Double Play on the Red Line

Traveling up and down Chicago’s elevated train system’s Red Line, Ratan, a professor of sports journalism, puzzles through a near-lynching of a peanut vendor at Wrigley Field. At first, the peanut vendor, Ernie, is hesitant to share much. What he does share includes the following: he played for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues; he served his country’s military in the Korean War; after the war, his smooth-fielding and power-hitting attracted the attention of the Cubs ownership; he was destined to be one of the first ten Black baseball players in the Major Leagues at a time in America’s history when black lives mattered only so far as they entertained whites or enhanced the economic value of the country’s capitalist engine; and he never played a single game in Wrigley Field because he was convicted of murder.

Dr. Rajesh C. Oza has contributed to Living in America and written Globalization, Diaspora, and Work Transformation; Satyalogue // Truthtalk; and P.S., Papa’s Stories. He writes columns and book reviews for India Currents and Khabar Magazine.Double Play on the Red Line is inspired by his daughter’s experience with Northwestern University’s Innocence Project. He and his family immigrated to Chicago when the astronauts landed on the moon and the Cubs had a momentous late-season collapse. Since 1969, the number of incarcerated Americans has increased fivefold, one percent of whom are wrongfully convicted.