Jackie Robinson West by George Castle

Author:George Castle
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781630761271
Publisher: Lyons Press

Two Bloodlines Converge to Make a Catcher-Scholar

BRANDON GREEN SEEMS EVERY BIT HIS FATHER’S SON.

Chris Green tends to the soft-spoken side, and his thirteen-year-old son further turns it down a couple of decibels, albeit making every word count with complete thoughts, even profound messages well beyond his age.

The elder Green is understated for both a competitive athlete and a night-shift beat cop on Chicago’s Far South Side. However, that personality seems perfect for on-the-spot mediation for the domestic calls on which he and partner Edward Fulton frequently work.

So much of Chris Green has been transferred to his son, most notably the love of catching. Brandon Green liked what he saw, watching the old man work the plate in the local police league, and bugged him to teach him all he knew. He endured a boot camp of sorts, and the end result was Brandon viewing the game from behind the plate for the majority of Jackie Robinson West’s stirring journey to the US Little League title.

But, like any child, multiple bloodlines course into the final product. The men in the Greens’ classic 1920s-vintage Chicago bungalow keep the volume down in contrast to the women gathered for a sit-down at their dining-room table.

Mom Venisa Beasley-Green is no stuffy academic with her PhD in educational research from the Illinois Institute of Psychology. Rather, the exuberant family promoter could be the life of any party with her verbal style and could hold a church audience in her sway if she were a preacher. Laughter flows freely when Beasley-Green opens up. She definitely gets her students’ attention as a counselor at Julian High School, a few blocks west of Brandon’s former home base at Jackie Robinson Field.

In turn, Beasley-Green is definitely her mother’s daughter. Annette Beasley, in attendance on this evening, also can hold the crowd with her verbal style. Academic achievement, both natural and finely honed at the postgraduate level, was an important part of their lives. And a genetic contribution from a naturally talented man on their side of the family—notable for his absence on this and all other nights—completes the building blocks of Brandon Green.

A parallel track has been set up in his life. The special mix of genes swirling about his being has Brandon as an eighth-grader academically talented enough to take high school credit courses already. The family projection is he’ll move on to college credits in the middle of high school and nail a college degree in less than four years, saving some of the king’s ransom put toward higher-education costs.

With her copious enthusiasm and gift of gab, Beasley-Green will always set the table in sketching out the human and faith-based pathways for her son: “Brandon’s life was on a pathway of success because he has had a great foundation with the parenting and schooling that he has had thus far.”

Then she looks upward.

“In my family, we’re very religious, so we think that God always has had his hand on Brandon,” Beasley-Green says. “Brandon was born at eight months. He was five pounds, two ounces.

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