Spill a little mustard on your shirt for Franktuary, which sunsetted its brick and mortar a few years back, but still operates a food truck here and there I hear.
Reverently prepared hot dogs.
Peter and I used to pilgrimage to their Lawrenceville location for boys day out Saturday lunches.
And like the great philosophers of antiquity, we’d spend the purgatory between our ordering and our munching engaging in spirited, hangry debates over the universe’s cosmic questions.
Does ketchup belong on a hot dog?
Answer: as you will consistently find across both your meat-eating eastern and western religions, the creator intended ketchup for hamburgers, mustard for hot dogs.
Are Franktuary’s fresh cut fries with garlic aioli better than Shorty’s fries with gravy?
Answer: What, in life, is truly objective? Just as Plato and Kant tussled with that hot potato across centuries … Peter and I staged “The Great Potato Debate” across many a table over the years. He was unequivocally Team Frankturary. Me? I was polytheistic on the matter. For the ultimate answer … ask God next time you see her.
Without irony, I believe that you can test the mettle of a good cathedral by the questions and conversations it engenders.
Once, while Peter and I were debating metaphysics, Heidegger, and the nature of being — by which I mean whether honey mustard was a salad dressing (Peter) or a condiment (me) — a father and young son, both dressed in Pirates jerseys, sat down at a booth across from us.
No sooner had they taken their seats when the son, maybe eight or nine, asked his Dad, “Who’s your favorite baseball player of all time?”
Which settled the question of God’s existence for me once and for all.
Where others might commission tattoos, I have … t-shirts.
I fall in love with too many things and am way too scrawny to commit to tattoos.
I can be pretty much summed up by and/or reduced to the Billy Collins’ poem, “Aimless Love.”
“But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow.”
Much to the chagrin of my wife (and my closet), I find t-shirts inexhaustible objects for my affections.
While shopping local a couple months ago, I stumbled upon the most wonderful creation, whose artist happened to choose a t-shirt for their canvas.
The above captures Forbes Field’s manual scoreboard the moment right before Bill Mazeroski cemented his baseball legacy on Oct. 13, 1960 — the second before his Game7-World-Series-winning home run off the Yankees’ Ralph Terry in the bottom of the ninth inning.
For me it was love at first sight.
So I was bummed when, the day after I ordered, I got an email from Wild Card in Lawrenceville, informing me they were out of larges … and asking me if I’d be interested in a medium instead.
But then I noticed a second email from Wild Card in my in-box. From the same person. Mentioning that if I wanted to try the medium, she’d send me a self-addressed return envelope in the slim (ha) chance it didn’t fit.
Who does that? Wild Card in Lawrenceville does.
Turns out, the medium suited me as kindly as Ralph Terry’s high fastball did Maz.
First time I wore it, I thought of a kindred spirit who would appreciate it.
Texted a pic of my proud torso to my friend Jeff.
His reply reeked of pure Pittsburgh serendipity.
Get this: turns out I actually know the person who designed the shirt.
Not only that, it was Jeff who introduced us a few years ago.
How’s that for a confluence?
Jeff shot me the number of his good friend, Nick, who I texted immediately, informing him of the wellspring of exponential Pittsburgh joy presently emanating from my torso.
“Ha … I think that’s my favorite, too,” Nick replied all the way from LA, where he now lives with his acclaimed-author-and-TV-writing- wife and family.
He summed up the inspiration for the design so perfectly and profoundly.
“Next pitch changes everything.”
Wow.
__
I’ve been walking around with Nick’s words in my pocket ever since our serendipitous exchange.
They keep grabbing me by my collar and shaking me awake.
We are all always only a pitch away from everything changing.
For the better … if you happened to be wearin’ black and gold on Oct. 13, 1960.
Or for worse, if you were wearin’ pinstripes.
Our existence is nothing but precious and fragile.
Yet always pregnant with possibility.
Which makes the choice of putting good into the world — even in something as temporal as a t-shirt — a sacred act.
As sacred as any kindness requiring intention … a self-addressed return envelope just in case, as an example.
If it wasn’t for the kind gesture of the person at Wild Card, I may not have ordered the shirt, and wouldn’t have thought of Jeff, wouldn’t have learned that I knew the designer, would never have sent Nick my gratitude, and would have gone a lifetime missing out on the golden wisdom he drew from Mazeroski’s heroic act.
Our tiniest gestures can be oxygen for campfires … that remind us that we’re connected in ways we can’t even imagine.
It’s pushing past noon when I hear my son, upstairs and recently awake, deftly float a question to his mother.
“If I went to Shorty’s, would you want me to bring you one back?”
It was an exquisite ask. The phrasing, brilliant.
He didn’t ask if she wanted to go to lunch. He didn’t say that he was even going. And he didn’t ask “Do you want anything from Shorty’s?”
He served the proposition on a platter, and in so doing, made it irresistible.
I couldn’t hear Karry’s response, but after he and I made a successful post office drop just before their 1 p.m. close, we found ourselves parallel parking into the one open spot along West Chestnut Street.
Couldn’t tell you the last time we hit up Shorty’s on a Saturday afternoon. Actually, I could if I looked at my camera reel. Which is funny when I think about it, because we get exactly the same thing every time. The only thing that changes in my photo documentation is whether the plates are sitting on the counter or — if no open seats there — a table. Makes me think of that time at the newspaper when the fellas in the sports department gave grief to the guy who’d laid out the section’s cover page the day before. To accompany a preview of the Kentucky Derby, the guy included the head shots of all the horses. Which, when you think about it, is ridiculous … since all the horses’ faces pretty much look the same.
But, is it any more ridiculously logical than taking the same photo of hot dogs again and again … and again?
Point is, it’d been a minute since we jingled Shorty’s door open on a Saturday afternoon, pausing a beat to acknowledge the Grill Guy at the Window before surveying the, um, untouched-by-time, interior for an open seat.
Can I just say?
Depositing one’s keister atop a stool at Shorty’s lunch counter on a Saturday afternoon is one of life’s great capital “A” Arrival-ings.
It’s an exhale.
An unburdening.
A ‘We Made It’ through the week.
A We Are Here Now.
There will likely be fist bumps.
Because you know.
You know that within a minute of sitting down, one of the waitresses will float in front of you and ask if you’re ready to order.
You know exactly what you’re going to say. Sh*t … you knew the moment you made the conscious choice to gift your Saturday. The only decision requiring any deliberation is whether you and your co-pilot are feeling trusting enough to share a large fry with gravy, or go with two smalls to guarantee a 50-50 split.
You know that, seconds after your order, your waitress will yell loud enough for both the Grill Guy at the Window and the Guy Dunking Fries in the Kitchen to hear.
You know that the sound of her voice will register to your ears the way you imagine some folks hear opera.
You know that within 90 seconds, your plated dogs will be placed in front of you.
For me, two with everything. For the boy, one every, one ketchup and onions. In Shorty’s parlance “everything” does not connote gratuitousness (i.e. the kitchen sink), but, rather, sufficient-ness, lacking of nothing — finely (and I mean, finely) diced onions, a squirt of yellow mustard, and a slather of their no-beans-just-a-bit-of-ground-beef chili. Cue angel chorus.
You know that your fries with gravy will trail just a minute behind, since you asked for them to be well-done, which is how the pros do it, FWIW.
You know that you will wait for everything to arrive before you and your co-pilot make ceremony of your respective first bites.
You know that you will allow a couple extra beats for your co-pilot to lightly crop dust the fries with a sprinkle of salt and then as many morocco shakes of the pepper as it takes to ensure thorough coverage across the plate.
You know that it will be perfect, and not in any kind of throwaway sense.
During our reverie I found myself conjuring a passage I copied into my journal a year or so ago. I poorly paraphrased it for Peter, but gave him enough to catch my drift, and nod in affirmation.
The passage is from a tribute that Joe Posnanski wrote back in 2020 upon the passing of the writer Roger Khan. Appearing in The Athletic, Posnanski wrote of how Khan’s masterwork, “The Boys of Summer,” changed his life. The piece struck me in the moment and has stuck with me since for two reasons. “The Boys of Summer” changed my life, too. It was the first book I remember reading for pleasure in college, the summer after my junior year. A book that taught me that good sportswriters were just good writers who happened to write sports. A book that, looking back, was among a small handful of cosmic forces that spat me into giving sportswriting a shot after graduation. The second reason was the exquisite language Posnanski used when describing Khan’s chronicle of his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers. I looked it up in my journal so I could get it right here.
“The Boys of Summer” might not be the best book I have read, just like “The Princess Bride” might not be the best movie I have seen and spaghetti and meatballs might not be the best meal I have had and Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke” might not be the best song I have heard and chocolate cake might not be the best dessert I’ve eaten. But it is, to me, the most perfect book, just as the rest are the most perfect examples of joy.
Those might not be the best lines I’ve scribbled into my journal. But, to me, they are the most perfect lines.
And capture exactly how I feel about Shorty’s on a Saturday afternoon. The only reason Posnanski didn’t mention Shorty’s by name in his enumeration is that he’s obviously never tried to find a parking spot on West Chestnut Street on his lunch hour.
“This is perfect,” I actually said aloud to Peter when swabbing the last fry across the bottom of our plate to soak as much of the remaining gravy as its absorptive properties would allow. He’d gifted me the last few on the plate after realizing the significant dent he’d put in the pile.
We shoulda gone two smalls.
A second later our waitress set down the brown to-go bag containing Karry’s go-to — one with ketchup, mustard and onions.
Asks us if we need anything else.
The question always begets a hesitation. Born of both respect and serious consideration.
You know you could totally go for a third, no problem. You’ve done it in the past with zero regrets. There was also that one time you may or may not have gone for a fourth.
But you remind yourself that the experience is not about gratuitousness but, rather, sufficient-ness.
So Peter settles up with the grill guy at the window, who doubles as the cash-only cashier.
And we backwash out the door, appreciating the gift of the slight downhill walk back to the car and the little bit of sun peeking through the clouds …
He just brought it home one day after work and presented it to me. No set up. Not born of a previous request or conversation.
The Glove.
Reggie Jackson model, waffle-pocket Rawlings. The Finest In the Field.
Said he’d bought it from an acquaintance. Some guy he knew from the store. Paid $25 for it, used. I remember him feeling shrewd about the deal.
It was huge. The finger holes were like catacombs. My 10-year-old digits barely reached.
And, oh, it was really used. The traditional method of breaking in a glove is to place a baseball in the pocket and tightly tie the glove closed with string so that you preserve a sweet spot for the ball. The Glove must’ve been given a Swedish Massage and then placed, empty, under the tire of a dump truck. Its pocket folded over its fingers like pages in a book. Its leather soft and pliant. It was so broken in I could clap with it. What padding it had was massaged into sweet surrender (presumably by the Swedes). But given that my fingers barely filled 25% of its real estate, padding wasn’t really relevant to the equation.
Letters for Maggie 