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THE BIG BLACK AND WHITE GAME





THINKING AHEAD

 

“Black and white” — what does this opposition usually imply? What associations come into your mind? What can really be “black and white”? By the way this phrase can sound even more poetic — “ebony and ivory”… Which version do you prefer and why?

A WORD ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 


   


Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles, Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th century American writers of speculative fiction. He has published over 300 hundred stories to set you shivering with terror and gaping with wonder. His stories are alive with people who never were and creations that one day will be.


 

PRE-READING ACTIVITIES

1. Baseball is one of the top popular sports in the US. Why, in your opinion? What’s there in the game? And what does the combination itself — ‘base + ball’ — imply?

2.Some people say that Afro-Americans are especially good at certain sports. Do you think it’s true? If yes, what, in your opinion, are the sports? Why do you think so?

3. Discuss the problem of the access to different sport facilities and the so-called ‘elite’ sport clubs. Do you believe that racial discrimination is something that can take place in sport?

READING ACTIVITIES

4. Read the first part of the story and pay special attention to the atmosphere of the coming small town holiday.

 

The people filled the stands behind the wire screen, wait­ing. Us kids, dripping from the lake, ran between the white cottages, past the resort hotel, screaming, and sat on the bleachers, making wet bottom marks. The hot sun beat down through the tall oak trees around the baseball diamond. Our fathers and mothers, in golf pants and light summer dresses, scolded us and made us sit still. We looked toward the hotel and the back door of the vast kitchen, expectantly. A few colored women began walking across the shade-freckled area between, and in ten minutes the far left section of the bleachers was mellow with the color of their fresh-washed faces and arms. After all these years, whenever I think back on it, I can still hear the sounds they made. The sound on the warm air was like a soft moving of dove voices each time they talked among themselves. Everybody quickened into amusement, laughter rose right up into the clear blue Wisconsin sky, as the kitchen door flung wide and out ran the big and little, the dark uniformed Negro waiters, janitors, bus boys, boatmen, cooks, bottle washers, soda jerks, gardeners, and golf-links tenders. They came capering, showing their fine white teeth, proud of their new red-striped uniforms, their shiny shoes rising and coming down on the green grass as they skirted the bleachers and drifted with lazy speed out on the field, calling to everybody and everything.



Us kids squealed. There was Long Johnson, the lawn-cutting man, and Cavanaugh, the soda-fountain man, and Shorty Smith and Pete Brown and Jiff Miller! And there was Big Poe! Us kids shouted, applauded!

Big Poe was the one who stood so tall by the popcorn machine every night in the million-dollar dance pavilion farther down beyond the hotel on the lake rim. Every night I bought popcorn from Big Poe and he poured lots of butter all over it for me. I stomped and yelled, “Big Poe! Big Poe!” And he looked over at me and stretched his lips to bring out his teeth, waved, and shouted a laugh. And Mama looked to the right, to the left, and back of us with worried eyes and nudged my elbow. “Hush,” she said. “Hush.”

“Land, land,” said the lady next to my mother, fanning herself with a folded paper. “This is quite a day for the colored servants, ain't it? Only time of year they break loose. They look forward all summer to the big Black and White game. But this ain't nothing. You seen their Cakewalk Jamboree?”



“We got tickets for it,” said Mother. “For tonight at the pavilion. Cost us a dollar each. That's pretty expensive, I'd say.”

“But I always figure,” said the woman, “once a year you got to spend. And it's really something to watch them dance. They just naturally got. ..”

“Rhythm,” said Mother.

“That's the word,” said the lady. “Rhythm. That's what they got. Land, you should see the colored maids up at the hotel. They been buying satin yardage in at the big store in Madison for a month now. And every spare minute they sit sewing and laughing. And I seen some of the feathers they bought for their hats. Mustard and wine ones and blue ones and violet ones. Oh, it'll be a sight!”

“They been airing out their tuxedos,” I said. “I saw them hanging on lines behind the hotel all last week!”

“Look at them prance,” said Mother. “You'd think they thought they were going to win the game from our men.”

The colored men ran back and forth and yelled with their high, fluting voices and their low, lazy, interminable voices. Way out in center field you could see the flash of teeth, their upraised naked black arms swinging and beating their sides as they hopped up and down and ran like rabbits, exuber­antly. Big Poe took a double fistful of bats, bundled them on his huge bull shoulder, and strutted along the first-base line, head back, mouth smiling wide open, his tongue moving, singing:

"—gonna dance out both of my shoes, When they play those Jelly Roll Blues; Tomorrow night at the Dark Town Strutters' Ball!"

Up went his knees and down and out, swinging the bats like musical batons. A burst of applause and soft laughter came from the left-hand grandstands, where all the young, ripply colored girls with shiny brown eyes sat eager and easy. They made quick motions that were graceful and mellow be­cause, maybe, of their rich coloring. Their laughter was like shy birds; they waved at Big Poe, and one of them with a high voice cried, “Oh, Big Poe! Oh, Big Poe!” The white section joined politely in the applause as Big Poe finished his Cakewalk. "Hey, Poe!" I yelled again.

“Stop that, Douglas!” said Mother, straight at me.

Now the white men came running between the trees with their uniforms on. There was a great thunder and shouting and rising up in our grandstand. The white men ran across the green diamond, flashing white.

“Oh, there's Uncle George!” said Mother. “My, doesn't he look nice?” And there was my uncle George toddling along in his outfit which didn't quite fit because Uncle has a potbelly, and jowls that sit out over any collar he puts on. He was hurrying along, trying to breathe and smile at the same time, lifting up his pudgy little legs. “My, they look so nice,” enthused Mother.



I sat there, watching their movements. Mother sat beside me, and I think she was comparing and thinking, too, and what she saw amazed and disconcerted her. How easily the dark people had come running first, like those slow-motion deer and buck antelopes in those African moving pictures, like things in dreams. They came like beautiful brown, shiny animals that didn't know they were alive, but lived. And when they ran and put their easy, lazy, timeless legs out and followed them with their big, sprawling arms and loose fingers and smiled in the blowing wind, their expressions didn't say, “Look at me run, look at me run!” No, not at all. Their faces dreamily said, “Lord, but it's sure nice to run. See the ground swell soft under me? Gosh, I feel good. My muscles are moving like oil on my bones and it's the best pleasure in the world to run.” And they ran. There was no purpose to their running but exhilaration and living.

The white men worked at their running as they worked at everything. You felt embarrassed for them because they were alive too much in the wrong way. Always looking from the corners of their eyes to see if you were watching. The Negroes didn't care if you watched or not; they went on living, moving. They were so sure of playing that they didn't have to think about it any more.

“My, but our men look so nice,” said my mother, repeat­ing herself rather flatly. She had seen, compared the teams. Inside, she realized how laxly the colored men hung sway­ing in their uniforms, and how tensely, nervously, the white men were crammed, shoved, and belted into their outfits.

I guess the tenseness began then, I guess everybody saw what was happening. They saw how the white men looked like senators in sun suits. And they admired the graceful unawareness of the colored men. And, as is always the case, that admiration turned to envy, to jealousy, to irritation. It turned to conversation like:

“That's my husband, Tom, on third base. Why doesn't he pick up his feet? He just stands there.”

“Never you mind, never you mind. He'll pick 'em up when the time comes!”

“That's what I say! Now, take my Henry, for instance. Henry mightn't be active all the time, but when there's a crisis—just you watch him. Uh—I do wish he'd wave or something, though. Oh, there! Hello, Henry!”

“Look at that Jimmie Cosner playing around out there!”

I looked. A medium-sized white man with a freckled face and red hair was clowning on the diamond. He was balanc­ing a bat on his forehead. There was laughter from the white grandstand. But it sounded like the kind of laughter you laugh when you're embarrassed for someone.

“Play ball!” said the umpire. A coin was flipped. The colored men batted first. “Darn it,” said my mother.

5.Now go on reading. Do you think you can predict the game results? Why (not)?

The colored men ran in from the field happily. Big Poe was first to bat. I cheered. He picked up the bat in one hand like a toothpick and idled over to the plate and laid the bat on his thick shoulder, smiling along its polished surface toward the stands where the colored women sat with their fresh flowery cream dresses stirring over their legs, which hung down between the seat intervals like crisp new sticks of ginger; their hair was all fancily spun and hung over their ears. Big Poe looked in particular at the little, dainty-as-a-chicken-bone shape of his girl friend Katherine. She was the one who made the beds at the hotel and cot­tages every morning, who tapped on your door like a bird and politely asked if you was done dreaming, 'cause if you was she'd clean away all them old nightmares and bring in a fresh batch—please use them one at a time, thank you. Big Poe shook his head, looking at her, as if he couldn't believe she was there. Then he turned, one hand balancing the bat, his left hand dangling free at his side, to await the trial pitches. They hissed past, spatted into the open mouth of the catcher's mitt, were hurled back. The umpire grunted. The next pitch was the starter.

Big Poe let the first ball go by him.

“Stee-rike!” announced the umpire. Big Poe winked good-naturedly at the white folks. Bang! “Stee-rike two!” cried the umpire.

The ball came for the third time.

Big Poe was suddenly a greased machine pivoting; the dangling hand swept up to the butt end of the bat, the bat swiveled, connected with the ball – Whack! The ball shot up into the sky, away down toward the wavering line of oak trees, down toward the lake, where a white sailboat slid silently by. The crowd yelled, me loudest! There went Uncle George, running on his stubby, wool-stockinged legs, getting smaller with distance. Big Poe stood for a moment watching the ball go. Then he began to run. He went around the bases, loping, and on the way home from third base he waved to the colored girls naturally and happily and they waved back, standing on their seats and shrilling. Ten minutes later, with the bases loaded and run after run being driven in, and Big Poe coming to bat again, my mother turned to me. “They're the most inconsiderate people,” she said.

“But that's the game,” I said. “They've only got two outs.”

“But the score's seven to nothing,” my mother protested.

“Well, just you wait until our men come to bat,” said the lady next to my mother, waving away a fly with a pale blue-veined hand. “Those Negroes are too big for their britches.”

“Stee-rike two!” said the umpire as Big Poe swung.

“All the past week at the hotel,” said the woman next to my mother, staring out at Big Poe steadily, “the hotel serv­ice has been simply terrible. Those maids don't talk about a thing save the Cakewalk Jamboree, and whenever you want ice water it takes half an hour to fetch it, they're so busy sewing.”

“Ball one!” said the umpire.

The woman fussed. “I'll be glad when this week's over, that's what I got to say,” she said.

“Ball two!” said the umpire to Big Poe.

“Are they going to walk him?” asked my mother of me. “Are they crazy?” To the woman next to her: “That's right. They been acting funny all week. Last night I had to tell Big Poe twice to put extra butter on my popcorn. I guess he was trying to save money or something.”

“Ball three!” said the umpire.

The lady next to my mother cried out suddenly and fanned herself furiously with her newspaper. “Land, I just thought. Wouldn't it be awful if they won the game? They might, you know. They might do it.”

My mother looked at the lake, at the trees, at her hands. “I don't know why Uncle George had to play. Make a fool of himself. Douglas, you run tell him to quit right now. It's bad on his heart.”

“You're out!” cried the umpire to Big Poe.

“Ah,” sighed the grandstand.

The side was retired. Big Poe laid down his bat gently and walked along the base line. The white men pattered in from the field looking red and irritable, with big islands of sweat under their armpits. Big Poe looked over at me. I winked at him. He winked back. Then I knew he wasn't so dumb. He'd struck out on purpose.

Long Johnson was going to pitch for the colored team. He ambled out to the rubber, worked his fingers around in his fists to limber them up.

First white man to bat was a man named Kodimer, who sold suits in Chicago all year round.

Long Johnson fed them over the plate with tired, un­assuming, controlled accuracy. Mr. Kodimer chopped. Mr. Kodimer swatted. Finally Mr. Kodimer bunted the ball down the third-base line.

“Out at first base,” said the umpire, an Irishman named Mahoney.

Second man up was a young Swede named Moberg. He hit a high fly to center field which was taken by a little plump Negro who didn't look fat because he moved around like a smooth, round glob of mercury.

Third man up was a Milwaukee truck driver. He whammed a line drive to center field. It was good. Except that he tried to stretch it into a two-bagger. When he pulled up at second base, there was Emancipated Smith with a white pellet in his dark, dark hand, waiting.

My mother sank back in her seat, exhaling. “Well, I never!”

“It's getting hotter,” said the lady elbow-next. “Think I`ll go for a stroll by the lake soon. It's too hot to sit and watch a silly game today. Mightn't you come along with me, missus?” she asked Mother.

It went on that way for five innings.

It was eleven to nothing and Big Poe had struck out three times on purpose, and in the last half of the fifth was when Jimmie Cosner came to bat for our side again. He'd been trying all afternoon, clowning, giving directions, telling every­body just where he was going to blast that pill once he got hold of it. He swaggered up toward the plate now, confident and bugle-voiced. He swung six bats in his thin hands, eying them critically with his shiny green little eyes. He chose one, dropped the others, ran to the plate, chopping out little islands of green fresh lawn with his cleated heels. He pushed his cap back on his dusty red hair. “Watch this!” he called out loud to the ladies. “You watch me show these dark boys! Ya-hah!”

Long Johnson on the mound did a slow serpentine wind-up. It was like a snake on a limb of a tree, uncoiling, sud­denly darting at you. Instantly Johnson's hand was in front of him, open, like black fangs, empty. And the white pill slashed across the plate with a sound like a razor.

“Stee-rike!”

Jimmie Cosner put his bat down and stood glaring at the umpire. He said nothing for a long time. Then he spat delib­erately near the catcher's foot, took up the yellow maple bat again, and swung it so the sun glinted the rim of it in a nervous halo. He twitched and sidled it on his thin-boned shoulder, and his mouth opened and shut over his long nicotined teeth.

Clap! went the catcher's mitt.

Cosner turned, stared.

The catcher, like a black magician, his white teeth gleam­ing, opened up his oily glove. There, like a white flower growing, was the baseball.

“Stee-rike two!” said the umpire, far away in the heat.

Jimmie Cosner laid his bat across the plate and hunched his freckled bands on his hips. “You mean to tell me that was a strike?”

“That's what I said,” said the umpire. “Pick up the bat.” “To hit you on the head with,” said Cosner sharply. “Play ball or hit the showers!”

Jimmie Cosner worked his mouth to collect enough saliva to spit, then angrily swallowed it, swore a bitter oath instead. Reaching down, he raised the bat, poised it like a musket on his shoulder. And here came the ball! It started out small and wound up big in front of him. Powie! An explosion off the yellow bat. The ball spiraled up and up. Jimmie lit out for first base. The ball paused, as if thinking about gravity up there in the sky. A wave came in on the shore of the lake and fell down. The crowd yelled. Jimmie ran. The ball made its de­cision, came down. A lithe high-yellar was under it, fum­bled it. The ball spilled to the turf, was plucked up, hurled to first base. Jimmie saw he was going to be out. So he jumped feet-first at the base. Everyone saw his cleats go into Big Poe's ankle. Every­body saw the red blood. Everybody heard the shout, the shriek, saw the heavy clouds of dust rising.

“I'm safe!” protested Jimmie two minutes later.

 

6.Read the story to the end. What do you think of the ending? Do you think the story may not be a piece of fiction? Why?

 

Big Poe sat on the ground. The entire dark team stood around him. The doctor bent down, probed Big Poe's ankle, saying, “Mmmm,” and “Pretty bad. Here.” And he swabbed medicine on it and put a white bandage on it.

The umpire gave Cosner the cold-water eye. “Hit the showers!”

“Like hell!” said Cosner. And he stood on that first base, blowing his cheeks out and in, his freckled hands swaying at his sides. “I'm safe. I'm stayin' right here, by God! No nigger put me out!”

“No,” said the umpire. “A white man did. Me. Get!”

“He dropped the ball! Look up the rules! I'm safe!”

The umpire and Cosner stood glaring at each other.

Big Poe looked up from having his swollen ankle tended. His voice was thick and gentle and his eyes examined Jimmie Cosner gently.

“Yes, he's safe, Mr. Umpire. Leave him stay. He's safe.”

I was standing right there. I heard the whole thing. Me and some other kids had run out on the field to see. My mother kept calling me to come back to the stands.

“Yes, he's safe,” said Big Poe again.

All the colored men let out a yell.

“What'sa matter with you, black boy? You get hit in the head?”

“You heard me,” replied Big Poe quietly. He looked at the doctor bandaging him. “He's safe. Leave him stay.” The umpire swore. “Okay, okay. So he's safe!”

The umpire stalked off, his back stiff, his neck red.

Big Poe was helped up. “Better not walk on that,” cau­tioned the doctor.

“I can walk,” whispered Big Poe carefully.

“Better not play.”,

“I can play,” said Big Poe gently, certainly, shaking his head wet streaks drying under his white eyes. “I'll play good.” He looked no place at all. “I'll play plenty good.”

“Oh,” said the second-base colored man. It was a funny sound. All the colored men looked at each other, at Big Poe, then at Jimmie Cosner, at the sky, at the lake, the crowd. They walked off quietly to take their places. Big Poe stood with his bad foot hardly touching the ground, balanced. The doctor argued. But Big Poe waved him away.

“Batter up!” cried the umpire.

We got settled in the stands again. My mother pinched my leg and asked me why I couldn't sit still. It got warmer. Three or four more waves fell on the shore line. Behind the wire screen the ladies fanned their wet faces and the men inched their rumps forward on the wooden planks, held papers over their scowling brows to see Big Poe standing like a redwood tree out there on first base, Jimmie Cosner standing in the immense shade of that dark tree.

Young Moberg came up to bat for our side.

“Come on, Swede, come on, Swede!” was the cry, a lonely cry, like a dry bird, from out on the blazing green turf. It was Jimmie Cosner calling. The grandstand stared at him. The dark heads turned on their moist pivots in the outfield; the black faces came in his direction, looking him over, seeing his thin, nervously arched back. He was the center of the universe.

“Come on, Swede! Let's show these black boys!” laughed Cosner.

He trailed off. There was a complete silence. Only the wind came through the high, glittering trees.

“Come on, Swede, hang one on that old pill. . .”

Long Johnson, on the pitcher's mound, cocked his head. Slowly, deliberately, he eyed Cosner. A look passed between him and Big Poe, and Jimmie Cosner saw the look and shut up and swallowed, hard.

Long Johnson took his time with his windup. Cosner took a lead off base. Long Johnson stopped loading his pitch.

Cosner skipped back to the bag, kissed his hand, and patted the kiss dead center on the bag. Then he looked up and smiled around.

Again the pitcher coiled up his long, hinged arm, curled loving dark fingers on the leather pellet, drew it back and — Cosner danced off first base. Cosner jumped up and down like a monkey. The pitcher did not look at him. The pitch­er's eyes watched secretively, slyly, amusedly, sidewise. Then, snapping his head, the pitcher scared Cosner back to the bag. Cosner stood and jeered.

The third time Long Johnson made as if to pitch, Cosner was far off the bag and running toward second.

Snap went the pitcher's hand. Boom went the ball in Big Poe's glove at first base. Everything was sort of frozen. Just for a second. There was the sun in the sky, the lake and the boats on it, the grandstands, the pitcher on his mound standing with his hand out and down after tossing the ball; there was Big Poe with the ball in his mighty black hand; there was the infield staring, crouching in at the scene, and there was Jimmie Cosner running, kicking up dirt, the only moving thing in the entire summer world. Big Poe leaned forward, sighted toward second base, drew back his mighty right hand, and hurled that white baseball straight down along the line until it reached Jimmie Cosner's head. Next instant, the spell was broken.

Jimmie Cosner lay flat on the burning grass. People boiled out of the grandstands. There was swearing, and women screaming, a clattering of wood as the men rushed down the wooden boards of the bleachers. The colored team ran in from the field. Jimmie Cosner lay there. Big Poe, no expres­sion on his face, limped off the field, pushing white men away from him like clothespins when they tried stopping him. He just picked them up and threw them away.

“Come on, Douglas!” shrieked Mother, grabbing me. “Let's get home! They might have razors! Oh!”

That night, after the near riot of the afternoon, my folks stayed home reading magazines. All the cottages around us were lighted. Everybody was home. Distantly I heard music. I slipped out the back door into the ripe summer-night dark­ness and ran toward the dance pavilion. All the lights were on, and music played. But there were no white people at the tables. Nobody had come to the Jamboree. There were only colored folks. Women in bright red and blue satin gowns and net stockings and soft gloves, with wine-plume hats, and men in glossy tuxedos. The music crashed out, up, down, and around the floor. And laughing and stepping high, flinging their polished shoes out and up in the Cakewalk, were Long Johnson and Cavanaugh and Jiff Miller and Pete Brown, and—limping—Big Poe and Katherine, his girl, and all the other lawn-cutters and boatmen and janitors and chambermaids, all on the floor atone time. It was so dark all around the pavilion; the stars shone in the black sky, and I stood outside, my nose against the win­dow, looking in for a long, long time, silently.

I went to bed without telling anyone what I'd seen.

I just lay in the dark smelling the ripe apples in the dim­ness and hearing the lake at night and listening to that dis­tant, faint and wonderful music., Just before I slept I heard those last strains again:

“—gonna dance out both of my shoes, When they play those Jelly Roll Blues; Tomorrow night at the Dark Town Strutters' Ball!

7. Answer the following questions.

 

· In your opinion, what are the time and place of the action? Why do you think so? Find in the text any hints that would prove your viewpoint.

· What can you say about the event to come? Why is it so significant for everyone involved?

· Study the speech and manners of the spectators. What social classes do they represent? Why do you think so?

· What can you say about Douglas and his mother? Is their attitude towards the players in any way similar?

· According to the boy’s mother, the coloured “…just naturally gotrhythm”. What does she mean by that, in your opinion?

· Remember the scene of the black and white players coming into the game. What impression does each of the teams leave? Find in the text the appropriate descriptions.

· How would you describe the first part of the game? How would you comment on the reaction of the spectators watching?

· What do you think of Big Poe’s and Jimmie Cosner’s behaviour right after the accident?

· What were the black players (and Big Poe in particular!) after while proceeding with the game?

· If given a choice, what title would you give to the story?

 

8.Find in the text all the words relative to the world of baseball. Make a list of sport terms you come across. Make sure you understand all of them. In your opinion, what does the expression ‘hit the showers’ mean?

9.Let us describe the characters’ attitude towards the players with the help of the formers’ remarks. Find out whom this remark belongs to and make a conclusion.

· “This is quite a day for the coloured servants, ain’t it? Only time of year they break loose.”

· “They are the most inconsiderate people.”

· “Land, I just thought, wouldn’t it be awful if they won the game? They might, you know.”

· “It’s too hot to sit and watch a silly game today.”

· “No nigger put me out!”

· “…A white man did. Me. Get!”

· “…Play ball or hit the showers!”

· “Come on, Swede, hang one on that old pill…”

· “You watch me show these dark boys! Ya-hah!”

· “Come o, Douglas! … They might have razors!”

10.Study the black players’ nicknames and the way the author describes the black players in the story. What kind of people are they, do you think? What can you guess about the authors attitude to them?

11.Let us focus on style. Read the definition of a stylistic device and find its examples in the text.

Litotesis a figure of speech, conscious understatement in which emphasis is achieved by negation; examples are the common expressions “not bad!” and “no mean feat.” Litotes is a stylistic feature that is responsible for much of characteristic stoical restraint, strong negation or determination.

12.Recall the sport stories with “unexpected twists” (accidents, bad shots, players’ mistakes) you`ve ever read about or witnessed. Which is the top one for you? Write down the content of the story of your choice (20 sentences).

DESCRIPTIVE WRITING

13.Nolan Ryan once said, “One of the beautiful thing about baseball is that every once in a while you come into a situation where you want to, and where you have to, reach down and prove something”. Make the list of ‘somethings’ the sports like baseball can let one reach and prove. Develop your ideas in a story of your own.

14.How would you describe the game like the one in the story being an umpire? Write a brief report on the game of your choice.

15.Write a 150-word biographical story focusing on the achievements of some great Afro-American athletes of today. Be ready to present your story in class. Here are some useful tips to make your story more impressive:

A composition describing a person should consist of:

· an introduction giving brief information about who the person is, where/how you met him/her, how you heard about him/her, etc;

· a main body which may include description of such things as physical appearance, personality/behaviour, manner/mannerisms and/or details of the person's life and lifestyle, (hobbies, interests, everyday activities, etc.)

· a conclusion in which you comment on why the person is of interest, express your feelings/opinion concerning the person, etc.

In a descriptive composition of a person, you may also be asked to explain why this person is successful/admirable/unusual, etc, why he/she made such a strong impression on you, how he/she has influenced you, etc.

Each paragraph should start with a topic sentence which summarises the paragraph. The content of the paragraph depends on the topic itself and where the emphasis is placed.

Points to Consider

To describe physical appearance, you should give details of the person's height/build, age, facial features, hair, clothing, etc. moving from the most general aspects to the most specific details.

To describe personality and behaviour, you can support your description with examples of manner and mannerism.

To describe life, lifestyle and beliefs, you should talk about the person's habits, interests, profession, daily routine, opinions, etc.

 

 

 


THE THRILL OF THE GRASS

THINKING AHEAD

Here you are going to meet an author who has a real passion for baseball. He is certainly not alone in this, but there are a few people who actually write baseball stories. There are even fewer people who feel so deprived when there is no chance to watch their favourite game that they will stop at nothing. How far are they ready to go? How strong is their commitment?

A WORD ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 


   
William Patrick Kinsella is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. His work has often concerned baseball, which is a significant part of all of his novels. He held a variety of jobs, and moved to Victoria, British Columbia, running a pizza restaurant and driving a taxi. Though he had been writing since he was a child he began taking writing courses at the University of Victoria later in life and didn`t stop until he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Literature degree. He is a winner of several prestigious literary awards.



PRE-READING ACTIVITIES

1. In small groups discuss the personality of a true fan. What character traits are an absolute must for such a person?

2. Decide whether watching sports can be more than just a relaxing hobby. Give your reasons.

3. Discuss the problem of traditions in sports. Do they to your mind hamper sports progress or contribute to it in some way?

READING ACTIVITIES

4. Read the first part of the story and pay special attention to the following sentence “Summer without baseball: a disruption to the psyche.” How can you interpret it? Does it predict the further development of events?

1981: the summer the baseball players went on strike. The dull weeks drag by, the summer deepens, the strike is nearly a month old. Outside the city the corn rustles and ripens in the sun. Summer without baseball: a disruption to the psyche. An unexplainable aimlessness engulfs me. I stay later and later each evening in the small office at the rear of my shop. Now, driving home after work, the worst of the rush-hour traffic over, it is the time of evening I would normally be heading for the stadium.

I enjoy arriving an hour early, parking in a far corner of the lot, walking slowly toward the stadium, rays of sun dropping softly over my shoulders like tangerine ropes, my shadow gliding with me, black as an umbrella. I like to watch young families beside their campers, the mothers in shorts, grilling hamburgers, their men drinking beer. I enjoy seeing little boys dressed in the home-team uniform, barely toddling, clutching hotdogs in upraised hands.

I am a failed shortstop. As a young man, I saw myself diving to my left, graceful as a toppling tree, fielding high grounders like a cat leaping for butterflies, bracing my right foot and tossing to first, the throw true as if a steel ribbon connected my hand and the first baseman's glove. I dreamed of leading the American League in hit­ting - being inducted into the Hall of Fame.

I know the stadium will be deserted; nevertheless I wheel my car down off the freeway, park, and walk across the silent lot, my footsteps rasping and mournful. Strangle-grass and creeping charlie are already inching up through the gravel, surreptitious, surprised at their own ease. Faded bottle caps, rusted bits of chrome, an occasional paper clip, recede into the earth. I circle a ticket booth, sun-faded, empty, the door closed by an oversized padlock. I walk beside the tall, machinery-green, board fence. A half mile away a few cars hiss along the freeway; overhead a single-engine plane fizzes lazily. The whole place is silent as an empty classroom, like a house suddenly without children.

It is then that I spot the door-shape. I have to check twice to be sure it is there: a door cut in the deep green boards of the fence, more the promise of a door than the real thing, the kind of door, as children, we cut in the sides of cardboard boxes with our mother's paring knives. As I move closer, a golden circle of lock, like an acrimonious eye, establishes its certainty.

I stand, my nose so close to the door I can smell the faint odour of paint, the golden eye of a lock inches from my own eyes. My desire to be inside the ballpark is so great that for the first time in my life I commit a criminal act. I have been a locksmith for over forty years. I take the small tools from the pocket of my jacket, and in less time than it would take a speedy runner to circle the bases I am inside the stadium. Though the ballpark is open-air, it smells of abandonment; the walkways and seating areas are cold as base­ments. I breathe the odours of rancid popcorn and wilted cardboard.

The maintenance staff were laid off when the strike began. Syn­thetic grass does not need to be cut or watered. I stare down at the ball diamond, where just to the right of the pitcher's mound, a single weed, perhaps two inches high, stands defiant in the rain-pocked dirt. The field sits breathless in the orangy glow of the evening sun. I stare at the potato-coloured earth of the infield, that wide, dun arc, surrounded by plastic grass. As I contemplate the prickly turf, which scorches the thighs and buttocks of a sliding player as if he were being seared by hot steel, it stares back in its uniform ugliness.

I remember the ballfields of my childhood, the outfields full of soft hummocks and brown-eyed gopher holes. I stride down from the stands and walk out to the middle of the field. I touch the stubble that is called grass, take off my shoes, but find it is like walking on a row of toothbrushes. It was an evil day when they stripped the sod from this ballpark, cut it into yard-wide swathes, rolled it, memories and all, into great green-and-black cinnamonroll shapes, trucked it away. Nature temporarily defeated. But Nature is patient.

Over the next few days an idea forms within me, ripening, swell­ing, pushing everything else into a corner. It is like knowing a new, wonderful joke and not being able to share. I need an accomplice.

5.Do you think the narrator is going to commit a crime? Go on reading and you will find out.

 

I go to see a man I don't know personally, though I have seen his face peering at me from the financial pages of the local newspaper, and the Wall Street Journal, and I have been watching his profile at the baseball stadium, two boxes to the right of me, for several years. He is a fan. Really a fan. When the weather is intemperate, or the game not close, the people around us disappear like flowers closing at sunset, but we are always there until the last pitch. I know he is a man who attends because of the beauty and mystery of the game, a man who can sit during the last of the ninth with the game decided innings ago, and draw joy from watching the first baseman adjust the angle of his glove as the pitcher goes into his windup.

He, like me, is a first-base-side fan. I've always watched baseball from behind first base. The positions fans choose at sporting events are like politics, religion, or philosophy: a view of the world, a way of seeing the universe. They make no sense to anyone, have no basis in anything but stubbornness. I brought up my daughters to watch baseball from the first-base side. One lives in Japan and sends me box scores from Japanese newspapers, and Japanese baseball magazines with pictures of superstars politely bowing to one another. She has a season ticket in Yokohama; on the first-base side.

“Tell him a baseball fan is here to see him,” is all I will say to his secretary. His office is in a skyscraper, from which he can look out over the city to where the prairie rolls green as mountain water to the limits of the eye. I wait all afternoon in the artificially cool, glassy reception area with its yellow and mauve chairs, chrome and glass coffee tables. Finally, in the late afternoon, my message is passed along.

“I've seen you at the baseball stadium,” I say, not introducing myself.

“Yes,” he says. “I recognize you. Three rows back, about eight seats to my left. You have a red scorebook and you often bring your daughter . . .”

“Granddaughter.”

“One of my greatest regrets,” says this tall man, whose moustache and carefully styled hair are polar-bear white, “is that my grand­children all live over a thousand miles away. You're very lucky. Now, what can I do for you?”

“I have an idea,” I say. “One that's been creeping toward me like a first baseman when the bunt sign is on. What do you think about artificial turf?”

“Hmmmf,” he snorts, “that's what the strike should be about. Baseball is meant to be played on summer evenings and Sunday afternoons, on grass just cut by a horse-drawn mower,” and we smile as our eyes meet.

“I've discovered the ballpark is open, to me anyway,” I go on. “There's no one there while the strike is on. The wind blows through the high top of the grandstand, whining until the pigeons in the rafters flutter. It's lonely as a ghost town.”

“And what is it you do there, alone with the pigeons?”

“I dream.”

“And where do I come in?”

“You've always struck me as a man who dreams. I think we have things in common. I think you might like to come with me. I could show you what I dream, paint you pictures, suggest what might happen . . .”

He studies me carefully for a moment, like a pitcher trying to decide if he can trust the sign his catcher has just given him.

“Tonight?” he says. “Would tonight be too soon?”

“Park in the northwest corner of the lot about 1:00 a.m. There is a door about fifty yards to the right of the main gate. I'll open it when I hear you.”

He nods. I turn and leave.

The night is clear and cotton warm when he arrives. “Oh, my,” he says, staring at the stadium turned chrome-blue by a full moon. “Oh, my,” he says again, breathing in the faint odours of baseball, the reminder of fans and players not long gone.

“Let's go down to the field,” I say. I am carrying a cardboard pizza box, holding it on the upturned palms of my hands, like an offering. When we reach the field, he first stands on the mount, makes an awkward attempt at a windup, then does a little sprint from first to about half-way to second. “I think I know what you've brought,” he says, gesturing toward the box, “but let me see anyway.”

I open the box in which rests a square foot of sod, the grass smooth and pure, cool as a swatch of satin, fragile as baby's hair.

“Ohhh,” the man says, reaching out a finger to test the moistness of it. “Oh, I see.”

We walk across the field, the harsh, prickly turf making the bottoms of my feet tingle, to the left-field corner where, in the angle formed by the foul line and the warning track, I lay down the square foot of sod. 'That's beautiful,' my friend says, kneeling beside me, placing his hand, fingers spread wide, on the verdant square, leaving a print faint as a veronica. I take from my belt a sickle-shaped blade, the kind used for cut­ting carpet. I measure along the edge of the sod, dig the point in and pull carefully toward me. There is a ripping sound, like tearing an old bed sheet. I hold up the square of artificial turf like something freshly killed, while all the time digging the sharp point into the packed earth I have exposed. I replace the sod lovingly, covering the newly bared surface.

“A protest,” I say.

“But it could be more,” the man replies. “I hoped you'd say that. It could be. If you'd like to come back. . .” “Tomorrow night?”

“Tomorrow night would be fine. But there will be an admission charge . . .” “A square of sod?”

“A square of sod two inches thick . . .”

“Of the same grass?”

“Of the same grass. But there's more.”

“I suspected as much.”

“You must have a friend . . .”

“Who would join us?”

“Yes.”

“I have two. Would that be all right?”

“I trust your judgement.”

“My father. He's over eighty,” my friend says. “You might have seen him with me once or twice. He lives over fifty miles from here, but if I call him he'll come. And my friend . . .”

“If they pay their admission they'll be welcome ...”

“And they may have friends . . .”

“Indeed they may. But what will we do with this?” I say, holding up the sticky-backed square of turf, which smells of glue and fabric.

“We could mail them anonymously to baseball executives, poli­ticians, clergymen.”

“Gentle reminders not to tamper with Nature.” We dance toward the exit, rampant with excitement. “You will come back? You'll bring others?”

“Count on it,” says my friend.

They do come, those trusted friends, and friends of friends, each making a live, green deposit. At first, a tiny row of sod squares begins to inch along toward left-centre field. The next night even more people arrive, the following night more again, and the night after there is positively a crowd. Those who come once seem always to return accompanied by friends, occasionally a son or young bro­ther, but mostly men my age or older, for we are the ones who remember the grass.

Night after night the pilgrimage continues. The first night I stand inside the deep green door, listening. I hear a vehicle stop; hear a car door close with a snug thud. I open the door when the sound of soft-soled shoes on gravel tells me it is time. The door swings silent as a snake. We nod curt greetings to each other. Two men pass me, each carrying a grasshopper-legged sprinkler. Later, each sprinkler will sizzle like frying onions as it wheels, a silver sparkler in the moonlight.

 

6.Now finish reading the story. Some people might say that nothing really happened. What is your opinion?

 

During the nights that follow, I stand sentinel-like at the top of the grandstand, watching as my cohorts arrive. Old men walking across a parking lot in a row, in the dark, carrying coiled hoses, looking like the many wheels of a locomotive, old men who have supped away from their homes, skulked down their sturdy side­walks, breathing the cool, grassy, after-midnight air. They have left behind their sleeping, grey-haired women, their immaculate bungalows, their manicured lawns. They continue to walk across the parking lot, while occasionally a soft wheeze, a nibbling, breathy sound like an old horse might make, divulges their humanity. They move methodically toward the baseball stadium which hulks against the moonblue sky like a small mountain. Beneath the tint of star­light, the tall light standards which rise above the fences and grand­stand glow purple, necks bent forward, like sunflowers heavy with seed.

I haven't been able to tell my wife - it is like my compatriots and I are involved in a ritual for true believers only. Maggie, who knew me when I still dreamed of playing professionally myself - Maggie, after over half a lifetime together, comes and sits in my lap in the comfortable easy chair which has adjusted through the years to my thickening shape, just as she has. I love to hold the lightness of her, her tongue exploring my mouth, gently as a baby's finger.

“Where do you go?” she asks sleepily when I crawl into bed at dawn.

I mumble a reply. I know she doesn't sleep well when I'm gone. I can feel her body rhythms change as I slip out of bed after midnight.

“Aren't you too old to be having a change of life,” she says, placing her toast-warm hand on my cold thigh.

I am not the only one with this problem.

“I'm developing a reputation,” whispers an affable man at the ballpark. “I imagine any number of private investigators following any number of cars across the city. I imagine them creeping about the parking lot, shining pen-lights on licence plates, trying to guess what we're up to. Think of the reports they must prepare. I wonder if our wives are disappointed that we're not out discoing with frizzy-haired teenagers?”

Night after night, virtually no words are spoken. Each man seems to know his assignment. Not all bring sod. Some carry rakes, some hoes, some hoses, which, when joined together, snake across the infield and outfield, dispensing the blessing of water. Others, cradle in their arms bags of earth for building up the infield to meet the thick, living sod.

I often remain high in the stadium, looking down on the men moving over the earth, dark as ants, each sodding, cutting, watering, shaping. Occasionally the moon finds a knife blade as it trims the sod or slices away a chunk of artificial turf, and tosses the reflection skyward like a bright ball. My body tingles. There should be sym­phony music playing. Everyone should be humming “America The Beautiful”. Toward dawn, I watch the men walking away in groups, like small patrols of soldiers, carrying instead of arms, the tools and utensils which breathe life back into the arid ballfield.

Row by row, night by night, we lay the little squares of sod, moist as chocolate cake with green icing. Where did all the sod come from? I picture many men, in many parts of the city, surreptitiously cutting chunks out of their own lawns in the leafy midnight darkness, listen­ing to the uncomprehending protests of their wives the next day -pretending to know nothing of it - pretending to have called the police to investigate.

When the strike is over I know we will all be here to watch the workouts, to hear the recalcitrant joints crackling like twigs after the forced inactivity. We will sit in our regular seats, scattered like popcorn throughout the stadium, and we'll nod as we pass on the way to the exits, exchange secret smiles, proud as new fathers.

For me, the best part of all will be the surprise. I feel like a magician who has gestured hypnotically and produced an elephant from thin air. I know I am not alone in my wonder. I know that rockets shoot off in half-a-hundred chests, the excitement of birth­day mornings, Christmas eves, and home-town doubleheaders, boils within each of my conspirators. Our secret rites have been per­formed with love, like delivering a valentine to a sweetheart's door in that blue-steel span of morning just before dawn.

Players and management are meeting round the clock. A settle­ment is imminent. I have watched the stadium covered square foot by square foot until it looks like green graph paper. I have stood and felt the cool odours of the grass rise up and touch my face. I have studied the lines between each small square, watched those lines fade until they were visible to my eyes alone, then not even to them.

What will the players think, as they straggle into the stadium and find the miracle we have created? The old-timers will raise then-heads like ponies, as far away as the parking lot, when the thrill of the grass reaches their nostrils. And, as they dress, they'll recall sprawling in the lush outfields of childhood, the grass as cool as a mother's hand on a forehead.

“Good-bye, good-bye,” we say at the gate, the smell of water, of sod, of sweat, small perfumes in the air. Our secrets are safe with each other. We go our separate ways. Alone in the stadium in the last chill darkness before dawn, I drop to my hands and knees in the centre of the outfield. My palms are sodden. Water touches the skin between my spread fingers. I lower my face to the silvered grass, which, wonder of wonders, already has the ephemeral odours of baseball about it.

AFTER-READING ACTIVITIES

 

7. Answer the following questions.

 

· In what way did the narrator try to kill his time when he had no chance to watch baseball?

· What was the origin of his love for baseball?

· Can we say that passion for baseball ran in his family?

· What impression did the deserted stadium produced on the narrator?

· Why was the man irritated by the artificial turf?

· What did he need accomplices for and what united all these men?

· What was the reason for their activity to remain secret?

· For the sake of what exactly did these men gather every night?

· What kind of reaction on the part of the players could be expected at the beginning of the baseball season?

 

8.Playing and watching baseball is part and parcel of American lifestyle. But understanding this game presupposes the knowledge of some baseball terms. There are quite a few of them in the story. Match the terms with their definitions.

1) A catcher a) to hit the ball lightly, rather than trying to hit it as far as possible : a surprise tactic
2) aballpark b) the player who throws the ball to (or at!) the batsman
3) a shortstop c) the fielder standing behind the batter to catch the balls the batter fails to hit.
4) to bunt d) a fielder who stands by second base
5) a pitcher e) the stadium where the home team play

 

Can you explain the origin of some of the terms?

9.Let us describe the main character of the story with the help of his remarks. Give a brief character sketch of the man.

· “Tell him a baseball fan is here to see him.”

· “I have an idea. One that's been creeping toward me like a first baseman when the bunt sign is on.”

· “The wind blows through the high top of the grandstand, whining until the pigeons in the rafters flutter. It's lonely as a ghost town.”

· “I could show you what I dream, paint you pictures, suggest what might happen.”

· “Tomorrow night would be fine. But there will be an admission charge.”

· “I trust your judgment.”

· “Gentle reminders not to tamper with Nature.”

10.There are several phrases in the first part of the story that create the atmosphere of the story. Read them and explain what the author is trying to say to the reader. Find more “atmosphere-making” phrases in the rest of the story.

· Summer without baseball: a disruption to the psyche.

· The whole place is silent as an empty classroom, like a house suddenly without children.

· The whole place is silent as an empty classroom, like a house suddenly without children.

11.Let us focus on style. Read the definition of a stylistic device and find its examples in the story.

Simile is the stylistic device where the comparison between the two things is made explicit by the use of the words: as, like. Similes are often much more than mere comparisons. They may be poetic, personal, unexpected and imaginative.

 

12.Imagine the main character in a few years` time telling his granddaughter (who is now a teenager, who doesn`t take anything at face value) what he did for the love of the game.

COMPARATIVE WRITING

13.We tend to compare things and people not only during English classes, but in real life as well. Practise creating similes. Don`t restrict your imagination.

· The tennis player moved like…

· The umpire looked at the players like…

· The audience yelled like…

· The hockey team fought like…

· The cyclist rushed ahead like…

· The crowd of fans behaved as…

· The gymnast flew through the air like…

· The football coach cursed like…

· The bicycle race winner felt as proud as…

· The injured boxer was as helpless as …

· The figure skater danced as …as…

· The runner sprinted ahead as…as…

14.Think of five ideas about various sports. Make your comparisons humorous.

· For an inexperienced observer cricket may seem as dull as an old pair of boots.

· ________________________________________

15.Visit a local sports venue and describe it using similes (80 words). You may start like this: “…In winter the tennis courts in the city park look as sad as…”


BLEACHERS

(An extract)

 

THINKING AHEAD

Many people do sports while in their teens. Yet very few of them become professional athletes. Truth is if you really fall in love with sports, your whole life will be colored by it, and you will become a different person. But you can’t do it all on your own — you need someone to guide you. A coach…Probably like the one you are going to read about.

A WORD ABOUT THE AUTHOR

   


John Ray Grisham is an American author, best known for his popular legal thrillers. Before becoming a writer, he was a successful lawyer and politician. As of 2008, his books have sold over 250 million copies worldwide. John Grisham as a child dreamed of being a professional baseball player. Realizing he didn’t have the right stuff for a pro career, he opted for other goals and achieved them. Recently he has shifted from writing about law and politics to sports, reliving his childhood dreams.


 


PRE-READING ACTIVITIES

1. In small groups discuss the problem of making sport and games an integral part of our life-style. What does it take to become a dedicated athlete early in your life?

2. Decide whether it is important for a promising athlete to have a role model in sports. Who suits the role better — a parent, a superstar athlete, or his/her coach?

3. Discuss the potential dangers of embarking on an athletic career. What should one be prepared for under the circumstances?

READING ACTIVITIES

4. The extract falls into three distinct parts. Read the first part of the story and say what Coach Rake looks to you.

Coach Rake had asked three of his former players to deliver eulogies. Short ones, he had demanded in writing from his deathbed. The first was given by the Honorable Mike Hilliard, now a circuit court judge in a small town a hundred miles away. Unlike most of the former Spartans, he wore a suit, one with wrinkles, and a crooked bow tie. He grabbed the podium with both hands and didn't need notes.

“I played on Coach Rake's first team in 1958,” he began in a squeaky voice with a thick drawl. “The year before we had won three games and lost seven, which, back then, was considered a good season because we beat Porterville in our final game. The Coach left town and took his assistants with him, and for a while we weren't sure we would find anyone to coach us. They hired this young guy named Eddie Rake, who wasn't much older than we were. The first thing he told us was that we were a bunch of losers, that losing is contagious, that if we thought we could lose with him then we could hit the door. Forty-one of us signed up for football that year. Coach Rake took us off to an old church camp over in Page County for August drills, and after four days the squad was down to thirty. After a week we were down to twenty-five and some of us were beginning to wonder if we'd survive long enough to field a team. The practices were beyond brutal. The bus for Messina left every afternoon, and we were free to get on it. After two weeks the bus was empty and it stopped running. The boys who quit came home telling horror stories of what was happening at Camp Rake, as it was soon called. Our parents were alarmed. My mother told me later she felt like I was off at war. Unfortunately, I've seen war. And I would prefer it over Camp Rake.

We broke camp with twenty-one players, twenty-one kids who'd never been in such great shape. We were small and slow and didn't have a quarterback, but we were convinced. Our first game was at home against Fulton, a team that had embarrassed us the year before. I'm sure some of you remember it. We led twenty to nothing at halftime and Rake cussed us because we'd made some mistakes. His genius was simple — stick to the basics, and work nonstop until you can execute them perfectly. Lessons I have never forgotten. We won the game, and we were celebrating in the locker room when Rake walked in and told us to shut up. Evidently our execution had not been perfect. He told us to keep our gear on, and after the crowd left we came back to this field and practiced until midnight. We ran two plays until all eleven guys got everything perfect. Our girlfriends were waiting. Our parents were waiting. It was nice to win the game, but folks were beginning to think Coach Rake was crazy. The players already knew it.

We won eight games that year, lost only two, and the legend of Eddie Rake was born. My senior year we lost one game, then in 1960 Coach Rake had his first undefeated season. I was away at college and I couldn't get home every Friday, though I desperately wanted to. When you play for Rake you join an exclusive little club, and you follow the teams that come behind you. For the next thirty-two years I followed Spartan football as closely as possible. I was here, sitting up there in the bleachers, when the great streak began in '64, and I was at South Wayne when it ended in 1970. Along with you, I watched the great ones play—Wally Webb, Roman Armstead, Jesse Trapp, Neely Crenshaw.”

“On the walls of my cluttered office hang the photos of all thirty-four of Rake's teams. He would send me a picture of the team every year. Often, when I should be working, I'll light my pipe and stand before them and look at the faces of all the young men he coached. Skinny white boys in the 1950s, with crew cuts and innocent smiles. Shaggier ones in the 1960s, fewer smiles, determined looks, you can almost see the ominous clouds of war and civil rights in their faces. Black and white players smiling together in the seventies and eighties, much bigger kids, with fancier uniforms, some were the sons of boys I played with. I know that every player looking down from my walls was indelibly touched by Eddie Rake. They ran the same plays, heard the same pep talks, got the same lectures, endured the same brutal drills in August. And every one of us at some time became convinced that we truly hated Eddie Rake. But then we were gone. Our pictures hang on the walls, and we spend the rest of our lives hearing the sound of his voice in the locker room, longing for the days when we called him Coach.”

“Most of those faces are here today. Slightly older, grayer, some a bit heavier. All sadder as we say good-bye to Coach Rake. And why do we care? Why are we here? Why are the stands once again filled and overflowing? Well, I will tell you why.”

 








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