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Me And Hank A Boy And His Hero, Tweny-Five Years Later by Sandy Tolan Free Press, 2000 | Buy the book

My life with Hank began on a warm Saturday afternoon in May 1964. I was eight years old. My big sister Kathy decided it was time I learned about baseball.

There were eight of us -- Mom and Dad; Tom, the oldest at fourteen; then Kathleen; Mary; me; John; and Willy, born in 1963. Up to then, anyway, we were faithful, obedient Irish-German Catholics -- fish on Fridays, mass on Sundays, birth control never. We filled up a huge six-bedroom, three-story brick-and-stucco house my parents bought for $29,500 in 1959. Maple tree in the side yard, basketball hoop on the garage, and across the street, a county park, with steps through a dark ravine to the lakefront, and the beach at Lake Michigan. Down the street were bigger houses still, on the bluff, overlooking the lake.

In 1964, my dad, left leg shriveled from polio at age six, could still limp around okay with leg braces and a cane. He could still make it down to the basement, where now and then we'd saw and pound together our great wooden ships, to launch in the bathtub. He could still swing a bat on the front lawn, sending us skittering after ground balls through the middle and into the neighbors' yard.

It was blue-skied and quiet that afternoon Kath took me for my lesson in baseball. We walked down Terrace Avenue beneath a canopy of giant elm trees. The way I remember it, I wore double-kneed jeans with the elastic waist and the too-long belt my mom had poked extra holes in. Kathy pounded her Duke Snider glove, playing catch with a hardball she tossed toward the leaves. She was thirteen, and a lefty, like me -- and like Eddie Mathews of the Braves, Number 41, her hero.

In four blocks we came to a favored spot on Earth: a tiny red and white building, with a bulbous silver fan spinning atop the tar roof. The Popcorn Stand was run from spring to fall by Mr. and Mrs. M. All winter long, we'd look at the boarded-up stand, with its hand-painted, orange-breasted bird, and its promise: See You With The First Robin! In April, when the robins came first, we'd get upset with Mr. and Mrs. M for not being there, too. One spring I wanted to call them -- "Um, excuse me, hi, when are you opening?" -- but nobody could remember what came after the "M." It stood for some long foreign name none of us could pronounce. Probably German -- like Maier, my middle name, after my mom's father. I wondered if the M's knew Grandpa Irv, for they each ran important businesses: for Grandpa, it was the daily newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal, where he was the publisher; for Mr. and Mrs. M, The Popcorn Stand.

We liked listening to Mrs. M's accent. John Topetzes, my buddy since kindergarten (who went by the nickname T), had innumerable ways to get her to say the word "three."

"How much is that pack of pumpkin seeds?" T would ask, standing on the "kids' step" in front of the sliding glass window.

"Tree." The old lady peered down over specs, wisps of gray hair escaping from a bun.

"What if I got four red coins and one swizzle stick?"

"Tree." Frowning now, wiping her hands on her apron.

"Three Bazooka Joes?"

"Tree."

"Six red coins?"

"Tr -- " And then Mrs. M would lose her temper and tell T to order or let the next kid step up.

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