Appendix
Timeline of Significant Events
One year later:
Nick and Esme have two more wedding parties; one at Sox Park in Chicago and one in Japan.
Esme becomes President of Sweetgum Chamber of Commerce.
Under Tillie’s leadership, the Sliding Salamanders win their division and league championship series. They become one of the best and most consistent teams in the minor leagues for decades.
Cooper is hired as Mr. Stinky, mascot for the Salisbury Stinkbugs.
Maddie and Carlton’s New Year’s Eve wedding at the Drake Hotel in Chicago
Two years later:
Esme creates the Sweetgum Arts Co-Op.
Tillie starts law school and remains the General Manager for the Sliding Salamanders.
Vinny finishes graduate school in journalism at the University of Missouri at Columbia.
Carlton is hired as radio play-by-play announcer for the Chicago Cubs.
Three years later:
Maddie and Carlton move into the yellow house on Grace Street where they will live for the next 50 years. Maddie walks to the Addison “L” stop every morning to ride the Red Line to work on the South Side. She never stops talking to people on the train, just like she used to talk to everyone at the Grand Lunch. The Red Line “L” is known as her “second office.”
Maddie gives Monty’s mansion on Dearborn to Esme and Nick. Esme has some big redecorating plans…
Four years later:
Herb becomes the voice of the Chicago Gray Sox but continues to perform in Sweetgum’s Shakespeare & Champagne Festival in the off-season.
Vinny is hired as a Gray Sox beat reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times.
Tillie graduates from law school and is hired as Assistant General Manager for Chicago Gray Sox.
Birth of Maddie and Carlton’s first child, Ernie Wilde
Six years later:
Nick retires.
Birth of Carlton and Maddie’s second child, Juliet Wilde
Tillie becomes General Manager for Chicago Gray Sox.
Mary Ann is the first American to win the Great British Baking Show.
Seven years later:
Maddie and Tillie’s Gray Sox win an epic World Series match-up with the Cubs.
Carlton broadcasts his first World Series.
Vinny wins national sportswriter of the year for his coverage of the Cubs/Gray Sox World Series
Over the next three decades:
Maddie’s Gray Sox win five more World Series titles, plus numerous Division and American League Championship titles.
Ten years later:
Mary Ann wins the Nobel Prize for Physics.
Maddie donates funds for Nina Di Caro to establish a national foundation for LGBTQ athletes & activism.
Herb opens a nightclub (The Pickle Jar) on Chicago’s South Side which becomes a legendary venue for all kinds of musicians.
Twelve years later:
Nick is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Twenty-five years later:
Ernie Wilde makes his MLB pitching debut.
Juliet Wilde joins the Joffrey Ballet.
Mary Ann wins a Nobel Peace Prize.
Thirty years later:
Ernie Wilde wins the Cy Young Award with the Cubs.
Mary Ann marries the King of Sweden, becomes Queen Consort, and serves as a global ambassador for peace and science.
Thirty-five years later:
Tillie leaves the Gray Sox to be a consultant for Major League Baseball.
The first Saturday in September is enshrined as Love in the Bleachers Day at Wrigley Field in honor of Carlton’s proposal. Couples choose this day to go on first dates, propose, announce engagements, and celebrate all manner of baseball romance.
Carlton leaves the Cubs to be play-by-play announcer for his beloved Gray Sox.
Juliet Wilde becomes a principal dancer for the Joffrey Ballet.
Forty years later:
Tillie becomes the first woman Commissioner of Major League Baseball.
On Tillie’s first day as Commissioner, the first person to call her is Madison Fields, owner of the Chicago Gray Sox. When Tillie answers the phone, Maddie greets her with, “Hi, Boss.”
Cooper retires as Mr. Stinky. Not by choice.
Vinny leaves the Sun-Times to teach sports journalism in several South Side community colleges.
Fifty years later:
Carlton and Maddie are inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame together; they are first couple to achieve this honor.
Notes:
Neither Tillie nor Vinny ever married, but for as long as Vinny lived, he was never without the photo taken of them at the Sip and Suds’ Karaoke and Kooky Cocktail Night from the summer he and Tillie met.
As Mary Ann Peebles told Carlton when she left Sweetgum, she REALLY did have “better things to do.”
The yellow house in the photo that introduces this appendix is a real house on Grace Street, near Wrigley Field, where Debra Mitchell used to walk dogs and imagine romantic baseball stories.
