Read Online Born on the Fourth of July by Ron Kovic - Free Book Online Page A

Yankees more than anything else in the world.
    I joined the track team in the spring. I wanted to be the greatest pole-vaulter in the history of the school and so I worked out every day until dark on the parallel bars Dad had built the summer before in the back yard. I remember Mom in the kitchen cheering me on, turning on the porch lights so I could work out even more. I loved those bars and when my brother Tommy was home from school, we’d both get on them together. We’d call Mom and Dad out to watch us perform, doing handstands together, back to back, with both of us touching each other’s feet. “The amazing Kovics,” I’d shout to Mom. “Ladies and gentlemen, the amazing Kovics are about to perform their death-defying feats.” I can still remember both of them standing below us with pride in their eyes as we turned and balanced on those bars. I’d swing my body back and forth, back and forth, until I had swept myself into a perfect handstand, my body in a strong beautiful arc above my back yard. I’d look out around me, holding the handstand as long as I could, and swing down, dismounting with a beautiful twist, thumping onto the ground, stinging my bare feet. It was perfect, I’d say to myself, beautiful, just beautiful.
    I was a natural athlete, and there wasn’t much of anything I wasn’t able to do with my body back then. I was proud and confident and there was always a tremendous energetic bounce in the way I moved. I knew what it was to walk and run and I loved it. After climbing the ropes in school, I’d go out to the track. I remember the feel of the long, lightweight, fiberglass pole in my hands and the black Permatrack beneath my feet; even in the meets I’d jump without shoes. I’d start running from the very end of the long track toward the pit, with the sleek pole gently vibrating up and down in my hands and my face full of determination. I’d hit the hole with the end of my pole, swinging like a pendulum, then kick high into the air, twisting, clearing the bar by inches, falling into the pit on my back, looking at the bar still up there.
    As I got older Mom would kid me a lot because I wasn’t interested in girls, but I was still dreaming about them all the time. I thought constantly about Joan Marfe, the girl who’d sat next to me in sixth grade, but I was too shy to ever ask her for a date.
    I’d heard a priest at some kind of church conference warn us how a thing called petting could lead to sin. Kissing was all right, the priest said in a serious voice, but petting or heavy petting almost always led to sex, and sex, he said, was a mortal sin. I remember listening to him that day and promising myself and God I’d try never to get too close to a girl. I wanted to do all the things the guys in the study hall whispered about, but I didn’t want to offend God. I never even went to the senior or junior prom. I just wanted to be a great athlete and a good Catholic and maybe even a priest someday or a major leaguer.
    In the spring of the year before I graduated I actually wrote a letter to the New York Yankees management telling them I would give anything in the world for a tryout at the stadium. Castiglia’s sister Arlene typed it up for me and for weeks I walked around in a daze waiting for an answer, daydreaming about how Dad and Castiglia would drop me off at the Long Island Railroad station that day and shake my hand and wish me luck. I’d be looking at them, pounding my fist into my new baseball mitt: ‘’I’m gonna make it. Don’t worry about it, Castig. I’m gonna make it.” Then there’d be the great moment after the tryout when one of the coaches would come up to me: “Well, Kovic, you really looked good out there today. We think you’ve got what it takes.”
    It never happened that way. Even though the letter from the Yankees finally came in the mail and I ran over to