barry turner was a baseball fan.
he had been a fan since he was ten years old. he had been captivated by the box scores in the daily newspaper, and started listening to the minnesota twins games on the radio.
a heavy and awkward child, he had no ability to play baseball or any other sport, or engage in any kind of strenuous physical activity.
he preferred listening to games to watching them on television. listening to the twins games on the radio, and reading box scores in the paper, became his life.
he had no siblings, and no friends. his mother had left his father when barry was an infant, and the elder mr turner was an uncommunicative sort who was always tired after his day’s work.
father and son subsisted on pizza and other takeout food.
barry was a poor student, but managed to graduate from high school.
he held a succession of jobs, mostly as a delivery man. he was never without a job for more than two weeks, and in over thirty years never called in sick or otherwise missed a day of work, not even to attend his father’s funeral.
barry despised people on welfare. but other than holding this strong opinion, he had no interest in politics.
through the long unfolding years baseball was his only preoccupation.
although he was not entirely pleased with the changes that took place in the game.
the fact that the players came to make so much money was always in the back of his mind. how, he wondered, could they care if they won or lost?
he was also distressed by the designated hitter rule, so much so that he finally switched his allegiance from the american league twins to the national league chicago cubs, whose games he could also tune in to on his radio.
switching his loyalty from the twins to the cubs was the closest thing to a traumatic event in his life.
he mostly listened to the games on the radio in his house. he now owned and still lived in the house he had grown up in.
with the advent of the internet and sirius radio, he could now listen to all the games of all the teams.
very occasionally he would watch a game on the television in a neighborhood bar, carefully nursing a beer or a root beer or a ginger ale.
one rainy night in late august he was watching the cubs play the arizona diamondbacks in a bar a few blocks from his house.
he was the only patron in the bar. the diamondbacks were leading the cubs 7 to 2 in the sixth inning.
the bartender was reading a newspaper, completely indifferent to the game.
suddenly barry himself lost all interest in the game.
he was overwhelmed by a realization that his life was more than half over, and that there were other things in the world besides baseball.
he finished his ginger ale and left the bar without saying goodbye to the bartender, whose name he had forgotten.
he went home. the rain was falling hard, and he got wet enough getting to his van and then getting from his van to the house that he had to change his clothes.
he felt a chill and a strange foreboding listening to the rain on the roof, but after devising a plan of sorts for what to do with the rest of his life, he managed to fall asleep.
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