Handcuffed Corpses & Baseball

I've carried a heaviness in my chest these past few weeks.

Like millions of Americans, I've watched the country I love send armed agents into neighborhoods that look like mine, into workplaces where people are just trying to make a living, and onto streets where families are simply trying to survive another day.

Some people shrug. Some celebrate. Some insist the dead "should have just complied.” I always wonder if the people saying that hear themselves. 

If compliance is all that matters, then January 6 should have ended in a cemetery.

Instead, we pick and choose whose lives deserve empathy. The death of Lorenzo Araujo won't leave me alone. Maybe it's because he was only a year older than me.

We were both Gen X kids.

Even if he grew up across the border and I grew up here, I know we probably listened to the same music. We watched the same movies. We laughed at the same jokes. We knew what it meant to come home to an empty house because our parents were working. We were the latchkey generation. The forgotten generation. The kids who figured life out on our own because there wasn't much of another option.

He wasn't just another headline. He was someone's generation. Someone's father. Someone's best friend. Someone who had already survived enough life to finally enjoy it.

We're at that age now. The children aren't little anymore. We finally have enough wisdom to appreciate life instead of simply surviving it.

That's why his death unsettles me.

Because it forces me to ask questions I never wanted to ask.

What if tomorrow is the last morning? Will I kiss someone I love goodbye without realizing it's the last time? Will I scratch my dog's ears before walking out the door one final time? Will the last conversation I have with one of my kids be about something completely ordinary? Will I even know it's goodbye?

Then I think about the young father in Maine.

Shot while his three-year-old daughter watched. She wasn't old enough to understand politics. She wasn't old enough to understand immigration. She was only old enough to understand fear. I wonder if she remembers the sound of the gunshots.

The smell of burnt gunpowder.

The chaos.

I wonder if she knew her Papí wasn't getting back up. I wonder if, while he lay dying, he spent his last breaths trying to comfort her instead of himself. I can't stop thinking about her because she's the age where memories become permanent.

She will carry that day forever.

Then I think about the grandmother in Chaparral. A woman old enough to be my mother. Stopped and questioned while she was on her way to chemotherapy.

Think about that.

Chemo.

There is something profoundly broken about a nation that can look at an elderly woman trying to stay alive and decide that today is the day to interrogate her.

There is something profoundly broken about a nation that has handcuffed corpses at the foot of a presidential paramilitary force.

I was born on the Fourth of July.

My grandmother made me an Uncle Sam costume for my first birthday because it was America's Bicentennial. I wore the Stars and Stripes before I could even spell the word patriot.

Later, I wore them again.

This time on my Army uniform. I proudly served my Uncle Sam. Never, not once, did I imagine that the same flag I wore on my shoulder overseas would someday be carried into American neighborhoods by masked men driving unmarked vehicles.

Never did I imagine asking myself a question that still hurts every time it enters my mind.

Why does my Uncle Sam seem to hate people who look like me?

America just celebrated 250 years.

For a few days, while the world's attention was here on the World Cup - not on Trump's ego-masturbation, things seemed quieter. Then reality returned.

Loving this country has never been simple.

America has an incredible ability to inspire your patriotism while simultaneously testing it. Sometimes both happen before lunch.

And then…while petting my dog for a small sense of comfort, baseball came along.

Just for a few hours, the All-Star Game reminded me that there are still parts of America worth believing in. Because baseball doesn't care where you were born.

The mound is still sixty feet, six inches away. The bases are still ninety feet apart. Every batter gets three strikes. Every team gets twenty-seven outs. Nobody gets a shorter baseline because they're rich.

Nobody gets a fourth strike because they're powerful. Nobody gets an extra out because they speak better English.

The rules belong to everyone. 

There is something beautifully American about that.

The game itself is wonderfully democratic.

The runner tries to steal every inch he can. The pitcher tries to fool him. The catcher tries to catch him. The umpire calls it the way he sees it.

Everyone is trying to outsmart everyone else, but everybody agrees to play by the same rules.

That's the America we're supposed to be.

The baseball doesn't know if you're Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Protestant, atheist, Black, white, Latino, Asian, rich, poor, gay, straight, immigrant, or native-born.

It doesn't care.

It asks only one question.

Can you play?

That's why baseball has always been America's story. It belonged to Irish and Italian immigrants playing stickball in New York streets. To Scandinavian and German families building communities across the Midwest. To kids sweating through summers in the Jim Crow South.

To the Black stars who filled the Negro Leagues with brilliance long before America was willing to recognize it.

Then came Roberto Clemente.

Fernando Valenzuela.

The Alomars.

Sammy Sosa.

David Ortiz.

Mariano Rivera.

Alex Rodriguez.

Ichiro Suzuki.

Hideki Matsui.

Shohei Ohtani.

Every generation has added another verse to America's song. Every immigrant wave has made the game richer.

Just like they've made this country richer.

All names that those guys in masks on a subway in our nation's capitol - hate that they exist.

Then, the other night while I was stressed about the American brownshirts I see on TV, murdering people that look like me, the racists who Trump has made comfortable enough to march in the streets of our nation’s capital - but not man enough to show their faces - came the tribute to The Sandlot.

It was a tribute to the move The Sandlot. 

And it was a diverse bunch of kids - none of them were what Trump would call “DEI”, that loved the past-time, but could flat-out ball. And MLB had a lucky few kids ride their bikes into the stadium to spend some time with their idols while Ray Charles’ rendition of America the Beautiful that he sang in Phoenix the year my Diamonbacks beat the Yankees - shortly after 9/11 - while the Philly sky was filled with fireworks to re-enact the 4th of July night-game scene in the movie.

The kids' idols were black, white, Asian, and Latino. The kids were just happy.

For a few minutes, I wasn't watching television anymore.

I was twelve again.

Back when nobody cared what your parents did for a living. Nobody cared where your family came from. Nobody cared what language your grandparents spoke or what barrio you were from.

You grabbed your glove, hopped on your bike and rode to meet your homeboys at the park. Then you showed everybody what you could do.

I remembered rubbing dirt between my hands before stepping into the batter's box, adjusting my cup, spitting out sunflower seeds - because every kid thought it made them look like a big leaguer.

I remembered the first All-Star Game where my little brother and I finally played on the same team.

My grandparents came to watch.

My Tata was making his way from the parking lot to the bleachers, led by my Nana, with his walker when I hit a grand slam that landed only a few feet from them. 

They stopped to clap for me, and I tipped my helmet as I rounded second. To this day, the only other time I felt that proud, was when my Nana pinned on my stripes when I became an NCO in the Army. 

My kid brother threw a no-hitter - in a fucking All-Star game.

For one perfect evening, our father got to watch his own father beam with pride because his boys had become the stars of the game. My Dad, finally had HIS Dad’s approval.

Three generations.

One baseball field.

One Chicano family.

My grandfather was a Republican Marine who fought at Iwo Jima. My father was a liberal Democrat who organized farmworkers for the United Farmworkers Union.

They argued about politics. 

Lord knows they did. 

But they agreed on something bigger. People deserved dignity.

Neither one of them would recognize an America where frightened brown, black, indigenous, and Asian families are hunted through neighborhoods while their neighbors cheer.

Actually - maybe my Tata would recognize that America. Even as a Marine fighting in Iwo Jima, he told me that white Marines would refer to him as “Mexican Pete”.

His name was Pedro F. Abeytia.

Neither my pop, or my Tata, would ever mistake cruelty for patriotism. America has always been a promise. Not a guarantee. A promise that every generation has to fight to fulfill.

We have stumbled. 

We have failed. 

We have betrayed that promise more times than we care to admit.

But we have also corrected ourselves before.

We abolished slavery. 

We defeated fascism. 

We passed civil rights laws. 

We expanded the right to vote.

We have always been at our best when we decided that our definition of "We the People" was too small and deserved to grow.

We can do that again. We should do that again.

In November, we WILL correct ourselves again.

Because the America I believe in isn't the one chasing frightened families through parking lots.

It's the one where a little kid rides his bike to the neighborhood ballpark with nothing but a glove, a dream, and the belief that if he can play, he'll get his chance. That's the America worth fighting for.

And somehow, every summer, baseball reminds me that it's still possible.