The Umpire’s Sons By Lisa Pollak The Baltimore Sun (A 1997 Pulitzer Prize Awardee)

link to feature story http://www.pulitzer.org/works/1997-Feature-Writing

This piece was like another story but was never really untold before. Another story about suffering of children, death and loss, but rare cases to happen in real life —a heart warming write up of the struggles of brothers which affects the lives of their family, mostly their father who happened to be an umpire of a baseball team. Actually when I red the first part of the story, I already had an idea that it has the same theme on an episode of the drama anthology “Maalaala Mo Kaya” I had watched, wherein the older brother died of the disease while the younger one is still on his struggle of the same disease. The brothers were also much attached to each other more than usual brothers could ever be.

The lead states the theme as to revolve around gambling, risks of a chance and fate. I liked how she sets up the story, first narrating the baseball stuff which is the sports played by the father and his sons, and how this played an important role on the lives of the family. I admire how did she represents the connections of the baseball stuff in order that the readers would easily allocate and interpret the meaning behind without pushing the readers to the real importance of the sport as to what the struggle they are in to. She represents each subsequent events rather than telling each purpose. The resolution can easily be established in the forms of questions: Will the boy survive? Who’s marrow would the family choose? How will he and his father cope up with the illness? She mainly relies on the authority of each character’s details so that the experience would not become as intently earned, but in a way with passion of telling a sad story.