“One out, a man on second, bottom of the seventh, two balls, no strikes…Ruffing checks the runner on second, gets the sign from Dickey, Ruffing stretches, Ruffing pitches.”
The opening line of the play accomplishes several things. It situates Eugene as being still a kid. It indicates his fervent interest in baseball which will very quickly be revealed as a dream job. The fact that he is all alone and replaying the last game of a World Series also reveals the extent of his imagination.
“I had a major problem. One more bite and I would have thrown up on the table. That’s a sight Nora would have remembered forever. A diversion was my only escape from humiliation.”
These lines are directed toward the audience and it is understood that the other characters do not hear them. One of the tools the playwright uses quite effectively is to have Eugene break the “fourth wall” by tossing occasional asides directly to the audience. These direct addresses differ substantially from Eugene’s direct discourse with other characters because though he is still quite obviously the young Eugene, he is commenting on what is happening from the perspective of the adult Eugene.
“What’s wrong with being in love with your cousin?”
While this line certainly sounds like it would be another direct address to the audience, it is, in fact, a reply to his brother’s admonition to forget all about Nora. The Nora from the above quote happens to be, unfortunately for Eugene, his beautiful and built first cousin Nora. Eugene’s passionate desire to see Nora naked is one of the subplots driving the narrative as well as the theme that Eugene is halfway between being the boy in the opening scene who plays by himself and the young man who has begun playing with himself.
“He thinks he’s a writer.”
At the beginning of the play, it’s quite clear that Eugene has dreams of becoming a professional baseball player. But like the baseball game that opens the play, that is all illusion and fantasy. Just below the surface of that dream is the compulsion to be a writer. In fact, Eugene already is a writer by virtue of the journal he keeps. When his brother Stanley says to the rest of the family it is with a slight edge; Eugene’s reply indicates that he notices his older sibling takes this dream about as seriously as he takes the baseball fantasy. A short time later Stanley’s tone has changed as he sincerely informs his father that Eugene “wants to be a writer. He wants to go to college.”
