In the very beginning of the book, The protagonist Doug Swieteck's father crushes his mother's carefully wrapped dishes with his tools. Doug observes that “She lifted out the pieces she had wrapped in newspaper, and for a moment held them close to her. Then she dropped them back in the box like they were garbage, because that's all they were now. Garbage. Like Joe Pepitone's cap.”. The protagonist notices this interaction between his parents, but doesn't completely comprehend it.
There are several reasons for this. Doug had been given a baseball cap by one of his favorite baseball players, but it had recently been stolen. The baseball cap holds such importance to him that his thought process is largely focused on it during this moment. In