Our Game

There was a rumble of disgust around Juan Carlos’s coffee cart this morning.

“What’s wrong with you guys?” Javier shot as he peeled the lid off his cup.

“The newspapers keep beating us down,” someone fired. “They think they’re better than us and better than Clemens and Pettitte and Tejada and Bonds, too.”

Javier shook his head.

“You can’t pay attention to judgments passed by people who’ve never done anything,” he said. “George Mitchell and Bud Selig and the people who write in the newspapers don’t know what things are really like. You think they’ve ever had coffee on the street with guys like us?”

Everyone laughed.

“They don’t have any idea what it’s like just trying to survive,” Javier said. “Don’t let any of them control how you feel about baseball or your team. The players get beat down the same way we do, but they aren’t going to quit and neither are we, right?”

Silence.

“So whose game is it?” Javier asked.

“Our game.”

“Whose game?”

“Our game!”