Primary Colors

“Cubs fan” was the answer.  The question was, “What is your religion?”  The lady in the scrubs was not amused.  Or maybe she thought the pain was causing delirium.   “That’s not one of the choices”, she explained.  “Maybe I’m at the wrong hospital then”, I replied.  

Here’s the thing.  Dying was not on my “to-do” list, and I wasn’t going to give an inch to the lady with the handheld touchscreen.  I wasn’t interested in dying, so she had no need to know my religion.  Nor does anyone outside my family so long as I remain in a public service career.  They set out across the Atlantic centuries ago to live and worship in freedom, and that freedom requires separation of church and state.  You want to know my religion?  Show up at the funeral. 

At the hospital I was born at, it wouldn’t have even been a question.  Arriving at Chicago’s Northside Ravenswood Hospital, Ernie Banks was 335 dingers into his 512 career total, and the only color they swaddled baby boys in was blue.  There was no Southside black.  There was no St. Louis red.  There was only blue.  I remember it, very distinctly.

Or, maybe it was the blue of the sky as I peered up at skyscrapers steeling themselves into the heavens.  Perhaps the serene blue lights glowing along Lake Shore Drive?  Or the beautiful blue waters of Lake Michigan, the ocean of my childhood.  The truth is, with the exception of rough and tumble blood that would spill with misadventure, I can’t remember my young life as anything but blue. It’s been blue since before I can recall any other color.  I can’t remember making any kind of conscious choice in the matter.  In those days, there was one game and that was baseball.  And there was one home team, and they were my team.

Ernie, Billy, Fergie, Ron, Glen and Randy were the boyhood core, and of that core Billy was the outfielder, so he was my hero.  I’d learn the limits of hero worship in 1969 as a seven year old which, looking back, was a providential age to cross that Rubicon.  By the time Steve Garvey, Leon Durham and the headphoned one whose name shall not be spoken made the team a generation-spanning cross to bear, I was sufficiently resilient to withstand anything.  Survive a wheelchair, orphanage, teenage crush(s) and Davenport?  Piece of cake.  I’m a Cubs fan.

So too are the Malin offspring.  Please, forgive me.  They weren’t born in the corporate limits of Chicago, but they didn’t miss the border by much.  Amanda’s first clear childhood memory was her first trip to Wrigley.  A cute blue mitt, a beaming father and a trip to the chocolate covered banana factory after the game?  There could be worse first memories.  Much worse.

The classic design of the ballpark and its neighborhood setting sets up a sequence of sights, sounds and smells that are distinctly memorable.  You travel by rail, car, bus, bike or some combination thereof into the heart of a real city neighborhood.  You arrive at a celebration, with tens of thousands milling about.  You get compressed through the entry gates with a mass of humanity and walk through the ancient bowels of a ballpark, saturated in the perfume of hot dogs, polish sausage and beer.  You walk up the same worn flight of stairs your father and his father walked up as boys and - suddenly - the sunshine and green of the ballpark explodes into your retinas, and heart. 

You’ve arrived at the Church of the Perpetually Optimistic, and you can’t see any reason why not to join.  There are sermons, prayers and a seventh inning hymnal.  There are sins, confessions and baptisms – particularly in the bleachers.  There is rote behavior, a smattering of Latin and a liberal sharing of wine and other spirits.  There is a shared sense of belonging, and longing.  Oh, the longing.  There is pageantry, pathos and grown men in ridiculous outfits.       

Most of all, there is belief.  Belief beyond certainty.  Belief beyond reason.  Belief beyond hope and the mortal bonds of a human lifespan.  Belief that redemption is not only possible, but fated to be. 

So, in my moment of emergency room intake infirmity, when the woman questioned the very depths of my soul with her rationally indifferent touchscreen and emotionless heart?

I’m guessing … Cardinals fan.