Nonfiction | August 19, 2021

On Defeat and Diego

Alexander Ramirez

Once, while I was training at the Police Athletic League in Oak Park, Diego “Chico” Corrales walked into the gym holding a trophy half his size. He was a local amateur standout, a home-grown offensive dynamo poised to terrorize the professional ranks in another year or two. My dad followed his career in the newspaper, so I’d been told about his reputation as a heavy-handed bogeyman. I watched Diego balance the trophy against his hip. He was still a teenager then; I was seven years old.

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