He was born in 1927 and grew up along Summerland Avenue, on Chicago’s North Side. His parents spoke mainly Swedish. He played the harmonica and he loved baseball. As he grew up over six feet he developed a wicked fastball and a what he would later call a “serviceable curveball.” One of the Chicago newspapers gave him the nickname “Tookey.” I have no idea why or what it means.
Paul Johnson, Delta Indians
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He was drafted by the Chicago Cubs his senior year in High School and immediately traded to the Cleveland Indians. He went into their farm system, playing for the Delta Indians. They had no team bus. On long drives between dusty Midwest farm towns, he would roll down the window, drive with one hand, and play the harmonica with the other while the other five guys sang or strummed or plucked their jaw harps.
He got drafted. Played for the Air Force in Europe during the occupation. Broke his pitching shoulder. Left the game. Went to college. Moved back to Chicago. Got married and had kids.
By the time I came along, the youngest of four, he was long past his playing days but he could still drive and play and he could still throw a fastball and swing a bat like nobody I’d ever seen.
In 1976, we took a summer camping trip to Ouray/Silverton Colorado area. As he drove our family station wagon, I sat in the back seat piling wads of gum into my jaw like it was chewing tobacco. The sound of his harmonica floated back from the front of the car as an accompanying soundtrack to the dream I projected on the station wagon’s back window. I had just pitched a no-hitter in some corn-fed Midwet town like Murphysboro and here we were, jammed into a station wagon moving along to the next town, the next game, with a Midwest sun dying into the immensity of corn.
