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lives—built those diamonds with their own hands and organized our leagues themselves.
    But how did the fiery passion for competitive sport and its breakneck energy coexist within the soul of a boy preoccupied with questions of mortality?

CURVE BALLS
    T HE IMAGES COME AT ME like curve balls. They do not arrive straight over the plate. They twist, they drop, they change direction. They hop, skip, and jump all over the place …
    I’m running. I’m born to run. I’m following in my brother’s footsteps—I’ll never catch Cliff or match his achievements—but I’m running nonetheless. Coach says I have talent in the two-mile and I’m starting to win meets here and there. The schedule is crazy. Dad gets us up and we run five miles.
    Earlier in my life, I was running back home, grabbing my bike and heading out to throw my paper route. I threw the San Francisco Chronicle , the Sacramento Union, and the Sacramento Bee . I was bicycling like a madman ’cause the dogs were waiting for me. Man, the dogs were mean. The Rottweilers, the Dobermans, the angry-hungry-killer-foaming-at-the-mouth mongrels going after me like I’m their sure-enough breakfast. After school, I was still running, running to my piano lessons. My teacher, Mrs. Crawley, said I had talent and a good shot to get into the junior orchestra. I felt a natural affinity for the classics. Loved me some Beethoven. Loved me some Mozart. Kept practicing—played violin as well—and even made it as first violin concert maestro, winning a statewide competition against some of the baddest kids in San Francisco and L.A.
    Man, I’m running.
    Running hard. Still trying to catch Cliff.
    Cliff is a champion athlete. Cliff has aspirations to be the first black man to break the four-minute mile. Cliff and Dad take me to the backyard—there’s lots of land and empty lots in the suburbs of Glen Elder—and teach me baseball. Comes naturally. Even develop a curve ball.
    “That’s a mean curve you got, bro,” says Cliff. “The thing just falls off the table. Keep working and no one will be able to touch that thing.”
    I keep working. Mrs. Reed’s sons—Raymond and Duane—are my constant playmates who help me hone my skills. My pitch gets meaner. Batters keep falling. At age 8, I strike out every twelve-year-old in sight. At age twelve, the sixteen-year-olds can’t touch me. Cliff and Dad put me at second base.
    “No one’s got eye-hand coordination like you, Corn,” says Cliff. “You can make it to the majors if you wanna.”
    I just wanna keep running. Coaches encourage me. Dad and Cliff keep pushing me on. When the rainstorms come and I can’t run or play ball outside, Cliff and I make up little imaginary baseball leagues using yellow pencils as bats and toothpaste caps as balls. We invent track meets using dice to get the runners going.
    Dad’s running us to San Francisco’s Candlestick Park to see our heroes, Willie Mays and Willie McCovey and Hal Lanier, my role model as a second baseman. These are Giants.
    “My boys are giants,” says Dad. “Giants in spirit. My boys have the hearts of lions.”
    I’m going. I’m running. Mom is running to teach at school every day, brimming with enthusiasm for teaching the young kids to read. Every night before we go to bed she’s reading us poetry. I’m reading about Teddy Roosevelt who went to Harvard—hey, that gives me an idea: I wanna go to Harvard—and I’m relating to Teddy because, although he’s running throughout his life, he loses his breath, like me. We both suffer with asthma.
    Asthma is frightening. Like the bridge over jagged rocks and the Rottweiler looking to bite off my backside, asthma threatens my life by cutting off my breath. Gotta stop. Can’t run. Start choking. Start panicking. Hate it when the asthma hits. The asthma keeps me from moving on. It’s keeping me from gaining ground. It’s got that death shudder falling all over me. What am I going to do about the asthma?
    Orange,