Russ Benzin

Batavia, New York Fifty-five years after his Vietnam-era military service ended, Russ Benzin remains haunted. Not, thank God, by memories of the state-sanctioned mass murder that is war, but by a seemingly intractable and feral military dog he came to love. I met Russ years ago in the third-base bleachers at Dwyer Stadium, where we whiled away many summers watching a set of trained canines – the Batavia Muckdogs of the (now defunct or, rather, exterminated) New York-Penn League. In the manner of ballpark friendships, ours developed over the years: from nodding acquaintance to grumbling exchanges (“why the hell didn’t the third-base coach send that guy?”) to friendship.