Writer in Residence - David Young

Monologue for a Man in a White Hat By Risa Z. Klarman

    The man is wearing a blue, single-breasted suit, a blue shirt, a striped tie.  His eyebrows are  white and wiry, as is his hair; the Trilby perched on top is the colour of cream. 

    The man seats himself at a desk in the first floor common area of the library and arranges his four shopping bags—not the plastic ones that cost five cents, but the heavy laminated ones, the kind you pay a few bucks for—beside him on the floor.  Rummaging  through the bags, the man  pulls out pocket books, sheaves of newsprint and notepads curled, softened, and smudged by repeated thumbing.
 

    No.  No, I can’t give these to you.  I need them to do the calculations.  You can get your own.  The Baseball Insider, it’s not that expensive.  They give you everything, see?  Look. Here, I’ve done the pitchers.  Tim Wakefield, he plays for Boston.  See, I’ve got all his stats.

    You can’t read those numbers?  Naaah, come on, they’re not so tiny.  I need to make them small, or they won’t all fit on the page.

     Ppfft, you need new glasses. 

    I do them all in pencil, so I can change them.  You have to wait until the end of the year, you can’t start this stuff early.  Here, look.  This is Tim Wakefield.   You heard  of him?  He’s 45.  A knuckleballer, the oldest pitcher in the Majors.  The oldest player  in the Majors.  After him, the next one is Halladay.  He’s pretty famous, Roy Halladay.

    Why do I do all these stats?  Because it shows you the exact order things are in, you can put your thumb on it.  You can put your fingers round the page and grip it to you.  And also, it encourages me to see them, I know who I want to see.  It doesn’t cost so much to go, I sit high up.  You pay bus fare, you buy something to eat, a hot dog, a drink, it costs me $250.  It’s not so much.

    I was born in Macklin, near Saskatoon.  My dad was a preacher, we lived in a lot of places.  I wrote a book once, you know—My Adventures in Thirty European Countries.  I spent a year in Europe, well, 365 days less ten, almost a year.  England, France, East Berlin—It was 1974, I was 34, 35… 

    Why?  Because I had the money.  I quit my job—I was in construction.  I had some money, but, well, a year’s a long time.  You work when you can get a job. There are youth hostels.  Or, when you really run out, you can sleep outside in a sleeping bag under the sky.  In the country it was okay, but it’s harder in the city, you can’t sleep out on the street, they’ll arrest you.  You have to hide in the bushes.  Sometimes, someone would see me and bring me a sandwich.  That’s what it was like, there. 

    The book?  Pfft, you wouldn’t find it in a library.  No, it’s not published.  I wrote it out by hand, twice.  Once in Spring Hill, Nova Scotia, once in Medicine Hat and Keswick.  Because they stole it from me, that’s why.  I gave it to a guy at the post office, he was a Scotsman.  No, he didn’t steal it, he put it up on some shelf somewhere, some dusty shelf.  He let them find it, though, those hoods from Quebec.  It was the airplane people, some shady outfit with the military, some criminal offshoot of the RCAF.  They took it in a plane to an underground facility somewhere.  Why?  They wanted to spy on me, probably… 

    Hey, here’s Omar Vizquel.  He’s a shortstop.  Not the best player in the Majors, but he’s played the longest, he’s got longevity.  I’ll give you a tip.  The Baseball Insider magazine.  It’s immensely valuable.  For $4.95, it gives you every single player from the oldest, 45, to the youngest,19, maybe 3,000, maybe 2,000 players.  I do them all, it doesn’t take so long. 

    I’m 71 years old.  I don’t drink.  I don’t smoke.  I sleep pretty good.  I eat proper, I eat food that really booms you up.  No, I don’t come here for the books.  These are my books, I bought these.  I come to the library because you’re free here, it’s less noisy.  They let you sit here and do your work, they leave you alone, not like in some places.  You have freedom in the library, that’s why I come.        

This monologue is reprinted with permission from the author. It was performed at the Toronto Reference Library as part of David Young's Writer-in-Residence workshop program, on November 30, 2011.