The Accord

Reading Time: 3 minutes

I am 108 years old. I was born on Oct 15, 1908, the day after the Cubs won the last game of their last world series victory. My life has been great, full of adventure and travel and working with smart people and making love to beautiful women and sometimes being a little closer to history then I would have liked. But through it all, baseball, the Cubs, have marked the time. Baseball has passed the days and the nights creating as many highs and lows and stories as the time that passed through it.

I’ve only had one regret in life, I think. I don’t know. It is just something that has lurked in the back of my mind. Maybe, I just have the slightest trace of PTSD. I have never shaken it. I was 36 years old at the time, leading men onto sandy beach to die during a beautiful sunset over the ocean in the South Pacific. Our intelligence was bad, there were far more enemy troops here then expected. Men dropped on either side of me as we stormed the beach. Zeros cruised over head straffing and dropping bombs; concussion blasts ripping men to pieces as they ran. The life expectancy on the beach was about five seconds. A wave of enemy soldiers came at us, bayonets clashing, rounds firing and whistling by me on all sides. I broke through the line and saw a thousand more men up on the hill ready to charge us. I dove into a foxhole and put my back to the dirt wall and the enemy. The only victor in this bloodshed would be the last person to get there when everyone else was already dead.

My heart pounded. Sweat poured from my brow. My knees shook uncontrollably. I knew I wouldn’t live to see the next morning. “Take anything you want, anything, just let me live.” I begged to no one, for who could hear over the screaming and bullets and explosions? A soldier jumped into the fox hole not even bothering to kneel. He had an out of place look on his face, a slight grin, like he was enjoying this god forsaken moment. “I will.” he said, “and you will. Are you of accord?” he asked, extending his hand. I extended my trembling hand to his not quite knowing what to make of this and said “Sure.” And made the accord. He jumped out of the hole. I never saw him again.

The next wave of fighters came, a bomb dropped and cratered out the fox hole next to me, taking out two men that had sought refuge as I had. Bullets screamed everywhere. A body fell on top of me. Then another and another. I stayed under the corpses for hours in the blood red moonlight smelling death all around. And then the fighting stopped. And a private dragged the bodies off of me. Turns out he was from Chicago and a big Cubs fan. We talked about how decimated the major league was, with everyone off to war; Joe Dimaggio missing some of the best years of a baseball player’s life. The Dodgers were still in Brooklyn and the Braves were in Boston. And the Cubs had a decent chance to win the world series this year. And the world seemed right again.

Baseball marks the time and it has marked my 108 years: from my first game at ten years old in 1919 at Wrigley Field, an ultra modern ballpark at the time; until now, a hundred years later to watch what I have waited for my whole life, a Cubs World Series victory. The Cubs play the Indians. It is game seven of the world series at Cleveland, surprisingly warm for a baseball game in November. Pundits have called it an Indian summer, an ominous sign for the Cubs. The Cubs are up 3-2. The Indians bat in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and Indians on all the bases. I’m on the edge of my seat, the Cubs once again giving me a heart attack, something I can ill afford at my age. Chapman pitches to Ramirez. Ball outside, the count is full. I can barely watch. It comes down to this. Everything is riding on this one pitch.

A man walks into my house without knocking or stopping. “Your accord” he says. “What?” I look up at him confused. A soldier. Realization is starting to sink in. “No.” “You’re kidding, right?” I stammer. Chapman goes into the stretch. I hide the remote under the cushions of the couch. “You can’t do this.” Chapman takes the sign from Contreras. I feel myself being pulled away, light, like when the bodies were pulled off me on that beach so many years ago. I smell the stench of fetid bodies starting to decay. Chapman rocks back, throws. The TV goes as black as my embittered soul. A tear rolls down my cheek. The debt is paid. Just one moment. But, it wasn’t just anything, it was everything.