coprime_recs (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
coprime_recs) wrote2005-08-24 05:00 pm
coprime_recs) wrote2005-08-24 05:00 pm
Entry tags:
due South: That's Where All of the Gangsters Live by minervacat
That's Where All the Gangsters Live (RayK | PG | 4,792 words) is about why RayK loves Chicago. This story is Chicago from the point of view of a native, and the mood and atmosphere are so perfect. It makes me love Chicago as well, and now I want to visit.
Excerpt:
Ray's a Cubs fan because Wrigley was the first stadium he ever saw, with his dad, maybe he was six or seven. He remembers the way the place with the food, it all smelled like piss and beer and cigarette smoke, and he remembers walking up to their upper deck seats. Rattling his fingers along the fence, watching the people on the sidewalk scalping tickets and all wearing bright blue caps, and the air getting lighter, higher they got. He remembers turning the corner out of that ramp, his first baseball mitt tucked under his arm, and then there was all that fuckin' green. In June, in Wrigley, everything's green. Scoreboard and the wall and the field, and it's green on the field and a sea of blue in the stands, and Ray fell, just like that. Fell hard.
Cubs lost to the Cards that day, Ray remembers all of it, it was a slugfest, couple of homers out onto Waveland, and Wrigley was only half full, but it was magic and the Cubs were heroes to him -- bigger than life, like movie stars and the tooth fairy all in one. Afterwards, out by the players' exit, Santo signed a ball for him, and it sits up against the chunk of Comiskey he stole. It's brown and cracked and the ink's smeared, but it's there.
Ray's a Cubs fan because this third baseman who wasn't much more of a kid himself, then, signed a ball for Ray -- To Ray, Best wishes and thanks for being a Cubs fan, Ron Santo -- and acted like he was happy to do it.
Excerpt:
Ray's a Cubs fan because Wrigley was the first stadium he ever saw, with his dad, maybe he was six or seven. He remembers the way the place with the food, it all smelled like piss and beer and cigarette smoke, and he remembers walking up to their upper deck seats. Rattling his fingers along the fence, watching the people on the sidewalk scalping tickets and all wearing bright blue caps, and the air getting lighter, higher they got. He remembers turning the corner out of that ramp, his first baseball mitt tucked under his arm, and then there was all that fuckin' green. In June, in Wrigley, everything's green. Scoreboard and the wall and the field, and it's green on the field and a sea of blue in the stands, and Ray fell, just like that. Fell hard.
Cubs lost to the Cards that day, Ray remembers all of it, it was a slugfest, couple of homers out onto Waveland, and Wrigley was only half full, but it was magic and the Cubs were heroes to him -- bigger than life, like movie stars and the tooth fairy all in one. Afterwards, out by the players' exit, Santo signed a ball for him, and it sits up against the chunk of Comiskey he stole. It's brown and cracked and the ink's smeared, but it's there.
Ray's a Cubs fan because this third baseman who wasn't much more of a kid himself, then, signed a ball for Ray -- To Ray, Best wishes and thanks for being a Cubs fan, Ron Santo -- and acted like he was happy to do it.