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I spent most of my summers as a kid playing a crappy shortstop for the Ben Franklin-store Little League team - couldn't field, couldn't hit, couldn't run, couldn't throw - otherwise, a pretty good shortstop. I remember coming off of Little League practice one afternoon in July. It probably was nineteen fifty-eight, a particularly disastrous, even catastrophic day on the, on the baseball field, and going into the library-it was one of these little Carnegie libraries that dot small-town America, a place that, if I were to close my eyes right now, I could - I would be there. I could see the ceiling fan spinning as you're walking in, and the smell of Johnson's paste wax on the floor, and those smells of - library smells, of paper and books and ink and glue. A kind of, the atmosphere was a kind of place that, as you enter it, instantly makes your bowels kind of relax. You know the feeling, don't you? Kind of peaceful, at-home feeling. Well, on this day, I found a book called - it was as instrumental in my becoming a writer as, say, Marquez or Faulkner - the book was entitled "Larry of the Little League." I read this book in, what, a half an hour or so, but what a half an hour! This kid Larry could do everything I couldn't do: he could field, hit, run, and throw. I finished the book, marched over to the librarian, asked for a pad of paper and a pen, which she gave to me, went back to my desk, and over the course of the next hour and a half, at age nine, possibly ten, composed the first novel of my life, or what I thought of as a novel. The title was "Timmy of the Little League," essentially a rip-off of Larry. It - I remember on the - my mom and dad, I think, still have this aborted effort - I remember on page ten or so of this - it was hand-written, in big handwriting, but on page ten or so, uh, the Worthington Ben Franklin team won the Worthington, uh, Little League, you know, championship. And I, in the character of Timmy, got the game-winning hit. On page twenty or so, the team went up to Minneapolis-St. Paul Little League championship, where the Worthington Ben Franklin team defeated a team from Edina, this kind of ritzy-ditzy, rich people's suburb - you guys would fit in there - a place we really despised, and again, the game-winning hit was by little Timmy, and at the end of the book, on page thirty or whatever it was, when I called it????, the team went to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where they defeated Taiwan, like, eighty to nothing, and again, the game-winning hit was mine.


I think it is very fascinating that Tim O'Brien wrote his first novel when he was about 9 years old. I always wanted to write one, but as soon as I started to type, I would lose focus and start doing something else. Also, another thing I like about this segment, is that he talks about his childhood. Usually when I think of writers, I think of people who dont leave their homes, and they take all their boredom and problems, and they write stories. But O'Brien seemed to have a life which wasn't deprived of sports or in some cases "fresh air". I actually really enjoyed this segment because his baseball team reminds me of one I played on in 8th grade. We were an all-star team, but actually, everyone was terrible. Granted I was very good at Baseball when I was younger, but this team was awful! So our first practice comes around, it is a early summer afternoon, and we are out on this brand new field in Woodbourne Park. We were doing this drill, which required no skill and was very poorly organized, and all of a sudden I just get socked in the face from the outfield. You see, I was at third base, fielding ground balls, and this idiot from the outfield crow hopped a lollipop from left field, and called my name when it was two inches from my face. It nailed me right in the nose. Of course it was sailor talk for the next few minutes while my nose was gushing. That kid broke my nose, and I have sought revenge ever since. Kind of, but not really... Anyway, if I were to write a novel. It would tell the same thing Timmy wrote. It would be Nicky of the All-Star League: How a Rag-tag bunch of Kids Pulled Out a Win. And we would continue to squeeze out impossible wins all the way to Williamsport, PA. In the end, it would be the Average Joes versus Japan. And do you know what? We would win, but in reality, we won our first game (I had another injury which stranded me on the bench for a couple of innings--this one is really bad for guys), and then I didn't even go to the second one, because I hated the organization and the coach. Honestly, I never wanted to play on a team with those kids again, and a year later, I played Freshman and that was it. Just pick-up and wiffle ball for now on.

The Things They Carried: Field Trip

Story Name: Field Trip

In this story Jimmy Cross returns to Vietnam with his daughter to revisit the country in which he was damaged psychologically. He also returned to the spot where his team received heavy mortar fire inside the field of mud and feces. Lieutenant Cross walked right into the area where Kiowa drowned. This story was so powerful, because Jimmy Cross returned to the area where he felt so much pain, only to see the country through his own eyes, and not through the scope of a 26 lbs. rifle. I thought it was very emotional when Jimmy Cross stripped down and entered the river. It was like he missed the feel of the country, and his only way to truly accept the peace, twenty years later, was to submerge himself within it's veins. I think O'Brien wanted the reader to see that Jimmy forgave himself for the fateful day outside of that village. Cross just wanted to feel the country outside of the shells and the war. He finally felt his pains go away when he laid inside the water, and all his troubles just flowed down stream.