{"id":14826,"date":"2018-08-01T01:25:34","date_gmt":"2018-08-01T06:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/?p=14826"},"modified":"2018-08-01T09:09:29","modified_gmt":"2018-08-01T14:09:29","slug":"softball-tournament-at-donovan-park-37th-and-lituanica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/14826","title":{"rendered":"Softball Tournament at Donovan Park: 37th and Lituanica"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By 9am, Chicago&#8217;s muggy sky was melting down,<br \/>\non the two dusty softball diamonds, their patchy outfield,<br \/>\ncottonwoods and cigar trees, seesaws and tire-swings,<br \/>\nand the men, my uncles, unpacking their bat-bags,<br \/>\nalready drinking Oldstyle. A transistor radio crooned<br \/>\nMotown, they sang along, gravelly and too loud. We filled<br \/>\nhalf the park, our family, Mexican and Irish, the women<br \/>\nlounged on bleachers, us kids ran wild, and the teenagers,<br \/>\nplotting their unknown trouble, snuck cigarettes<br \/>\nto the abandoned warehouse\u2014 a great wall of green-glass<br \/>\nwindows, mostly broken, that towered over the park,<br \/>\nlike some guardian relic.\u00a0 We crept to watch smoke rise<br \/>\nfrom their lips and learn the newest baddest words we\u2019d repeat<br \/>\nwhile throwing pop bottles and rocks at the top floor\u2014 one point<br \/>\nfor hitting glass, two for breaking. Words like <em>motherfucker,<br \/>\n<\/em><em>cunt, <\/em>and <em>wetback, <\/em>words that flashed like fireworks<br \/>\nin our mouths, words learned at home, words passed down<br \/>\nblindly, that promised to cut us later. And when twilight faded<br \/>\nto the dim orange burn of streetlights, we climbed the backstop<br \/>\nto watch through chain-link, flinching at the thud of every hit,<br \/>\nand squinted at the ball gliding off, the men chasing after.<br \/>\nTheir yells echoed off the bulwark of broken windows,<br \/>\nand hung suspended with the floating cottonwood snow.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h6><a href=\"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/14720\">Lizabeth Yandel<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By 9am, Chicago&#8217;s muggy sky was melting down, on the two dusty softball diamonds, their patchy outfield, cottonwoods and cigar trees, seesaws and tire-swings, and the men, my uncles, unpacking their bat-bags, already drinking Oldstyle. A transistor radio crooned Motown, they sang along, gravelly and too loud. We filled half the park, our family, Mexican [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1704,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[57],"tags":[25],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-3R8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14826"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1704"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14826"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14827,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14826\/revisions\/14827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}