Sax & Santo

As a boy who was a product of a brutally alcoholic father and emotionally shattered mother, positive influences outside our family were essential. In effect, the Chicago Cubs became surrogates. Reliable? Absolutely! They showed up to play every day between April and October. Well, at least if there was no rain, snow or hurricane. Emotionally fulfilling? That depends. When they won, sure. But losing exacerbated the despair created within our home. Season-ending disappointments were devastating.

Ultimately, however, the Cubs gave me what became a great gift: my soul brother, Lee. He, too, endured a horrific childhood. Then again, as he would say, "I was lucky. My dad left me." His father had no idea what he missed.

On April 24, 1971, I took Lee to his first baseball game. His hero, Ron Santo, hit a home run in the first inning, giving the Cubs a 2-0 lead over the New York Mets. In the fourth and fifth innings, Santo walked and, ultimately, scored. The Cubs won, 7-5.

I scored that game, in primitive fashion, as well as every subsequent game I attended. One month later, we saw our first game between the Cubs and Dodgers. The Cubs won that game, too, 5-2. I'd get revenge one month later, with a 6-4 Dodger victory.

Saving those scorecards not only preserved years of memories, it provided the opportunity to calculate team and individual player statistics, officially memorializing the Sax & Santo League for posterity. Among the players we saw: Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Willie Davis, Pete Rose, Billy Williams, Wes Parker, Donn Clendenon, Willie Crawford, Sammy Sosa, Johnny Bench, Ryne Sandberg, Tom Seaver, Ferguson Jenkins, Willie Stargell and Denny McLain.

To date, we've seen 63 games, most of which were played at Chicago's Wrigley Field. Should a player have a great game or stellar Sax & Santo League career, he is enshrined in our hall of fame, The Saxonian Institution.

For the record, Ron Santo's Sax & Santo League batting average is .400; Steve Sax's is .342. We saw one no-hitter, which was pitched by Burt Hooton against the Philadelphia Phillies on April 16, 1972. And one of our games, against the Montreal Expos, was suspended due to darkness. But our best moment occurred on April 4, 1988, our first Sax & Santo League game at Dodger Stadium, when Steve Sax hit the first pitch of the season for a home run

Twenty nine years after our first game, we took Lee's oldest daughter and son to Wrigley Field, and watched the Cubs beat the Mets, 2-1. In 2006, we took his four children to their first game at Dodger Stadium. The Dodgers beat the Washington Nationals, 13-1.

More than any other sport, baseball retains an inherent sentimentality that binds players and fans, families and friends through generations. It also gave two traumatized boys a means to cope with unstable lives and create a lifelong bond.