the game, too-- fill in many of the blanks in my understanding who Adolfo was.
As a hard laborer at a copper smelter, and as a father who loved his family, Adolfo provided for his wife and children to the best of his ability. As a baseball fan, though, Adolfo was his own man. My sister remembers as if seventy years ago was yesterday: "Don't speak to him while he listens to the game on the radio on away games. He became desperately sad when the Copper Kings lost. It was worse if the players lost a home game. Don't say a word in the car on the drive home. But! When the Copper Kings won, Dad was over the moon. He would buy us all ice cream cones on the way home! We loved winning nights!"
Those are some of the few strokes on the broad and mostly blank canvas that is, for me, my Dad. They are lots less than many, but more than some people have. They tell me plenty about Adolfo's spirit, who I recognize at times in my siblings, my self and always in the sparks of energy and enthusiasm for life and joy in my nieces and nephews.
My reckoning with the winning night's impact was not only about Adolfo's passion, but it was also tied to being American and our family's identity. The wave that washed over the crowd was about winning and I was a part of it. That surprised me especially in the West Texas outpost of Alpine. This cheering and celebration was for the team, the region and all it stands for. That included me!
This made me question the frames of my identity. For all of my life, I somehow allowed others to define me, to hyphenate and make me the other. First as Mexican American, next as a Latina. Proud as I am of those identities, they carry an undisclosed cost. Being named as something other than plain American, being labelled a hyphenated American by some unknown statistician or government budget officer is a burden that has robbed me of precious energy. The irony is that Adolfo Cuellar Jr.'s family had lived and worked in Texas for five generations. His people were here before Texas was a thought, much less a state, yet by the accounting of the Census and for other purposes of those governing, he --and by extension our family-- was not plain and simple --American.
I drove and thought about the effect of the wave that washed over the celebrating crowd in the stands of Kokernot Field. For me it was transforming. It washed away some of the silt of carrying identities imposed on me before I could question or reject them. All of this made clear from a baseball game. The tension of being at the brink of losing, then the cheering and celebration of the win, all among strangers who were just like me, it turned for me a new page.
Those strangers watching the close game were as scared, then as thrilled, as I was. Watching the players give it their all, we were 'in this together,' whether we left Kokernot Stadium with our tails tucked beneath us, or wagging in joy.
Citizenship alone does not create community. That sense of unity which the baseball game temporarily provided, was enough to show me that my story is still evolving. New information. New ways of thinking.
I know, the differences between the people standing shoulder to shoulder last night are great. There are many distinctions in history and heritage, class, education and politics. There are still the ancient resentments, injuries, hurts and pain, but soaring above these, like the ball that shot from the Cowboy batter's amazing force, the possibilities are now shown to me: There is always a clean page to write, always the next step in the journey. These mean more than differences. The future awaits all of our hands to create it.
