The Youngest Hero

by Jerry B. Jenkins

  Luke smiled at me. “You’re a little wired.”

  “Am I ever.”

  I paced.

  Momma just sat, her eyes full, her face blotchy. “This waiting is gonna drive me crazy,” she said. “How am I supposed to sleep? How am I supposed to work tomorrow?”

  Luke put his arm around her. “You just heard a sermon on worry,” he said.

  She snorted. “It was pretty good too. It just didn’t take, that’s all.”

  “You think you’ve got worries,” Luke said, “I’ve got scads of cleaning to do before my company comes tomorrow. I hope that gentleman from baseball doesn’t mind drinking out of an old jelly glass!”

  “Lucas!”

  “Oh, I’ll take care of him. Sounds like all he needs is a chair and something to munch. You guys go till late morning; I’ll cater a fast-food lunch.”

  I slept no better than my mother. I heard her sighing, tossing, and turning all night. All while I was doing the same thing.

  62

  I showed up too early at Lucky’s Secondhand Shop the next morning. The place was locked and the street deserted. I thought about moseying over to Lucky’s flat, but that was not the plan. Once Rafer Williams showed up and Luke spirited him to his apartment, Luke was to meet me at the store and send me there.

  I whiled away the longest hour and a half of my life sitting on the pavement, looking in the window, lying on the pavement, and hanging over the curb to watch insects in the gutter. I rested my back against the short brick wall beneath the window of Lucky’s and closed my eyes against the morning sun. I was wound tight, wishing the clock would move, wishing Luke would show up.

  I scrambled to my feet when I heard Luke’s boots on the sidewalk.

  “There’s been a screwup,” he said. “Mr. Williams thought everybody understood he wanted to meet with your mother first. I called your place, but that guy Bravado or whatever his name is said you’d left two hours ago and your mother an hour ago. You’d better get goin. You know the place.”

  I hurried toward Luke’s apartment and was almost past an old man with a cane when the man stopped and said, “Woodell!”

  I spun and stopped. “Yes, sir?”

  The old man reached out a huge, strong hand. “Dressel. I been scoutin ya.”

  “Yes, sir. Nice to meet you, sir.”

  “Don’t let that guy bully you now, hear? Don’t let him compare you with big leaguers. All we’re sayin is that physically you’re ready for the minors. Whether you’re ready in any of the other ways, who knows?”

  Without another word, Ronny Dressel waved and moved on.

  I felt a tingle up my spine. Who would believe I had just met a Hall of Fame pitcher and was about to have a secret meeting with a Hall of Fame catcher who was also commissioner of baseball? Would I be able to speak, or would I just melt and have to be scooped up and poured back onto the street?

  When I reached Luke’s apartment I thought of my dad and how proud he would be of me. I knocked.

  “It’s unlocked,” came the huge, bass voice.

  I turned the knob and pressed my knee against the door where it always stuck. It squeaked and broke free. A few feet from the door stood a chuckling giant of a black man. He was shiny bald with a rim of long, curly hair. His feet were spread and his arms folded across his chest, making his shirt cuffs and suit coat arms ride high off his wrists. Mr. Williams was about six-four and had picked up at least forty pounds since his last playing day nearly ten years before. He had become a broadcaster, then—of all things for a National Leaguer—American League president before becoming the surprise choice for commissioner. In the meantime he had become a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

  “You’ve been here before?” Rafer Williams said, his voice too loud for the room. I looked puzzled. “You knew just how to open the door!”

  When he shook my hand, my fingers disappeared. Mr. Williams pointed to the couch, and I sat. “It’s mighty nice to meet you finally,” he said. He removed his brown, pin-striped coat and draped it over the back of a kitchen chair, then took off his tie and stuffed it in the pocket of his coat.

  I sat with my feet flat on the floor, knees together, fists on my thighs. Williams pulled the coffee table away from my knees and settled his expanse right in the middle of it. The table bowed.

  I felt more at ease as Rafer Williams made himself comfortable. There was a sparkle in his eye and excitement in every move. The man sat forward, elbows on his knees, not two feet from me, and smiled. Then he pulled up his socks, still not taking his eyes from mine. He tugged at his pant legs until they rose a few inches above the tops of his socks.

  The commissioner crossed his legs and held his ankle to his knee with both hands. He had a gold ring on each hand, a gold watch on his left wrist.

  “See that briefcase over there?” he said.

  The satchel-style bag was stuffed, papers peeking out the top.

  “That’s full of you. Videotapes, charts, graphs, radar gun printouts, timings of you to first, you to second, you from first to third, you around the bases. If you can measure a ballplayer by the numbers, you’ve been measured, buddy.”

  “Uh-huh.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “But you and me both know you don’t measure a ballplayer like that, don’t we? A ballplayer is measured by his head and his heart, am I right?”

  I nodded. “But you can tell a lot about a guy by his numbers.”

  Williams stuck out his lower lip and nodded. “True enough. Like the numbers I’ve got on you show that you’d be about, oh, tenth or eleventh fastest runner on a big-league club, maybe third or fourth on a rookie-league team. Your arm is remarkable. You throw the ball like an eighteen-year-old. But I s’pose you know that most eighteen-year-olds would rank last on a big-league team in throwing.”

  I nodded.

  “I thought maybe we’d talk some baseball,” the commissioner continued. “You know how rarely I get to do that? Seems all I talk about is other junk—legal stuff. Contracts, deals, negotiations. If I didn’t insist on goin to a ball game at least once a week I wouldn’t even see one. Let’s talk baseball.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let me tell you what makes you such an unusual hitter and you tell me if I’m right. It’s all bat speed, right?”

  I hesitated. “I used to think bat speed was pretty much everything, sir,” I said. “But when I started facing faster pitchers, guys who throw in the low eighties, I had to start getting stronger. The faster the pitch, the harder it is for the bat to change its direction.”

  “You’re right!” he chortled. “It’s not just bat speed, or all these little guys would be hitting home runs all the time! You think pitches in the low eighties make a bat hard to push through the strike zone, try to turn around one in the high nineties! That ol bat seems to recoil in your hands. Ever hit offa one of those superfast pitching machines? Same feeling. You face that kind of pitching all the time, you’ve got to be built for it.”

  I nodded.

  “Are you built for it? Let me see your hands.”

  I held them out. Williams took one in each of his.

  “Resist me,” he said.

  He pulled my hands toward each other. I resisted but not successfully. I was off balance, had no base. My rear end was on soft cushions. The more I fought, the more Williams was able to make me lean from side to side. I planted my feet.

  “Thatta boy!” Williams said. “Set yourself and hold steady.”

  I squared my shoulders. I was no match against the big man, but I offered more resistance when I was braced.

  “Unusually strong for your age,” Williams said. “Truly phenomenal. You have the body and strength of a late teen, and the baseball knowledge—so they tell me—of an adult. Better than that. The baseball knowledge of the expert adult. Your fielding and throwing are above average for American Legion, and you hit like a double- or even triple-A player.”

  Afraid I would sound immature, still I had to ask.

/>   “Do you really think a double-A player would hit near seven hundred in Legion ball?”

  Williams stopped and stared at the ceiling, cupping his neck in his hand.

  “Now that’s a good question,” he said. His mind seemed to be cataloging double-A players.

  I didn’t want to look cocky. I looked the commissioner in the eyes and mouthed silently, “Seven hundred?”

  63

  I took a call at my desk from Mr. Thatcher.

  “Well, of course I want to meet with him,” I said. “But not until after work. How’s it going with Elgin?”

  “Dressel and Luke are at the shop, and Elgin left for Luke’s apartment more than an hour ago.”

  “Well,” I said, “I don’t mind tellin you, I should have taken the day off. I am worthless.”

  “Well now, you’ve got me there,” Williams said, seeming to enjoy himself. “A minor leaguer who would hit seven hundred in Legion ball? Hm. I remember a kid played for the Cubs some years back. Black shortstop with a gun of an arm. Hit over three-fifty two years running in triple-A. Had trouble hitting his weight his first few years in the bigs. Wound up a pretty fair hitter. I believe he could have hit seven hundred in Legion ball. Maybe a couple of others.”

  “So I’m hitting like a high minor leaguer,” I tried. “Someone on his way to the majors.”

  “Course a lot more goes into making a professional ballplayer than a good bat.”

  “I’ll do anything.”

  “Would you stand in against the fastest pitcher in baseball and let him throw a hundred straight pitches past you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I thought you said you’d do anything.”

  I smiled. “Anything except let him throw them past me.”

  Williams howled. “You’re somethin, kid! I gotta give you that. Would you work out with a trainer so you wouldn’t overdo it, but build yourself up to where you can change the direction of a ninety-mile-per-hour fastball? Don’t nod so quick. You know it takes eight thousand pounds of force to change the motion of a ball that weighs just over five ounces from coming at you at ninety miles an hour to going the other way at over one hundred ten?”

  “I’ve read that,” I said, “but I don’t understand it. I mean, how does even somebody your size, when you were playing I mean, produce eight thousand pounds of force?”

  The commissioner laughed loud. “I don’t know,” he said. “I always wondered that myself! I’m not a physics man, but I know it has to do with more than bat speed. It’s got to be strength.”

  Billy Ray Thatcher was on his cell phone in the back room at Lucky’s. He had returned the call of the general manager of the Houston Astros.

  “It’s about time, Mr. Thatcher. I’m calling about this kid who’s getting all the attention. There’s no hope of getting him into the June draft, I suppose.”

  “If that happened, would Houston be interested?”

  “You never know,” the GM said. “I can’t imagine being interested in a child.”

  “I hear you,” Billy Ray said. “He’s just a babe.”

  The man chuckled. “With a capital B?”

  Billy Ray smiled. “So you’re telling me what? That you’re interested or that you’re not interested?”

  “Just to ask about the June draft. If you can’t get him into that, this is all academic.”

  “So, let’s be academic. In fact, let’s be hypothetical. Let’s say you could be fairly certain this boy would be the Tiger Woods of baseball. Dominate the game like no one ever has, lead the league in just about everything, win the MVP several years in a row, lead a team to the play-offs and Series year after year.”

  “I’ve seen the videos. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for all of us. I know every other team in baseball is interested, because we have first pick and we’ve been contacted by all of them.”

  “That so?”

  “Personally, I’m pessimistic that the boy will be made available until he’s of age. But I wouldn’t trade his rights for anything I can think of.”

  “Not even millions?”

  “No. Even though he would never pay off until the majors. But if he keeps progressing, he could be one of the youngest big leaguers in history. He’d fill every stadium every game if he could simply compete with adults. He’d pay for a long-term deal within a half season.”

  Thatcher laughed. “Refresh me on which of us is on which side of the bargaining table, sir.”

  The GM laughed. ‘Just let me congratulate you on the hottest property since the first Babe. Protect him, Thatcher. For the good of the game and especially the boy.”

  “Count on that,” Billy Ray said.

  “You’re not serious!” Rafer Williams thundered. “Not even to Wrigley?”

  I shook my head. “Never to one big-league game.”

  “Well, we’re gonna have to see about that,” Rafer said. He looked at his watch and pulled his cell phone from a pocket.

  “Rafer Williams calling for Mr. Martin—Hey, Cliff! Rafer! Good! Listen, I need four tickets to Saturday night’s game. Box seats, best you’ve got, where you’d put me, hear? No, not a luxury box. And then for the next day, you’ve got a midafternoon TV game, right? That’s when I want a skybox, lots of food and soft drinks, all on my office. Got it? Leave em at Will Call for Luke Harkness.”

  I smiled.

  “Now, son, I want you to tell me about your daddy.”

  Billy Ray Thatcher placed a call to the general manager of the Phillies.

  “Give me some good news,” the GM said. ‘Just tell me what it’s going to take. What’s the floor bid?”

  “Congratulations,” Billy Ray said. “You get to start the bidding.”

  “You know what the rumors are.”

  “Tell me.”

  “That the commissioner is going to have the kid scouted independently.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what I hear. What do you hear?”

  “I just hear offers,” Billy Ray said.

  “You think Rafer will clear the kid for the June draft?”

  “I couldn’t tell you.”

  “But do you know?”

  “Of course not. I would imagine there’d be a lot of hurdles.”

  “I’m not so sure,” the Philadelphia man said. “There’ll be do-gooders and social-worker types who’ll cry bloody murder. But how can you keep a guy from doing what he wants to do and is capable of doing when he has parental consent? He can be tutored for school, can’t he? I mean, he’s going to make millions.”

  “How many millions?” Thatcher asked.

  They both laughed and agreed to keep in touch.

  Rafer Williams’s voice was soft. “So there was no goin back for the funeral? That’s rough. Uh-huh. That’s a rough one. Made you a better player, though, did it? Uh-huh. Wow. How’s Momma doin now?”

  I smiled, embarrassed. “Momma’s in love with Luke Harkness.”

  “You don’t say!”

  “By the way, Luke said to just call him and he’d bring us some burgers.”

  “Burgers! Let’s call him!”

  I skipped lunch at the office and began to feel faint by early afternoon. There was little I wanted more than to talk with the commissioner and to be able to know something one way or the other about Elgin.

  64

  Baseball commissioner Rafer Williams tried to press a twenty-dollar bill into Luke Harkness’s hand.

  “No way,” Luke said. “It’s on me. Drink whatever you want from the fridge.”

  As Luke left, the commissioner swept open the refrigerator to find it stocked with several different brands of soft drinks. “What’ll you have, Elgin?”

  “Diet Coke.”

  “Good man. Stay away from the sugar. This is Monday, so I’ll do the same.”

  Williams howled, but I didn’t get it. We sat at the tiny kitchen table in vinyl-covered chairs. He had a way of talking with his mouth full without being offensive.

  �
�Elgin, if I compared you to Jackie Robinson, do you know what I’d be saying?”

  “Sure. He was the first black ballplayer to play in the major leagues. Someday I’ll be the first kid.”

  “The question is, do you bring to your job what he brought to his? First, he was a great, great player. That helped. But when he made an out, had an oh-for-four game, made an error, well, he was everybody’s nigger.”

  I was stunned. Momma didn’t even allow that word in our house. And here was a black man saying it.

  “They told him to go back to the jungle,” Mr. Williams said. “He even had a rough time with his teammates.”

  “Yeah, until he won Rookie of the Year.”

  “You know your history, don’t you?”

  “I read a lot.”

  “But Jackie Robinson was a big enough man to not fight back. He had to get angry and had to feel the injustice. If just once he had attacked somebody or treated them like they treated him, he’d have ruined it for all of us. Think I’d be commissioner today if it weren’t for Jackie Robinson? Not on your life. But let me tell you this, he won over a lot of people, but not everybody. Understand?”

  I nodded.

  “Now tell me, son, what kind of heat you’ve taken. There had to be a lot of kids who lost jobs because you came along.”

  I told him I had suffered some but that it didn’t seem like much, now that I was thinking about Jackie Robinson.

  “Otherwords, you’ve never been spit at.”

  I shook my head.

  “Ignored?”

  “Not really.”

  “Shunned?”

  I shook my head again. “I don’t guess I’m a Jackie Robinson.”

  The commissioner finished off another burger and took a long pull on his Diet Coke.

  “See, there’s where we have our problem. I don’t know how much you know about the legal side of this thing, but to get you into the June draft I would have to make an exception to an old rule. Breaking old rules is part of my heritage, so I’m not against that. I’m not even all that concerned if the worst that happens is that you’re a paper tiger and you flounder in the minors and never see a major-league inning. That makes us look bad, sure, for exploiting you, ruining your childhood, all that. But even if that happens, you and your mother will likely be set up for life.