Cross Country: Making Jack Proud

Little League was just a ruse to mask my addiction to Big League Chew. When it came time for the annual little league lottery I was selected by the Sodom Tigers, an expansion team in a small town nearly twenty-five miles from my house. The Rotary and Gore teams held down a yearly rotating monopoly on the Adirondack Division Championship and in an unsuccessful antitrust adventure the Division created two other teams in the town of Johnsburg, The Tigers and The Wildcats. Our teams shared a brand new diamond in the town of Sodom while the champs split time at the field in North Creek. The draft was a setup from the beginning, coaches had been scouting talent from the days of t-ball and even though it was noted in the Enterprise, the small circulation free weekly paper, that the draft was based purely on pulls of numbers from a hat, each team in order, four players at a time, followed by four players at a time, Gore and Rotary always ended up with the future superstars of the Johnsburg Jaguars baseball team. I was drafted out of pity. My scouting report detailed my fascination with random wildflowers and dandelions that grew in the right field of the t-ball track. Perhaps it touched on my all-consuming passion for the small one scoop free ice cream cones that we enjoyed after every game at Stewarts. Or, maybe it talked about how I would sneak my way out of the dugout mid-inning, I was always warming the pine, to buy some penny candy at the parking lot concession stand.

With my advancement to the bush leagues came a new found love of Big League Chew, the plain flavored shredded gum, that came in the foil, resealable pouch decorated with a juiced up Mark McGwire look-a-like cartoon character. After a thorough trouncing from the Dunkley family clan, who fielded generations of Rotary team players, I asked coach if Kyle had been dipping the entire game. During a trip to pick up some Kit Kat bars in the fifth I thought I spied Kyle picking tobacco out of a pouch, placing a wad in his cheek. Maybe that was how he hit all those home runs I thought. Coach said he wasn’t dipping, that was just Big League Chew. I just had to have some. Everyone wanted to be like Kyle.

Stores these days just aren’t the same. Coca Cola has a new soft drink product that hits the market every time I made a pit stop on my recent drive from Los Angeles to upstate NY, but I couldn’t find a pouch of the Chew anywhere. 2,876 miles coast to coast. Thirty six hours. One shattered moon roof. Two moments of panic when I thought I had run out of gas. Three blinding rainstorms. Ten green apples and a few hundred roasted almonds. Eleven diet cokes (new flavor Coke Plus included) and no pouches of Big League Chew.

I stuck Little League out through three years of a .078 batting average and numerous fielding errors. After playing one year of modified baseball in the seventh grade I promptly switched to tennis the following year. Maybe this was Big League Chew’s revenge.

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They call Montana big sky country. I think Texas deserves the title. Out the driver side window at 75 miles per hour.


Somewhere in New Mexico. A train on a fast moving horizon.


Delmar - The water is fine! C'mon in.


I was tired and so I stopped for some rest and relaxation.


That is my car on an empty strech of the real Route 66 somewhere in eastern California. I stopped to take a photograph of the trailer below.

I couldn't figure out the last time this had been used although there were piles of rotting clothes inside. I didn't see another living soul for sixty miles in either direction.