Chapter 1
In the city of Chicago, a minor subdivision of a cornfield by the name of Illinois (which is an insignificant portion of the United States of America,) is a very minor stadium known as “Wrigley Field.” Wrigley Field, oddly enough, has nothing to do with raising corn, and little to do with the manufacture of chewing gum. Wrigley Field is a sports arena, specifically a sport which proclaimed to be the great American pass-time, despite the fact that the great American pass-time was really watching American football on the television on Monday nights. Baseball was what America watched during the football off-season.
On one particular day, the sky was overcast and the sun was barely visible, some great Americans were busily passing time by tossing the ball back and forth in Wrigley Field. The teams were the Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox.
It matters not to our story who the individual players were, even though the bat girl for the Red Sox had a very interesting sideline. She was studying social anthropology for a post-graduate degree, and she decided to write her thesis on the social rituals and caste system of the Red Sox. She even expounded further to include their mating rituals, and even actively participated. The Red Sox were rather fond of her, if not their wives.
What matters to our story is that on this particular day while the Cubs and the Red Sox were on the field of battle, it was the top of the seventh inning when the Cubs pitched and the Red Sox batter clipped the ball on a foul tip that ricocheted off the bat into the head of the head umpire, Carl Rosetti.
Our story is, of course, about Carl Rosetti. Carl was born forty-five summers previous to the foul ball incident in Wrigley Field. Due to a relatively rare combination of male pattern baldness and premature graying, he looked like a man in his sixties. In fact, he looked like a man in his sixties since he was thirty. He considered himself lucky that the trend didn’t continue, as by the time he was forty-five he should’ve looked
like a man in his nineties, but the effect seemed to have arrested itself. He actually had the hope that by the time he was ninety he would still look like a man in his sixties. The fact is, (and he would be the last to admit it,) he bore a striking resemblance to the current Pope, John Paul II. He would be the last to admit it, that is, until the infamous ball incident in Wrigley Field. After that, he thought he was Pope John Paul II. He couldn’t understand how he had forgotten Polish.
After returning to his native Brooklyn, he was thoroughly examined by his family doctor, and all of his family doctor’s colleagues in the mental health profession. After intensive testing, poking and prodding right up to the limit his health insurance would pay for, he was eventually released to go home. Along with schizophrenic, delusory, conscious suppression and a lot of other words the doctors used, “pretty much harmless” was the phrase that saw his return to the outside world. “Whadya mean, harmless?” his father demanded. “How’s he gonna work, eh? He thinks he’s the freakin’ pope, fer Chris’ sake! You expect him to go back to work for baseball? Who’s gonna believe any of his calls?”
“Mr. Rosetti,” Dr. Sternberg smiled indulgently, “I’m sure he will receive workman’s compensation for a job-related injury. He may not have to work again.”
Bob Rosetti didn’t like Dr. Sternberg’s indulgent grin. He felt he was being patronized, which he was. He instinctively distrusted anybody with a degree. He instinctively distrusted everybody else, too, but not so much as a person with a degree. Even his daughter, Dorothy, was not to be trusted since she got her degree from City University in Interpretive Dance. Bob Rosetti worked very hard to raise enough flowers to put her through school so he could distrust her. He looked at Dr. Sternberg hard. “So you expect me to put up with a forty-five year old Pope running around the house. Hell, I’d be better off going back to work.”
“Careful, Bob. Remember your blood pressure,” Betty reminded him.
“How can I forget my freakin’ blood pressure with you remindin’ me every two minutes? Look, Doc, isn’t there something you can do?”
“What would you like me to do?”
Bob Rosetti’s face flushed. He thought the answer was rather obvious, but the man with the indulgent degree couldn’t figure it out. “Fix him!”
Dr. Sternberg continued to smile indulgently at him. He learned it from a weekend seminar during post-graduate school and was quite proud of it. In fact, he’d gotten an ‘A’. “I’m sorry, Mr. Rosetti. To be able to fix him you must first assume that he is broken. The fact is, he’s in perfect health, physically. It’s his mental status that is lacking.”
Bob Rosetti was starting to sweat from his crimson pores, and the fact that Betty was stroking him on the shoulder wasn’t calming him down in the least. “Look, he’s got a problem in his head, right? And you’re a head doctor, right?” Dr. Sternberg continued to smile indulgently. Bob couldn’t believe that it was up to him to draw the obvious correlation. “And since you’re a head doctor and his problem is in his head, it’s up to you to FIX HIM!”
Dr. Sternberg wasn’t entirely certain whether to frown thoughtfully or to continue to smile indulgently. Since he’d only gotten a ‘C-plus’ in the frowning thoughtfully seminar, he decided to stay with what he did best. “You see, Mr. Rosetti, Bob, if I may call you Bob,...
“No, you may not call me Bob!”
“You see, Bob,” Dr. Sternberg continued, “the matter is not so simple as just fixing him. The trauma of the accident compounded with the public embarrassment of the incident only worked to release some deep-rooted suppressions. It’s an escapist maneuver, to avoid the constant pressures of the job, the entire world waiting on his every decision and half of the entire world violently disagreeing with those decisions. It’s also a way for him to deal with his own feelings of inadequacy, for who can argue with the decisions of the Pope? Since he’s retreated into the world of his own creation, it will take many years of therapy to root him out.”
“Why can’t you just whack him on the head again?”
“I’m sorry, Bob,” Dr. Sternberg smiled, “but there are laws prohibiting doctors from whacking their patients in the head.”
“Then what if I do it?”
“You could cause concussion, brain damage, even death. You wouldn’t like that on your conscience, would you?”
“It would beat a middle-aged pontiff hanging around the house.”
