Please Don’t Let This Season Turn Into A Funeral Dirge

I was washing dishes at the Taco Bell in the Silver City Galleria when Ted Williams died in 2002. I liked washing the dishes. Usually, I was asked to work the register, because I was one of the only native English speakers in the place. So every time I got bumped back to the dish sink I felt like I was coming off stage. I could breathe back there.

We washed the dishes and we talked about soccer and the Red Sox. I didn’t know anything about soccer back then, but it was a World Cup summer and I worked with two Brazilian brothers who followed every minute of the tournament. Klessio and Kleyber would patiently try to explain the brilliance of Ronaldo to me and Mike, and then Mike and I returned…