{"id":18522,"date":"2011-11-24T08:23:16","date_gmt":"2011-11-24T16:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seamheads.com\/?p=18522"},"modified":"2011-11-24T08:23:16","modified_gmt":"2011-11-24T16:23:16","slug":"un-ganso-en-la-barajita-a-goose-in-the-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/24\/un-ganso-en-la-barajita-a-goose-in-the-card\/","title":{"rendered":"Un ganso en la barajita. (A Goose in the card)"},"content":{"rendered":"

 La primera vez que supe de Rich Gossage fue en las vacaciones de 1975. Aquel agosto me levantaba temprano, desayunaba y abuela me pedía que le hiciera varios mandados junto a mis primos Luis Alfredo y Luis José. Luego de comprar algunos víveres, nos deteníamos ante el kiosco de los periódicos y comprábamos varios sobres de barajitas de béisbol. Recuerdo a Richie Hebner, <\/strong>Pete Rose, Al Oliver, David Concepción, Wayne Twitchel y aquel tipo con la gorra roja de los Medias Blancas de Chicago. “Parece como si estuviera apretando los dientes”, dijo Luis José. A mi me parecía que estaba disimulando una sonrisa. Luis Alfredo me templó el brazo. Teníamos que regresar a casa antes de las once. Metí las barajitas en el bolsillo del pantalón y corrimos hasta el número 30 de la calle Ayacucho. Sabía que si quería jugar pelota en la tarde tenía que mantener buenas las relaciones con abuela.<\/p>\n

Abuela nos esperaba en la puerta de calle y agarraba los víveres de mis manos con fuego en los ojos. No podía dejar de mirar las barajitas, eso era lo que molestaba más a abuela, por eso no había regresado más temprano. Después de almorzar, le tuve que rogar por más de 10 minutos para que nos dejara ir a jugar pelota. En el juego Luis Alfredo me tenía que llamar a cada momento. “Vamos, te toca batear”. Tenía los ojos soldados al respaldo de la barajita de Rich Gossage . Había un ganso con un guante de béisbol haciendo el wind up sobre un montículo. Metía la barajita en el bolsillo trasero del pantalón y agarraba el bate. Tan pronto como llegaba a una base o iba de regreso al dugout sacaba el montón de barajitas. Había una pregunta debajo del dibujo del ganso. “¿Cuál es el apodo de Rich Gossage?” Empecé a preguntarme porque lo llamaban “Ganso”. Tal vez porque usaba una almohada de plumas de ganso. Quizás porque le gustaba volar alto. Por cierto el ganso lucía muy dominante sobre el montículo.<\/p>\n

Cada vez que trataba de leer las estadísticas del reverso de la barajita me tocaba batear o teníamos que ir a servir al campo. Sólo pude ver el primer equipo de ligas menores, de la liga de novatos, por eso pensé que era un aspirante más para llegar ala GranCarpa.Cada momento libre que tenía en el juego corría a esconderme detrás de un gran árbol de jabillo y miraba el reverso de la barajita. Los números no eran muy impresionantes pero algo en su sonrisa me decía que aquel tipo tenía mucho béisbol desde su gorra hasta sus zapatos. De vez en cuando el viento soplaba tan fuerte que parábamos el juego. Una vez, Luis Alfredo me dijo que varias barajitas estaban volando en el viento. Dejé el guante en el suelo y comencé una gran carrera. Logré alcanzar las barajitas en el límite con la calle, un carro marcó un frenazo que dejó un reguero de humo sobre el pavimento. El conductor estaba muy molesto conmigo, pero yo sólo estaba pendiente de las barajitas.<\/p>\n

Luis Alfredo me fue a buscar a la calle y me dijo que los muchachos me estaban esperando para continuar el juego. Como le dije que no regresaría hasta que recuperara la última barajita de la calle, los muchachos me sacaron del juego. No me importó porque había encontrado unas barajitas en las ramas de una mata de mango. Moneé la mata y agarré las barajitas una por una. La barajita del Ganso con aquella gorra de los Medias Blancas estaba en la rama más alta.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Alfonso L. Tusa C.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

English translation<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The first time I knew about Rich Gossage was in 1975 vacation time. That August I  got up earlier, ate breakfast and Grandma sent me along with my cousins Luis Alfredo y Luis José to make some errands. While buying some groceries, we stopped by the newspapers kiosko and bought some envelopes of baseball cards. I remember Richie Hebner, Pete Rose, Al Oliver, David Concepción, Wayne Twitchel and that guy with the red cap of the Chicago White Sox. “He looks like he’s pressing his teeth”, said Luis José.  To me the guy looked like if he was trying to avoid a smile. Luis Alfredo tugged me by the arm. We had to be back at home before eleven o’clock. I put the cards in my pants’ pocket and ran to the number 30 of theAyacucho Street. I knew if I wanted to go playing sandlot ball in the afternoon I had to keep good relationships with Grandma.<\/p>\n

Grandma had to go out to the street to take the groceries bag from my hands. I couldn’t stop looking at the baseballcards. After lunch, I had to beg her for more than 10 minutes for going to play ball. In the game Luis Alfredo had to call me at any moment. “Come on, it’s your time to bat”. I had my eyes welded to the back of Gossage’s card. There was a goose with a baseball glove making the wind up on a mound. I put the card in my pant’s rear pocket and took the bat. As soon as arrived to a base or back to the dugout I took the bunch of cards out. There was a question below the painting. “What is Rich Gossage’s nickname”. I began guessing why they called him “Goose”. Maybe because he has a pillow of goose feathers. Perhaps because he liked to fly high. By the way the goose looked very dominant on the mound.<\/p>\n

Any time I tried to read the stats in the back of the card, it was my turn to bat or we had to go to play in the field. I only could see the first minor league team from the rookie league, so I thought he was just another pretender to establish as a big leaguer. Each free time I had in the game I ran behind a big tree and looked at the back of the card. The numbers were not so impressive but something in his smile told me that guy had a lot of baseball from his cap through his spikes. From time to time the wind blew so strong that we had to stop playing. Once, Luis Alfredo told me some cards were blowing in the wind. I left the glove on the ground and started a great race, and got the cards at the edge of the street where a car stopped with big noise of the tires. The driver was very mad at me but I only cared about the baseball cards.<\/p>\n

Luis Alfredo came to the street to tell me the guys were waiting for me to resume the game. Since I told him I wasn’t going back to play until I got the last card blown on the street, the others kids told me I was out from the game. I didn’t care about that because I’ve found some cards in the branches of a mango tree. I climbed the tree and took one by one the cards on the leaves. Goose’s card with that White Sox red cap was in the highest branch of the tree..<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Alfonso L. Tusa C.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Alfonso’s work has been featured in Venezuel’s daily newspaper, El
\nNacional and in the magazine Gente en Ambiente, and he has collaborated
\non several articles for newspapers, including the daily paper Tal Cual.
\nHe has also written three books and biographies for SABR’s BioProject.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

 La primera vez que supe de Rich Gossage fue en las vacaciones de 1975. Aquel agosto me levantaba temprano, desayunaba y abuela me pedía que le hiciera varios mandados junto a mis primos Luis Alfredo y Luis José. Luego de comprar algunos víveres, nos deteníamos ante el kiosco de los periódicos y comprábamos varios sobres […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2483,17444,17446,14904,17450,17443,17441,17445,17452,17438,17440,16380,17439,1850,17449,17447,6166,17451,17448,17442],"class_list":["post-18522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-al-oliver","tag-almohada","tag-apodo","tag-brazo","tag-cada-momento","tag-compr","tag-dicos","tag-kiosco","tag-los-dientes","tag-luis-alfredo","tag-medias-blancas-de-chicago","tag-n-250","tag-pantal","tag-pete-rose","tag-pluma","tag-rich-gossage","tag-richie-hebner","tag-trasero","tag-usaba","tag-veres"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}