YOU HAVE GOT TO BELIEVE!

July 22, 1924

Dearest Calvin:

When I heard the news that you were missing from your Boston hotel, my heart sank as low as a human organ can possibly descend.

Had I realized how discouraged and despondent you had become over the fate of your ball team, I might have encouraged you to take a week of vacation at mid-season, or at the very least escorted you to a local psychological practitioner here. As it is, I am left here alone in our Southfield dwelling, seeing to the wee ones and fending off the newspaper hounds and telephone calls concerning your disappearance.

I contacted your editor at the Free-Enterprise to have this missive published, so if you are by chance reading it now, know that I long for the day when you resurface in my arms, or at the very least in the press row of Yankee Stadium or Navin Field, the team's next apparent destination. True, we have been lacking when it comes to expression of our innermost desires, but that is a normal approach of married couples, and when we were joined in holy matrimony I assumed we would still consult each other when mental strains grew too severe.

Do you remember my friend Eliza? Since her poor younger brother succumbed to malaria in the Congo last year she has found solace in the spiritual workings of Madame Blishky, a noted occultist from Toronto who frequents family members in distress across the upper American states. She sat with me and some of our friends last evening in our parlor, reading my palm and soothing my worst worries.

Oh darling, she sensed you all around us! There was a liquid sensation, she said, as if you were immersed in cold water, and I immediately feared you had drowned in Boston Harbor or somewhere else. She said no, you were certainly alive, and was part of the natural world now. How could that be? The smallest insect bite sends you running into the house for ointment!

Dare I say that I fear the worst has overtaken you. Come back to us, dear Calvin, or at the very least, send me a spiritual sign you are safe and alive. I await with hushed breath.

Love unblemished,

Bonnie


MADAME BLISHKY'S AMERICAN BALL GAME READINGS:

TIGERS 6-9-0, at YANKEES 3-10-1
There is a man with the initials T.R.C., a short, hard-scrabble fellow no one seems to like...and he propels a home run in the game's beginning for a 2-0 Detroit lead. A princely type with the last name of Whitehill, perhaps an earl, pitches well enough, and I see a famous, rotund man wearing white stripes reaching base all four times for the home nine, yet mysteriously driving in no one...

at SENATORS 5-13-0, WHITE SOX 4-8-0
A man named Ogden with curly hair throws for the home club, bestows three triples on the visitors from Chicago, yet from a sure divine miracle still wins the contest...The number three figures again in the 7th, as a free pass to Harris is followed by three straight singles from Messers. Judge, Goslin and RIce.

BROWNS 12-16-0, at ATHLETICS 6-12-5
I feel nothing but tragedy in the brotherly love city, as a short-stopper named Galloway hangs himself by making four of the five flubs for his team. A baby doll named Jacobson hits a home run and a pair of two-sack hits off a vanishing spectre of a pitcher named Rommel.

INDIANS 5-9-1, at RED SOX 4-8-1
The Cleveland hurler Smith with a female first name gives Boston two runs right away, then turns their sticks into hardened ectoplasm. Smith triples in three runs himself as the key moment of the Tribe's four-run 4th inning to seal the lead forever.

AMERICAN LEAGUE through Tuesday, July 22
Washington Senators	64	31	.674	—
Detroit Tigers	52	44	.542	12.5
Chicago White Sox	50	43	.538	13
New York Yankees	48	45	.516	15
St. Louis Browns	44	51	.463	20
Cleveland Indians	41	55	.427	23.5
Philadelphia Athletics	40	55	.421	24
Boston Red Sox	39	54	.419	24