Ted & Me

by Dan Gutman

  17

  An American Hero

  “WAKE UP!”

  This time Ted whispered it in my ear.

  I was a little freaked out to open my eyes and find myself in a hospital bed. It took a few seconds to remember how I got there. Little Howie was asleep in the bed next to mine. He must have finally let go of Ted’s finger. Ted gestured for me to follow him, and we tiptoed out the door.

  Back in the car, Ted said it was only about 40 more miles to Washington. We were getting close. I started thinking about what I would say to President Roosevelt. That is, if we could manage to get inside the White House.

  “How do you know they’ll let us meet the president?” I asked.

  “I’m Ted !@#$%! Williams, that’s how.”

  We got back on Route 1 heading south. I wasn’t paying much attention to the scenery passing by because I was too nervous thinking about what might happen to us in Washington. What if we got to the White House, and the security guard wasn’t a baseball fan? Maybe he never heard of Ted. Or what if we got inside to see President Roosevelt, and he didn’t believe me when I told him what’s going to happen at Pearl Harbor? What if he thought I was crazy and had me thrown in jail or something? I just hoped that Ted’s fame would overcome those problems. With luck, people would take one look at him and believe what we had to say.

  We were driving through flat, endless farm country. Hardly any signs or people. The only stations the radio could pick up were filled with static. It seemed like a good time to talk to Ted about the other reason I had come to see him.

  “I did some research on you,” I told him. “If you play baseball instead of joining the marines, you’re likely to get about 500 at-bats each year. In four years, that would come to 2,000 more career at-bats.”

  “So?” Ted asked.

  “Well,” I continued, “if you hit one home run in every ten at-bats, you’ll hit another 200 homers in your career. As it is, you’re going to end up with 521 homers. But adding 200 more would bring the total to 721.”

  “So?” Ted asked.

  “Babe Ruth hit 714 in his career,” I told him. “So if you stay out of the military and play ball instead, there’s a good chance you’ll retire with more homers than Ruth.”

  Ted thought about that for a moment and then shook his head.

  “I don’t care about home runs,” he said, “and I don’t care about beating Ruth either.”

  “But the other night you told me your dream was to walk down the street and have people call you the greatest hitter who ever lived,” I said.

  “I don’t care about that anymore,” Ted replied.

  “Why not?”

  I was starting to panic. I must have done something, or said something, that changed his mind. Maybe I had messed up history without knowing it. Maybe I stepped on that twig in the forest.

  “Hitting a baseball just doesn’t seem so important anymore,” Ted told me. “If this Pearl Harbor thing is going to happen like you said, all those guys are going to die. I have to stop it. Some things are more important than hitting home runs.”

  We drove on in silence for a few miles. I was thinking about all those people who were going to die. Ted was probably thinking about them too.

  “You and me, we’re lucky to be born here,” he said out of the blue. “It gave us the chance to be the best in the world at something. If I was born in some other country, I wouldn’t have hit .400. I wouldn’t be rich and famous. None of this would have happened.”

  “You mean because they don’t play baseball in other countries?” I asked.

  Ted looked at me like I was stupid.

  “The United States is the only country in the world where it doesn’t matter who your parents are or how much money you have,” he told me. “A dirt-poor half-Mexican kid like me can grow up to become rich and famous. He can play ball or invent something, start a company or even become president.”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “Because it’s true,” Ted told me. “That’s why this country is great. You know what the most important part of the word ‘American’ is? The last four letters: I C-A-N.”

  As I let that sink in, the road took us into a small town with a few churches, a firehouse, and a ball field. There were people gathered on the field, lots of them. At first I thought there might be a game going on; but the people were standing all over the field, and some of them were carrying signs. We were too far away for me to read them.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “That’s another reason why our country is great,” Ted said. “These folks are protesting something or other. The United States is one of the few places in the world where people have freedom of speech, y’know. If they protested like this in some other country, they’d get locked up. This is what America is all about.”

  We had to slow down to a crawl because there were so many people milling around in the road. I saw a big sign on the outfield fence….

  RALLY FOR AMERICA FIRST!

  SPEAKING TODAY: CHARLES LINDBERGH

  “Lucky Lindy!” Ted said excitedly. “He was my hero growing up. I was eight years old when he made the first solo flight across the Atlantic. He was everybody’s hero. No wonder all these people are here.”

  Ted pulled the car off to the side of the road and opened the door.

  “Don’t you think we should just keep on driving to Washington?” I asked.

  “Plenty of time for that,” Ted replied. “How often do you get to see a real American hero? Come on!”

  As we crossed the street and walked toward the rally, Ted told me something I didn’t know about Charles Lindbergh. A few years back his baby, Charles Jr., was kidnapped in the middle of the night right out of his crib. The police found the boy’s body a few months later. What a horrible thing to happen to anyone. I felt sorry for him. Lindbergh and his wife were so devastated that they went to live in England for a few years.

  The rally was open to the public. I could hear chanting, and now we were close enough to read the signs the people were holding up…

  KEEP AMERICA OUT OF THE WAR!

  LET EUROPE FIGHT ITS OWN BATTLES!

  STAY OUT OF FOREIGN WARS!

  Some guy handed me a flyer….

  I always thought everybody supported that war.

  So it was an antiwar rally. I had heard about the antiwar movement during the Vietnam War, but I didn’t know they had them before that. I always thought that back in the old days, Americans pretty much agreed on political stuff. Not like today when everybody seems to just argue about everything. Maybe I was wrong.

  There was a stage with a podium on it set up near second base, some American flags, and a banner that said DEFEND AMERICA FIRST. Charles Lindbergh wasn’t onstage yet, but the crowd was already pumped up. People were clapping, shouting at each other, and passing out buttons and pamphlets.

  “Let England and France fight their own wars,” shouted one guy.

  “Let the Nazis wipe out the commies!” yelled somebody else. “Keep us out of it.”

  As Ted and I moved through the crowd, I didn’t have a good feeling. These people weren’t peace-loving hippies. They looked angry. I patted my back pocket to make sure I still had my pack of new baseball cards, just in case I needed them.

  A pretty woman wearing a NO WAR button stepped in front of Ted.

  “Hey there, handsome,” she said, smiling, “did anybody ever say you look like Ted Williams, that baseball player?”

  “Actually, miss,” Ted replied with a smile, “I am Ted Williams, that baseball player. And what’s your name? I bet it’s as pretty as you are.”

  The girl said her name was Bonnie, and she just about fainted upon realizing that the guy she thought looked like Ted actually was Ted. She told him that he was her favorite player and that she had pictures of him all over her room. Ted started singing “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” while Bonnie fussed with her purse until she came up with a pen and a piece of paper.

/>   “Can I have your autograph?” she begged. “Please? Please? Please?”

  “I’ll make a deal with you,” Ted told her. “I’ll give you my autograph if you give me your phone number.”

  “Sure thing, honey!”

  Neither of them paid any attention to me, of course. Ted and Bonnie flirted with each other while he signed her paper.

  As soon as he started writing on it, I heard people around us asking, “Who’s that guy?” and “Is he somebody famous?” It didn’t take long for people to realize it was Ted Williams. Scraps of paper and pens appeared almost as if by magic and were thrust in Ted’s face from all sides. In seconds, he was surrounded by a crush of autograph seekers. It looked like he was almost as popular as Charles Lindbergh.

  “It’s Ted Williams!” some girl squealed. “The guy who hit .400!”

  I wasn’t sure what to do. Ted looked up over the heads of his admirers and caught my eye.

  “I’ll catch up with you later, Stosh,” he said.

  I wandered around the crowd, trying to get closer to the stage. It would be cool to see the famous Charles Lindbergh close-up. There were more signs up front: FREE SOCIETY OF TEUTONIA and FRIENDS OF NEW GERMANY.

  Suddenly, on one side, the crowd broke out into cheers and applause. A man climbed up on the small stage. He was wearing a jacket and tie. As he stepped up to the microphone and a roar went up, I realized he was Charles Lindbergh.

  “Lindy! Lindy! Lindy!”

  He was a handsome man, and over six feet tall. He looked to be less than forty but seemed confident and sure of himself. I was close enough to see that he had a dimple in his chin. Lindbergh waved and waited until the crowd calmed down before he started to speak.

  Charles Lindbergh

  “It is now two years since this latest European war began,” he said. “From that day in September 1939 until the present moment, there has been an ever-increasing effort to force the United States into the conflict.”

  “Booooooooooooooo!” shouted the crowd.

  They weren’t booing Lindbergh, I gathered. They were booing because they didn’t want the United States to enter the war.

  “We, the heirs of European culture, are on the verge of a disastrous war, a war within our own family of nations, a war which will reduce the strength and destroy the treasures of the white race.”

  “That’s right!” somebody yelled.

  What? I wasn’t sure if I heard him right. Did he say “the white race”? In my time, people who use terms like “the white race” are usually white racists.

  It took a minute for it to sink in that I was listening to a racist speech. We had learned about Charles Lindbergh’s famous flight in school. But I didn’t remember hearing that he was a bigot. Maybe I was absent that day.

  “There are three important groups who have been pressing this country toward war,” Lindbergh continued, “the Roosevelt administration, the British, and the Jewish.”

  “Booooooooooo!”

  “Juden schwein!” somebody hollered.

  “It is they who represent a small minority of the American people,” Lindbergh went on, “but they control much of the machinery of influence and propaganda.”

  “Down with Franklin D. Rosenfeld!” somebody yelled.

  “The New Deal is the Jew Deal!”

  Most of the people just stared at Lindbergh in awe. He seemed to have a hypnotic effect on the crowd. After just about every sentence, there was wild applause.

  “War is not inevitable for this country,” Lindbergh continued. “Whether or not America enters this war is within our control. This tragedy is preventable if only we can build a Western Wall of race and arms to hold back the infiltration of inferior blood.”

  Another roar went up.

  “Inferior blood”? I turned around and saw some people giving Nazi salutes. I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing. Even the true haters in my century would never insult a minority group or say things like “inferior blood” in public. They would never get away with it.

  I looked around to find Ted to see if he felt the same way as Lindbergh. But most of the people were taller than me, and I couldn’t find Ted in the crowd. For all I knew, he ran off with that girl Bonnie.

  Lindbergh went on for a while saying more hateful things about President Roosevelt, England, and Jewish people. When he finished, the crowd gave him a huge ovation.

  As he walked off the stage into a throng of adoring fans, I realized something. If I couldn’t find Ted again, my mission would be over. I would never get to Washington. Even if I could get to Washington without him, I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere near the White House.

  And it wasn’t like I could just call Ted on his cell phone.

  Lindbergh had whipped the crowd up into a frenzy. People were crowding around him, trying to shake his hand or simply touch him. Ted had to be in that crush of people, I figured. If I could get near Lindbergh, I could find Ted.

  Everybody was pushing and shoving. I tried to make my way toward the stage. What happened over the next couple of minutes was a blur to me.

  “Jews control all the money,” a guy right next to me shouted. “What’s happening to them in Europe is their own fault!”

  “You heard what Lindy said,” hollered some other guy. “The Jews are leading us into the war to get back the power in countries that banished them!”

  Man! Some of these people were full-fledged Nazis!

  “What are you talking about?” I said to the guy next to me. “That’s ridiculous. If you want to keep America out of the war, stop the attack on Pearl Harbor. It’s coming on December 7th.”

  “Hey, watch where you’re stepping, kid!” a boy shouted at me.

  “Sorry,” I said, “I need to get to Lindbergh.”

  “Grab him!” yelled somebody else. “He’s trying to get to Lindy!”

  “He’s trying to kidnap Lindy’s other kids!” a voice yelled.

  A giant, burly security guy grabbed my arm roughly.

  “You don’t look like you’re from around here,” he told me. “You kinda look like a Jew.”

  “I’m not Jewish,” I explained. “And what if I was? Who cares what I am?”

  “He said it!” somebody yelled. “He’s a Jew! A dirty Jew!”

  “I am not,” I sputtered. “I didn’t say that. What I said was—”

  That’s when somebody punched me in the face.

  It wasn’t the security guy. It was some other guy. I didn’t even see the guy who did it. His fist came out of nowhere.

  The next thing I knew, I was on the ground. I put my hand to the side of my head. There was blood on it. That’s when they started kicking me.

  “He’s a Jew!”

  “Kill the Jew!”

  I tried to get up and run away, but they wouldn’t let me. One of them had his boot pressed against my head while the others were kicking me in the sides.

  I curled myself into a ball to protect myself. This can’t be happening, I thought. Not in America. Somebody will stop them. But nobody did.

  Maybe they’ll have mercy on me. Maybe Ted will come. Maybe the cops will come. But the only people who came were more Nazis, and their boots.

  “Work that Jew over, Johnny!” one of them yelled.

  “How do you like it, Jew boy?”

  Ted wasn’t going to rescue me. I had to get out of there before they killed me. There was only one way. I managed to reach into my pocket for my pack of baseball cards. While the Nazis were still kicking me, I ripped the pack open and took out one of the cards.

  “Kill the Jew! Kill the Jew!” they chanted.

  I tried to block it out and focus on where I wanted to go. Home. Louisville. The twenty-first century. Anywhere but here. Fast!

  It didn’t take too long for the tingling sensation to come. I felt it in my fingertips first, as always, and then it swept up my arm and across my body. While they pummeled me with kicks and punches, I felt myself getting lighter. It was happening. I was fad
ing away.

  “Hey! My foot went right through—”

  And that was the last thing I heard before I disappeared.

  18

  Nobody’s Perfect

  WHEN I CAME FLYING INTO THE LIVING ROOM, MY MOM WAS wearing a leotard, jumping around in front of the TV screen. We got the Nintendo as a Christmas present for me, but Mom has pretty much taken it over to do aerobics. She didn’t see me coming, and proceeded to kick me in the head.

  “Owwww!”

  “Joey, are you okay?” she said, rushing to my side when I hit the floor. “You’re a mess! Is that blood on your face? Oh, I’m so sorry!”

  My ribs were already sore from the beating I got from those Nazis. And now my own mother had kicked me in the head. This was not my day.

  “I’m fine, Mom,” I moaned. “It’s not important. Did Ted make it to Washington? Did he get to meet with the president?”

  “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Did I stop the attack on Pearl Harbor?” I asked urgently. “Are we going to get that briefcase full of money from the FBI?”

  “Uh, I don’t know. I didn’t hear anything about it on the news.”

  Of course she didn’t. The news is about things that happen, not about things that don’t happen.

  I ran upstairs two steps at a time to check the internet. My fingers fumbled on the keyboard because I was in such a hurry. But all I had to do was type “Pea” on Google to find more than eleven million websites telling me that Pearl Harbor still happened. All those soldiers still died. World War II went on, just the way it always had. Nothing had changed.

  I went over to baseball-reference.com to see if Ted took my advice about not enlisting in the marines. Again, in seconds, I had my answer. It said that Ted didn’t play any baseball in 1943, 1944, or 1945, when World War II was going on. It said he only played a few games in 1952 and 1953, during the Korean War.

  So Ted never made it to Washington to meet with the president. And he must have decided to enlist in the military even though he could have hit a lot more home runs if he played baseball during those years.