The chapter begins with Chick’s memories of his childhood. We learn he idolized and emulated his father, and his love of baseball is rooted in his father’s own love of the game. His father, Leonard Benetto, was charismatic and handsome but distant and often demanding. He owned a liquor store, and drove a “sky blue Buick sedan” (20). Chick sees having a closer relationship with his father as “life’s assignment,” as dictated by expectations of him as a boy (20). But his life changed forever on “a hot cloudless Saturday morning in the spring of my fifth-grade year,” when he finds his mother upset and sitting at the kitchen table (21). She tells him his father is not there, but does not tell him where he is: “I was a mama’s boy from that day on,” Chick says (21).

When Chick regains consciousness on the baseball field and sees his mother standing in front of him, apparently alive, he tries to shout to her, but can’t make a sound. When he looks up again, she is gone. He gets up, despite his many injuries, and walks toward his old house, still determined to end his life. The chapter ends with a short, encouraging note that Chick’s mother wrote him on his first day of kindergarten.