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January 31, 2006
Sad premonition
Avery Blodgett was a wisp of a boy with stooped shoulders and a vague look on his face. He wasn’t much of a ballplayer, but no one on Bill’s Enterprises looked like a future David Ortiz. Often, John Fensterwald and I, who coached Bill’s in one of Concord’s T-ball leagues in 1990, looked out into the outfield at White’s Park and saw our outfielders standing with their backs to home plate.
But Avery was different. He didn’t care about winning or losing or baseball. He seldom spoke, had no friends and hid his emotions. The only time you really noticed him was when he was doing something mean or destructive. It might be as simple as jumping in a puddle to splatter a teammate with mud. Or he might tug on the shoddy chain-link fence behind the bench until a sharp stray wire was pointing out at chest level.
John Fensterwald, the Monitor’s editorial page editor at the time and my longtime pal, often sat on the bench speaking quietly and patiently with Avery. Many of the children on our team came from affluent families, and although we knew little specific about Avery’s home life, we knew he did not. But with a dozen or more other children to look after, neither John nor I felt like the time we gave Avery did much to compensate for whatever might be missing from his life.
I found it frustrating to talk with him. Five minutes after I;d tell him to stop poking another player with a stick, he’d be back at it again. More than once, John and I told each other that Avery was going to wind up at prison someday. And we meant it. A coldness in his behavior and our inability to connect with him gave us this sense.
And so, although my heart sank, I was not surprised when I read last week that Avery had been indicted on bank robbery charges. He already had a record, including the brutal 1999 home-invasion robbery of an elderly couple in Dunbarton.
I’m certain that in the years after that one season on our baseball team, Avery was the beneficiary of many second chances and special educational opportunities in Concord. And it was predictable that nothing worked.
I’m sure veteran local teachers pick up each day’s Monitor with a combination of hope and apprehension, knowing that they will see their own predictions for their students confirmed. Many former students will make productive adult lives for themselves, even after hitting bumpy patches as teenagers. And a few will wind up in trouble with the law. Of these, the teachers will tell you they knew way back when that this was going to happen.
On the basis of my experience with Avery, I now know how sad and bitter this feeling is. You do what you can for him when he is 8. If you live in community like Concord, you know that many adults more capable than you will try to help him find his way in the years to come. But you are pretty sure, even when he is a small boy in a Little League T-shirt, where his life is headed.
Posted by Mike Pride at January 31, 2006 07:00 PM