The last 24 hours had been kind to Cabrini-Green. There was an arrest for strong-armed robbery, for purse-snatching, for criminal sexual abuse, for aggravated battery, for burglary, for pickpocketing, for three counts of theft.
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“But no shootings,” said the Distict 18 police desk officer. “So that would be a quiet night.”
This is how peace is measured at Cabrini, by the number of bullets fired, by the wailing of ambulance sirens.
But there are other ways to detect hope here. Saturday morning, on a tired patch of dirt and dandelions known as Carson Field, you could catch a glimpse of innocence as the Near North Little League celebrated its seventh and–because of redevelopment in the area–possibly its last opening-day festivities.
More than 150 children, many of them from the nearby Cabrini high- and low-rises, made their way to this worn little field. They play at Carson because it is relatively safe, safer than the field directly next to Cabrini, where gangbangers have been known to fire shots down from the windows.
Of course, Cabrini isn’t without its daily quota of tragedies. Months ago a Little Leaguer was riding his bike when someone came up and split his face open with a bat. Or was it a pipe? No one knows for sure.
This is a tough, angry place, where parents hope their children can survive long enough to finish high school. But beneath the calluses is a community. Proud. Defiant. Stubborn enough to hold the Near North Little League tight to its chest.
“I hear him while he’s dreaming,” said Denise Threatt, nodding toward her 9-year-old son Marcus, a second baseman for the Nilotes. “Last night he was talking in his sleep, saying, `Throw the ball. Throw the ball.’ He’s very, very excited about today.”
Marcus has never played in a league. But he was up by 7 a.m. Saturday, pestering his mother about buying a pair of cleats and telling anyone who would listen that he was destined for stardom.
“You would have thought he had a whole pot of coffee,” Denise said. “He tells me I’m his agent now.”
It costs $1,500 to sponsor a team. That’s the easy part, writing a check. The hard part is doing what co-founder Bill Seitz does, which is load his battered baby blue Ford van with every imaginable box of baseball equipment and uniforms and making sure every kid looks like a Little Leaguer. Seitz does it out of love and because of tiny moments worth a lot more than $1,500.
Standing near the back of his open van, Seitz was approached by several players who had just been issued uniforms and new batting gloves. The kids bounced up and down like popcorn kernels, happily shouting, “Thanks, Coach Seitz, for the gloves!”
Seitz couldn’t help but grin with them.
There are other volunteers. League treasurer Eric Boeckmann, a Northern Trust bond fund manager, munches on a raisin bagel as the field is readied. Jean Meyer organizes the pregame ceremonies. Umpire Andrew Jones, who lives in the community and is known as “Big Blue” by the players, carefully counts off the distance from home plate to the pitcher’s mound. League President Harlan Jones, who works in marketing for Fannie Mae, shoos kids away from the diamond as “Cheeky” and the rest of the Chicago Park District crew drags the infield.
“The Near North Little League is more than baseball for these kids,” Harlan said. “It’s an escape.”
Many of the players come from single-parent families. Some of the parents are drug addicts or in jail. No wonder the bleachers rarely include a father.
Instead, it is the coaches who often take the kids to movies, or organize Christmas or Thanksgiving parties, or launder the kids’ uniforms, or offer tutoring–or, better yet, friendship and guidance.
But they only can do so much. As the teams began to assemble on the field for the national anthem, a Pharoah coach noticed one his of players holding his fingers a certain way.
“What are you doing?” demanded the coach.
The kid, no more than 12, stared at his sneakers and mumbled, “I’m flashing.”
“What happens when you do that?”
“They shoot.”
Carson Field looks this good once a year, which isn’t saying much. Rocks and jagged chunks of broken beer bottles are raked from the pitcher’s mound. Workers missed the plastic forks and rusted bottle caps sitting atop the weedy infield.
Red, white and blue helium balloons covered parts of the field’s rusty chain-link fence. And so ill-kept is the diamond that the borders of the infield jut at least 6 inches above the dirt itself.
No one seemed to mind. Perhaps by accident, perhaps because Park District superintendent Forrest Claypool was scheduled to throw out the first ball, workers actually lined the entire infield.
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As promised, the Jesse White Tumblers provided the pregame entertainment. White, the Cook County recorder of deeds, is also the league’s commissioner.
Then came a Boy Scout honor guard, followed by the national anthem, which was sung just as a four-car “L” train rattled by. There were brief speeches by Claypool, and White, and Ald. Walter Burnett, who promised that Cabrini redevelopment won’t mean the end of the Near North Little League.
“It’s not going to go out for a year,” said Burnett later, as he held his 16-month-old son, Walter Jr. “It’s not going to miss a beat. Anyway, I’ve got to make sure (Walter Jr.) has a place to play when he’s 9 years old.”
The speeches meant little to Marcus and his Nilotes team. They were too busy chirping away at their opening-game opponents, the Zulus.
“We’re going to show the Zulus,” said Nilotes first baseman, Onea.
Claypool threw out the first pitch. So did Burnett, then White and then Boeckmann. They used official Little League balls made in China, not the practice balls donated to Seitz by the FBI. The practice balls feature fake Frank Thomas signatures and, after the feds confiscated them in a recent raid, blue FBI evidence stamps.
As if it mattered to Seitz, who will take all the freebies he can get.
Fifteen minutes later, after the politicians, the patrol cars, the tumblers, the honor guard, and the Park District crews were long gone, Andrew Jones lumbered behind home plate, his shin guards flapping with each step, and yelled, “Play ball!”
Let the record show that the first official pitch of the 1997 Near North Little League was a strike. Let the record also show that on a murky, overcast day near Cabrini-Green, the opening-day lineup for the Massai team included a special player as tough and gritty as the neighborhood he came from.
Remember the kid on the bike?