What ever happened to Benny Santini?

It was 1990.  One of the classmates had flashed a 1987 Donruss Jose Canseco.  I thundered, an athletic but very obese youngster, frequently sweating at the edges of my curly mane.  The stratagem was simple: to offer the princely sum of one US quarter to the lad with the card, and I hustled along hoping to catch him after school.  No PED controversy at the time in the league, Canseco being that rare blend of speed and power.  A base stealer and a home run hitter, centerfield for the Oakland Athletics.  Through the eras I pick-out so many of those guys, except for Barry Bonds, during my baseball hiatus, but Mike Trout, Ricky Henderson, my man Acuna Jr.

The lad with the hot card.  He was a car rider, and I a bus rider, and the car riders had a further walk, and sure enough, athletic butterbuns trying to catch him, he was out of sight at the main door.

But I had a quarter, and suddenly that quarter seemed impotent in my pocket.

There was an ancient school building adjacent on the property, with the school “canteen” where we could purchase afterschool snacks from vending machines, one or two at the time, languishing in a line, hoping the bus didn’t leave us in the meantime.

A Dr Pepper that was gone dry before I crossed the yard–now a kind of soccer field on the property, sold to private interests, and I was, like a madman or a gladiator, making my way through the opening in the fence(“wait til they get a load of me”) for the bus, where it was a different program, assigned seating and no talking(something about talking distracted the bus driver, who was during the school hours, a library assistant).