Jackie & Me

by Dan Gutman

  I couldn’t take my eyes off Jackie. I felt sure he was going to raise a fist in the air, or spit, or perform some act of defiance. He didn’t. His act of defiance was just being there. He stood off to the side, solemnly, alone, while the rest of the Dodgers stood together as a unit.

  “O’er the land of the free…and the home of the brave.”

  9

  OPENING DAY

  “PLAY BALL!” SHOUTED THE UMPIRE.

  Pee Wee Reese, at the edge of the dugout, waved his arm and the Dodgers sprinted to their positions. Reese at shortstop. Spider Jorgenson at third. Eddie Stanky at second. Joe Hatten was pitching, with Bruce Edwards behind the plate. The outfield, from left to right, was patrolled by Gene Hermanski, Pete Reiser, and Dixie Walker. And, of course, Jackie trotted out to first base.

  It had happened. A black man had entered the white man’s game. When Jackie stepped across the first-base line, the color barrier crashed to the ground. And I had the best seat in the house.

  “Hum that pea, baby!” somebody shouted to Joe Hatten.

  Hatten, a lefthander, retired the Braves easily in the first. When Jackie trotted off the field, I told him that Rachel had arrived with Jackie Jr. He seemed relieved.

  Ant told me to kneel in the on-deck circle and retrieve the bat after any of the Dodgers hit the ball. He would chase foul balls behind the plate and supply the umpire with fresh baseballs if they were needed.

  Eddie Stanky walked up to the plate to lead off for the Dodgers. Some of the guys on the team called him “Brat.” On the mound for Boston was Johnny Sain, a righthander who’d won twenty games in the last season. I knew the name. Sain and Warren Spahn were the only decent pitchers Boston had, which led to a famous baseball rhyme: “Spahn and Sain, then pray for rain.”

  “Rip it, Brat!” somebody called from the stands.

  As Stanky worked the count to two balls and a strike, a loud cheer went up from the stands. I turned around and saw Jackie coming out to the on-deck circle. The black fans—and there were a lot of them—were yelling their heads off.

  “What’s he throwing, Stosh?” Jackie asked me as he loosened up, swinging three bats.

  “Curveballs,” I replied. “All curves.”

  Stanky flied out to right field. It was Jackie’s turn to bat, his first in the majors.

  A roar went up in the stands as Jackie tossed away two of the bats and walked slowly toward the plate. Every black person in Ebbets Field was standing, and most of the whites were, too. The players in both dugouts moved to the edge of the bench.

  I didn’t hear any racist comments, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t any. There were a few scattered boos, but for the most part, the Brooklyn fans were on Jackie’s side. His skin color didn’t seem to matter. The color of his uniform did.

  There was no electronic scoreboard instructing people to GET LOUD! or LET’S HEAR SOME NOISE. It wasn’t necessary. I put my fingers in my ears to shut out some of the noise.

  Sain waited for the sound to die down a little before he looked in for the sign.

  “Ten bucks says Sain makes him eat dirt,” I heard somebody in the Dodger dugout say.

  “Twenty,” somebody else countered.

  Jackie dug his back foot into the outside line of the batter’s box. He took a deep breath and held both arms extended far away from his body. He gripped the handle of the bat high, at eye level, and pumped the bat back and forth as Sain wound up. Jackie quickly took his left hand off his bat, wiped it on his pants leg, and gripped the bat again.

  It was a curveball, just off the outside corner. Sain, it appeared, was no headhunter. He was going to pitch to Jackie just like he’d pitch to anybody else.

  Jackie and Sain battled until Sain put a fastball over the inside part of the plate. Jackie took a swing at it, a choppy, lunging swing. He smacked a grounder to short.

  Jackie broke from the batter’s box like a bullet. The shortstop scooped the ball up and hurried his throw to first base. Jackie stepped on the bag at about the same time as the ball hit the first baseman’s mitt.

  “Yer out!” the umpire yelled, jerking his thumb up.

  He looked safe to me, but Dodger manager Barney Shotton didn’t complain. Jackie tossed a look at the ump, but he didn’t argue the call.

  Jackie dug his back foot into the outside line of the batter’s box. He took a deep breath and held both arms extended far away from his body.

  Jackie made an out, but the black fans roared with approval anyway. It didn’t matter to them that Jackie didn’t get a hit. What mattered most was that he was given the opportunity to get a hit.

  Pete Reiser drew a walk, but Dixie Walker flied out to end the inning. No score.

  After the first inning, the crowd settled down. The color barrier had been broken. The earth didn’t spin off its axis. The world as we knew it didn’t cease to exist. It was like any other baseball game.

  The Dodgers scored a run in the third inning on a ground ball out. Boston tied it up in the fifth, then scored twice more in the sixth. Jackie wasn’t Superman. He flied to left in the third and bounced into a rally-killing double play in the fifth.

  In the seventh inning, Stanky led off with a walk. Jackie dropped down a perfect bunt to advance the runner, and the throw to first hit him on the shoulder. As the ball bounded into right field, both runners advanced. The letter E on the big Schaefer Beer sign lit up to indicate an error had been made.

  Pete Reiser followed with a double off Johnny Sain that landed just inside the right-field foul line. Stanky and Jackie both scored.

  As Jackie crossed the plate, I put my hand up for a high five. He put his hand down for me to shake it. We missed hands. He must have thought I was a real idiot.

  Reiser would also eventually come home, and the Dodgers ended up winning the game by the score of 5–3.

  When the final out was made, the lady in center field clanged her cowbell and shouted, “Eacha hearts out, ya bums!”

  Barney Shotton gave each of the Dodgers a pat on the back as they filed into the clubhouse. They tore off their uniforms and threw them into a pile in the middle of the floor.

  Most of the players hung around for a while, going over the game, but Jackie showered and dressed quickly. None of the players congratulated him for making history.

  “I have to go out a special exit,” Jackie whispered to me. “They’re afraid the crowds might get out of control if they see me. Can you find your way back to the hotel?”

  I told him I could, and he slipped me a nickel for the subway.

  It had been a long day and I was tired. I was also anxious to go out on the street and see if I could get some baseball cards for my dad.

  “Not so fast, black boy,” Ant said when he saw me heading for the door. “The game ain’t over for us yet.”

  For batboys, I learned, most of the work comes after the ninth inning. There were uniforms to bag up for the laundry. The dugout had to be mopped clean of tobacco juice. The clubhouse had to be swept and mopped. Equipment had to be cleaned and put away.

  Ant had me do most of the dirty work, while he sat there with his feet up on a table. He seemed to enjoy watching me.

  “I’m sure you know how to shine shoes,” Ant smirked, just when I thought my work was done. “I’ll take half and you take half.”

  He had lined up thirty pairs of cleats on the floor. One pair for each player, plus all the coaches. My right hand was killing me from signing all those fake autographs. My left hand was killing me from catching Jackie’s warmup throws. And now I would have to shine shoes! I wished I was back in Louisville, soaking in the bathtub.

  “You’re lucky,” Ant informed me. “The polish won’t even show up on your skin.”

  I started polishing, doing my best to ignore Ant’s remark. By the time I finished shining the fifth pair, I was dragging. But Ant was already on his sixth pair, so I worked a little faster.

  Neither of us said out loud that we were racing, but I think we both knew we were.
Ant kept looking over at me to see how many pairs I had finished. I did the same to him. He seemed surprised that I was able to keep up with him.

  It was uncomfortable, the two of us alone in the clubhouse together. I guess Ant felt it, too. I don’t think he had ever spent so much time with a black person. At first he didn’t say anything to me, but after a while he pulled the Amazing Stories magazine out of his back pocket.

  “Ya hear ’bout dis?” he asked, showing me an article. “Last month sump’n fell outta da sky in Roswell, New Mexico. Dey think it might be aliens or sump’n.”

  “I heard about it,” I replied. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  “Oh I believe it right now,” Ant said, looking me straight in the eye. “Aliens are here. No doubt about it.”

  By the tenth pair of shoes, I was wiped out. But Ant saw me catching up to him, so he cranked it up a little faster. He was still one pair ahead of me. By the time I got to the fifteenth pair, I decided I would never wear leather shoes again for the rest of my life. I had nearly caught up, and we were both working on the last pair at the same time.

  “Done!” Ant said triumphantly just a few seconds before I finished the last shoe. We both wiped our faces with towels.

  “Here, kid,” he said, pulling three dollar bills from his pocket and handing them to me. “Your pay.”

  “Thanks…Batman.”

  I didn’t know that batboys got paid. I accepted the money gratefully. I could use it to buy more baseball cards for my dad.

  Ant and I had come to an understanding, I felt. He didn’t like me very much. I didn’t like him very much. But we both had a job to do, so we did it.

  “Be here tomorrow at ten o’clock sharp,” he said as we left the clubhouse. He locked the door behind us and walked out the exit without saying good-bye.

  10

  THE STREETS OF FLATBUSH

  IT HAD BEEN COOL GOING BACK IN TIME TO MEET JACKIE Robinson. I had enough information to do my report. I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was go back home to Louisville and fall into my bed.

  But I couldn’t do that. Not yet, anyway. Dad had given me an assignment. I had to at least try to carry it out.

  I had to find a baseball card store. My plan was to buy as many cards as I could carry. Then I would go back to Jackie Robinson’s hotel. In the middle of the night, I would use my Ken Griffey Jr. card to take me and my old cards to the future.

  It was about five o’clock in the afternoon when I left Ebbets Field. I started wandering around the streets looking for a baseball card store. Brooklyn didn’t look anything like Louisville. It didn’t look anything like Manhattan either.

  The street was filled with people, almost all white people. Old guys in undershirts sitting on lawn chairs. Women gathered in clusters, gabbing in Italian, German, and Irish accents. I didn’t see any black people, and I had the sense that the white people on the street were staring at me.

  Vendors pushed carts down the street. One guy was selling corn on the cob from a big basket he attached to his bike. Another came around sharpening knives and scissors. There wasn’t a baseball card store in sight.

  Kids were everywhere. Girls playing hopscotch, roller skating, jumping rope. Boys pitching pennies, flicking yo-yos, playing dominoes, marbles, and games I’d never seen before. Back home in Louisville, most of the games I played with my friends were video games.

  It was so noisy! Radios blared out of every window. Trolleys clanged and screeched around the corners. There was a siren somewhere, but nobody paid attention to it. Moms were leaning out their windows, calling their kids to come home and eat. I could hear somebody practicing scales on a violin.

  There was a bell in the distance and all the kids started yelling, “G’Jooma! G’Jooma!” I couldn’t imagine what that meant. But a minute later, a Good Humor truck arrived and it all became clear. My eyes were wide open. It was all very new and different to me.

  A group of shirtless boys were down the street playing stickball. Now this was a game I knew. In fact, back in Louisville, I ruled at stickball. I leaned up against a fence to watch them.

  For a bat, the kids were using a sawed-off broom handle with black tape around the lower half. The ball was an old tennis ball, hard and dead. They had drawn a scoreboard with chalk in the street.

  “Wanna play?”

  The kid who said that was looking toward me, but I figured he must have been talking to somebody else. I turned around to see if anybody was behind me.

  “You,” the kid said. “Colored boy. Wanna play?”

  “Uh…okay.”

  I came around to the other side of the fence, and all the kids in the game jogged in from their positions.

  “Hey, I ain’t playin’ with no nigger!” one of the kids said.

  “Shut up, Louie!” said another. I stood there awkwardly, pretending I didn’t care if they let me play or not.

  “The Dodgers got a colored guy now,” a third kid said. “If it’s okay with the Bums, it’s okay with me.”

  “Me too.”

  “Fuhgetaboutit,” the kid they called Louie said, picking his shirt up off the ground. “I’m goin’ home.”

  “Okay,” the biggest kid said. “You can play.”

  They explained the ground rules to me. Home plate was a manhole cover. Trees on each side of the street were first and third base. Some kid’s shirt lying on the ground was second base. A ball hit past one sewer was a single. Two sewers was a double. Three sewers, well, nobody could hit a ball that far.

  “Ya hit it past the Chevy on a fly, it’s a double,” a kid explained. “Ya hit past the Ford, it’s a triple.”

  They assigned me to the team at bat. Everybody ran to their positions. A kid on my team picked up the bat and wiggled it around.

  “Look, I’m Pee Wee Reese!” he boasted.

  “You look more like Rizzuto, Alphonse!” somebody yelled. “And he stinks!”

  The pitcher went into his windup, and the kid who was imitating Reese took a big swing at the ball. He dribbled an easy roller back to the pitcher for an out. Somebody told me it was my turn to hit.

  I grabbed the bat and walked up to the manhole cover. The broom was longer and thinner than anything I ever swung. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself. I pumped the broom back and forth a few times.

  “Hey look!” somebody yelled. “It’s Jackie Robinson!” Everybody laughed.

  The pitcher went into his windup and tossed the tennis ball. It looked hittable and I whipped the broom handle around. I could tell right away I got all of it.

  “Could be three sewers!” somebody yelled.

  The ball was up high, curving to the left, toward an apartment building. As it came down, somebody said, “Uh-oh!”

  The ball crashed against a window and shattered it. For a second, I just froze. I just stood there with the bat in my hand, admiring my home run.

  “That was a twenty-five-cent ball!” complained one of the kids.

  “You hooligans!” a lady screamed through the broken window. “I’m gonna call the cops on you!”

  “Run for it!” one of the kids yelled. Instantly, they all dashed away, like roaches after somebody turned the light on.

  I took off at top speed and ducked around the first corner. After I had gone a couple of blocks and saw that nobody was chasing me, I slowed down and tried to act casual. If the lady told the police it was a black kid, it would be hard to hide. I didn’t hear any sirens, and relaxed a little.

  Stores lining the street were selling just about everything anybody would want to buy, it seemed. Fish. Newspapers. Pots and pans. Radios. Everything but baseball cards. I fished a dime out of my pocket and bought a hot dog from a street vendor.

  I noticed four kids kneeling on a corner. They were throwing something against a wall. As I got closer, I could see that they were flipping baseball cards.

  My dad told me he not only flipped cards when he was a kid, but he even put them in the spokes of his bike with a clothespin to
make a noise like a motor. Incredible! Some of those cards would be worth hundreds of dollars. If these kids were smart, they’d put them in plastic pages instead of throwing them at a wall. But they didn’t have a clue.

  “Excuse me,” I asked one of the kids, “is there a baseball card store in this neighborhood?”

  The kids looked at me oddly, and then at each other. I wasn’t sure if it was because of what I said or because they weren’t used to seeing black kids in their neighborhood.

  “Go back to Harlem, jungle bunny,” one of the kids said.

  “Yeah, beat it,” said another.

  They had me outnumbered four to one. I wasn’t about to pick a fight.

  “Look,” I said as politely as possible, “I don’t want any trouble. I just want to know if there’s a store around here that sells baseball cards.”

  “A what?” asked one of them, a kid who hadn’t spoken before. He seemed nicer than his friends.

  “A store that sells baseball cards.”

  “Bubblegum cards?” asked the kid. “Try the grocery on the corner of Flatbush Avenue. He might have some.”

  The kid looked familiar to me somehow, but I couldn’t place him.

  “Your turn, Flip,” somebody urged the kid.

  “Flip?” I asked. “Your last name. It’s not—”

  “Valentini,” he replied. “What’s it to ya?”

  Flip Valentini! I had traveled back over fifty years and who should I meet up with but the guy who lent me the Jackie Robinson card…as a kid! The world was a strange place.

  “Let me give you a piece of advice,” I told Flip Valentini. “Keep your bubblegum cards in a safe place. When you get older and you move out of your mom’s house, take ’em with you. Whatever you do, don’t let her throw them away.”

  Flip looked at me like I was nuts and went back to his game. I bought another hot dog from a vendor and headed for the grocery store Flip told me about. The sign on the front of the store said ITALIAN & AMERICAN GROCERIES. SAM HERSKOWITZ.