It was all about the Frosty Malt. Frozen solid in a paper cup with a thick wooden spoon “like a stick,” my dad said, it took a while to make its appearance. “They came around with the most popular items that people wanted like beer, popcorn, and hotdogs. But I kept looking.” When the vendor finally appeared, he could already taste the cold chocolatey goodness while sitting in the hot sun in July in Riverfront Stadium. My Dad’s grandma and grandpa were Reds fans. “It was a different time,” my Dad repeated often, explaining how no one watched baseball on tv when Great-Grandpa became a fan in the 1940s. Even in the 1980s when my Dad was a kid, he listened to games or looked for results in the newspaper the next morning, when my Dad was young, Great Grandma and Grandpa shared season tickets with friends from the bank, traveling to Cincinatti, 20-25 games a season. They took my Dad and a chosen friend to one game a summer. In Alexandira, Indiana, They would all jump into Great Granpa’s red Buick with a cooler full of soda. Halfway to Cincinatti, they would the stop the car at a rest stop to grab a coke from the cooler. Great Granpa was 6 foot 3 and never wore shorts. At Riverfront, a perfect “cookie-cutter” circle on the Ohio River, Dad would emerge from the underground parking lot and see that unmistakable green astro turf bright from the sun’s rays. There were four rows of seats: Blue, Green, Yellow, Red. Great Grampa always bought tickets in the green seats because an overhang blocked the direct sunlight during the game. Great Grandma would pull a pencil from her purse to keep track of the game on a scorecard. Great Grandpa would talk to the two boys about what was happening on the field. Dad marveled at how Grandma could call a homerun long before he was sure. Great Grandpa explained how when a player hits a ball there is a sound, and “if they barrel the ball” it is a particular sound that tells you the ball is gone. How did you fall in love with baseball? Grandpa was a big fan of baseball. It was different then. NBA didn’t exist. Football didn’t exist. In the 1920s. Baseball was the only sport. He listened to baseball games on the radio. Detroit Tigers games. He switched to the Reds fan in the 1940s when he was young man. He loved baseball. He went to Reds games. He took me. Who was your favorite player? Bo Diaz, catcher in the 1980s. Pretty good catcher, really, but not a superstar. Couldn’t see a game on tv. In the 1980s, they didn’t film games. 1983, probably doesn’t exist. I didn’t watch. See box scores in the paper. Grandpa: ice cream floats, Barry Larkin. Now? De La Cruz, hard not to be a fan. So exciting. Joey Votto. Matt mcClean, young guys. If you become really attached, players become traded so often. Love the player while you got them, they will move on. Used to stay with team Leave early, backseat of Buick, red cars always drove. Drive to Cincinnatii from Alexandria. Halfway rest stop, cooler of soft drinks, cans. Wipe off cans. I want to get to the game. Different time. Go to bathroom. Parked underneath Riverfront. Parking pass. Shared season tickets, bank. 20-25 games. 1 game in the summer. Go in gates, all seats blue green yellow red. Green seats, Didn’t like the sun. Green seats second level, great view, 1st r 3rd baseline. Overhang. Big concrete emerged, astroturf was an electric green. You look out and slightly Wanted to eat: frosty malt, cup, frozen solid. Wooden spoon like a stick. Spoon not great but frosty malt. Least popular. Beer hotdogs. Grandma kept score on a scorecard with a pencil. Buy scorecard each time. One flavor chocolate. I didn’t get up much during game. Talked some. Always brought a friend. Grandma, knew it was homerun. When a player hits a ball there is a sound, if they barrel the ball, certain speed, exit velocity, didn’t know, and that determines. Grandma knew. Everything new. Riverfron tStaduoun 970-2001 or something. Cookie cutter stadium, bowl. Big deal in 1970s. Camden Yards, have character. Astroturf, different time. My height 6’3, always were pants, collar polo shirt, stripes, glasses and prescription sunglasses. Gold watch. Reds hat, shirt, didn’t wear. M Very frugal. 90 NCLS jacket for me and him. Riverfront remembered.
Memory as Character, by Noah
Baseball Family Tornadoes tore through the Midwest in the early hours of April 1, 2023. Following the reports on my Dad’s iphone, the four of us pulled on shoes and wrapped ourselves in blankets to head down to the basement. Barely more than a potato cellar with bare beams on the ceiling and dirt on the floor, we were squished on folding chairs between Santa lawn decorations, old kitchen appliances, and the cat litter boxes. While my six-year-old brother peppered my Mom with questions about tornadoes, I could only think of one thing: Would the Cincinnati Reds game be postponed that day? It wasn’t. The morning was sunny and warm in Indiana as we headed to Kids’ Opening Day at the Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati. We parked on the Ohio River across from the ballpark and started across the street, my dad and I hotly debating why TJ Friedl wasn’t batting first that day. I carried my mitt for possible foul balls coming my way, and sported the sunglasses that made me look just like Jonathan India if you used your imagination to add curly shoulder length hair and a lot of tattoos. While I wore my “Big Greene Machine” t-shirt, I carried my Mr. Red sweatshirt under my arm. Halfway across the street, a huge gust of wind off the river hit our backs and carried the sweatshirt onto the ground and along a straight path to the gaping wide mouth of the storm drain. We all stood there in horror as groups of fans kept walking around us. First a tornado warning and now a lost sweatshirt. But nothing was going to stop us from the game. Our family is a baseball family. What this means is that when the temperature dropped below 40 degrees by the second inning and winds reached over fifty miles an hour, we stayed. We wrapped my brother in my mother’s coat and bought a fleece blanket for sweatshirt-less me in the team store. We watched Jonathan India bomb a homerun in the 3rd, TJ Friendl steal third base in the 5th, and Jake Fraley crushed a three-run homerun in the 8th. I could barely feel my hands as I dug elbow deep into the huge bag of caramel popcorn but there was no place I could rather be. But the rest of the family started to flag by the 6th inning as we watched groups and groups of families leave with chattering teeth. At the bottom of the 8th, my dad said, “We could leave….?” and my mother and brother nodded excitedly. “No!” I gasped. And we stayed. Our family is a baseball family. My dad taught me to love baseball. He was taught by his grandma and grandpa. My great grandparents were big Reds fans. At every game Great Grandma would pull a pencil from her purse to keep track of the game on a scorecard that she always would always buy before the Reds game at riverfront stadium. Great Grandpa would talk to my dad and his friend about what was happening on the field. Dad marveled at how Grandma could call a homerun long before he was sure. Great Grandpa explained how when a player hits a ball there is a sound, and “if they barrel the ball” it is a particular sound that tells you the ball is gone.
Self as Character, by Leo
Back in China, my Mom, had a childhood greater than that of her peers. While under Confucian cultural influence, most parents were busily pushing their kids and molding them to their dreams, but her parents let her pursue her own career. As such, she pursued a law degree, only to realize with dismay upon immigrating to the United States that firstly she could not afford law school, and secondly that law school would require great English, which she lacked being a first-generation immigrant. She initially went for an accounting job at Pepsi, but following my own birth she set out a better job and eventually switched to a financial job. A multitude of reasons were behind this but one of them was simply because she was better at analysis rather than the tedious work of accounting. She now works as a Financial Analyst for this very reason. One overlooked skill people fail to observe is listening. My mom has personally agreed that she thinks of herself as not the smartest, yet she always knows what people want to hear and says what people want to hear because she listens first. As a fact of her job being non-creative, her primary interests are creative, including art and reading books. Although my mom did not experience the biggest changes compared to others, she still holds as an example of the importance of flexibility to not only a small change in character, but also a job path. From this, we now get the lesson that life is not a mere single road but a network of highways, detours, and uphill. Some parts might even be missing. When I was starting 6th grade, I was fresh from the summer of 5th grade, when I had built some bad habits. Although I breezed through virtually all the tests and did well on group projects, waves of disappointment washed over. I expected to do much better on group projects. However, around winter, I rapidly began to rebound, through a turn in character for one more hard-working and self-striving. With this in mind, in a flash, I was a perfectionist. I had not only broken bad habits, but had become more hardworking in character. This was not only a recovery but a breakthrough, and by spring, my lexile levels had broken through a higher barrier, and this spread to math as well. In essence, the golden rule here is that we must realize that the rewards for change in character lead to not only success, but can go far beyond the simple solving of a problem. They lead to cascades, and these cascades all point to success. Along the way, habits are the incremental bits you should take positively to boost you further, or without that you will be slowed down by them. You must learn to be like a spring, flexible to a change in form, yet very firm against loss of confidence. It helped me look at my own way of life in the same way as I view others and thus be more neutral. Neutrality is incredibly important to success as a nonfiction writer, as without it nonfiction would be filled to the brim with bias and essentially being dishonest in the fact that it is a slightly warped reality. It also allowed me to view my life in an even further scientific way, and simply exercised my writing skills as an added plus.
