When the Yellow Jackets Played

As I began the conclusion of the writing of this book, I finally started to understand its whole meaning. All the times I had sat and listened from my early childhood, all the times my father had taught with his eyes and soul on fire, I had not ever really understood. I had assumed time and again that I was listening to a story about a 1930s semi-pro football team. How had I missed the point. I was, all these years, being told a love story. A love story on so many levels. On one level, I was being told about how an American game captured the hearts of a group of mean, immigrant street kids and gave them some of the rules by which to live. How, on another level, they were supported and immersed in a depression community whose own rules and ways of loving complemented the game they played in ways that even they didn't always understand. And I came to understand the depth of feeling these individual young men had for their families, neighbors, teammates. They were crass and tough on the outside --boxers, laborers, steel workers. On the inside they were constantly swelling up with tears for those who all around them were unemployed, jailed, losing hope, and forever hungry. Finally, I think, I understood the power of Lefty. That his love of the game and his love of life were really the same. That the passion, hard work, the integrity, and the intelligence that went into playing hard and fair were the things that allowed him to play his best at the game of life. This was Lefty's real gift to me and to the others who were lucky enough to have heard these stories. I hope that you will enjoy the reading of this story as much as Lefty would have enjoyed the telling of it to you. And I assure you, had you been interested, he would have told it to you, and you would have slipped away to a place where you could laugh, cry, cheer, and be amazed at the strange places you could find hope and love.