by Wes Tooke
Nick’s life at home was also going relatively well because his father seemed to be settling into coaching. At practice he generally worked with the younger pitchers on the team, and during the games he would pace the bench and stare at the opposing dugout, trying to crack their signals. About half the time he would be successful, and the players learned to trust him when he warned them about pitchouts or trick plays. He also was familiar with most of the pitchers from the local teams, and before most games he would be surrounded with Bismarck batters who wanted a scouting report.
After a noontime game on a Saturday—an 8–1 blowout of a traveling team from St. Cloud, Minnesota—Mr. Churchill gathered the team in the center of the diamond.
“I have good news and better news,” he said, half shouting to be heard over the clamor of the departing crowd. “The good news is that we’ve been invited to play in the National Baseball Congress. The better news is that the people who organize the tournament have agreed to pay us a bonus of one thousand dollars for every victory!”
The players stared at one another for a stunned moment and then broke into loud cheers. Mr. Churchill watched them, a satisfied smile on his face, and then waved his hands for silence.
“We leave on Thursday,” he said when everyone was quiet. “Same travel plans as usual. And make sure you get some sleep, boys. It’s going to take seven wins to take home that trophy.”
The team cheered again as Mr. Churchill headed toward the office, and even Nick’s father had a smile on his face. They were probably happy about the chance to win a thousand dollars per victory, but Nick mostly was excited that he was going to get to see Satch pitch against teams from all over the country—that was a prize worth more to him than any amount of money.
By the time Nick finished his chores around the ballpark, the players were gone. As he walked out the main gate, he was surprised to see Emma sitting on the curb, her glove resting next to her.
“Hey,” Nick said. “What are you still doing here?”
“Waiting for you,” she said. “My mom wants me to pick up some stuff from the store and I need help getting it home.”
“Oh,” Nick said. “Okay.”
They walked north along a wide street, Nick following Emma’s lead. He was still thinking about the tournament when she suddenly paused and pointed into a big park that stretched along the side of the road.
“Aren’t those your friends?” she asked.
Nick followed her finger and suddenly realized that she was pointing at the youth baseball field—the place that had practically been his second home before he got sick. A team was taking infield practice, and as Nick focused on them he realized that Emma was right: Tom was at shortstop and Nate was at first.
“Aren’t you going to go say hello?” Emma asked.
Nick shrugged. “I don’t want to interrupt practice.”
Emma looked at him for a long moment and then turned and cupped her hands to her mouth. “Hey,” she shouted before Nick could stop her. “You need a pitcher?”
The game paused as every head swung in their direction. Nick wanted to hide behind a tree—or maybe strangle Emma—but it was too late so he slowly walked toward the field, a dull feeling of dread in his stomach. Tom and Nate trotted in from their positions to meet him.
“Are you really ready to pitch again?” Nate asked when he reached the fence.
“I don’t know,” Nick said.
“I saw him pitch the other day,” Emma said. Nick’s head swung around—she was standing right behind him. “He looked really good.”
“We still need another pitcher,” Tom said. “We’ve got the best hitters in the league, but we give up too many runs.”
Nick stared out at the field. While he was trapped in his hospital bed, he had played hundreds of games here in his imagination, and every clump of dirt and kink of the fence felt familiar. A huge part of him craved the feeling of walking back onto the mound—the instant acceptance that would come from being on a team again. But . . .
“My doctor says I can’t,” Nick finally said. “Sorry.”
Nick turned and walked away before anyone could say anything else. Emma hustled to catch him, but she was quiet as they continued toward the center of town. When the five-and-dime store was within sight, Nick glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.
“You knew they were going to be at that park,” he said.
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Why?”
“Because you can pitch,” she said in a rush. “It doesn’t matter what your dad thinks or whether your leg is perfect or anything else. You can pitch and you want to pitch. And you won’t be happy until you try.”
Nick kept walking, silent. It was nice of her to care so much, but Nick also wished she would mind her own business. Nick knew he wasn’t ready to play. Yeah, his leg felt a lot better and he could throw off a mound without falling on his face, but what if a batter bunted? Would he be able to sprint forward and grab the ball? Could he run the bases? But those physical fears seemed minor compared to the big one—the feeling of pure terror that Nick got whenever he imagined standing on the mound with everyone watching him and waiting to see if he was a pitcher or a cripple. Nick had been known for one thing before he went to the hospital: being the best young pitcher in Bismarck. And it was petrifying to imagine stepping back onto the field before he really knew whether he was going to ruin that reputation.
While Emma may have had an ulterior motive in asking Nick for help, she hadn’t been lying about needing to pick up stuff from the store. Nick ended up walking home with a bag of flour over his shoulder as she lugged two small bags of potatoes. As they rounded the corner of her house, Emma suddenly stopped and pointed at a window. Nick peered inside and saw Emma’s mother sitting at the kitchen table. A man was sitting across from her, his back to the window, and as Nick watched, the pair suddenly burst into laughter at some private joke. Something about the way the man threw his head back was oddly familiar—
“Is that my father?” Nick asked, the words bursting from his mouth.
But Emma had dropped the potatoes and was striding away across the yard. Nick leaned the bag of flour against the house and then hurried to catch her. They walked back to the bench behind the house, but instead of sitting she turned on her heel and leaned against a tree. Nick’s leg was stiff after the long walk so he settled onto the bench.
“What’s the matter?” he asked after a long, silent moment.
Emma stared at him, her face ghostly white in the shadows. “You don’t think it’s weird?”
“What’s weird?”
“Don’t play dumb,” she said. “First you and your dad came over for dinner, and now they’re sitting in the kitchen having a cup of coffee.”
Nick thought for a long moment. Yeah, it was weird to see his father laughing with Emma’s mother—or anyone else. But life with his father had gotten easier over the past few weeks. He wasn’t exactly a chatterbox, but it also didn’t sound like he was angry every time he opened his mouth. And maybe Emma’s mother had something to do with that or maybe she didn’t, but anyone who could make his father laugh was nothing short of a miracle worker.
“I want my dad to be happy,” Nick eventually said. “Because maybe if he’s happy we’ll get to stay in Bismarck. And maybe he won’t be so mean.”
“Oh,” Emma said.
She looked at Nick, something sad in her dark eyes, and she then pushed herself away from the tree and came and sat next to him on the bench. Nick tensed as her head settled onto his shoulder. They were quiet for a long moment. Nick could feel the warmth radiating from her forehead and smell a hint of soap.
“Then I guess it’s okay,” she finally said. “But I don’t want to be your sister. Okay?”
“Okay,” Nick said.
That Thursday the team piled back into the Chrysler and the Plymouth and barnstormed south toward Wichita and the National Baseball Congress World Championship. After a game in Lawrence—ju
st west of Kansas City—Nick and the team walked back to the cars and found a tall, muscular man leaning against the Chrysler, a toothpick between his teeth and a battered suitcase at his feet. Satch broke into a wide smile.
“Are my eyes lying or is that Chet Brewer, the second greatest pitcher on the planet?” he asked nobody in particular.
“Might be,” the tall man said. “Although I’ve heard that Chet Brewer is the best pitcher on this planet or any other planet in the solar system.”
Satch glanced at the suitcase. “Are you coming with us to the tournament?”
“Depends.” Chet flicked his head at Mr. Churchill. “If he’s paying, I’m playing.”
“Oh, I’m paying,” Mr. Churchill said. “Satch promised me that if we picked you up, we’d go through that tournament like a hot knife through butter.”
Satch clapped Mr. Churchill on the shoulder. “I said it and I meant it. Those folks down in Wichita have never seen anything like us.”
After three more games in three more days, the team arrived in Wichita—tired yet exhilarated. They were riding a twelve-game winning streak that put their season record at sixty-six wins, fourteen losses, and four ties. Satch had closed his regular season with a typically brilliant stretch, and his final numbers were a 29–2 record with 321 strikeouts and only 16 walks. The numbers proved something Nick already knew—he had witnessed one of the most amazing stretches of pitching in baseball history. Maybe Satch hadn’t been facing major-league hitters, but that wasn’t his fault; he beat the men he was allowed to play.
The hotels in Wichita were segregated just like in McPherson, but this time Double Duty knew of a few boardinghouses where he and the other black players could sleep and eat. The morning of the first day of the tournament, the team met at registration, which was held in a giant agricultural hall downtown. As they waited in the long, slow-moving line, Nick scanned the program. According to the opening section this was going to be the most diverse tournament ever held in the United States—or maybe anywhere. There were thirty-four teams from twenty-four states, including four all-black teams, a team of Japanese players from California, and an Indian team from Wewoka, Oklahoma. There was even a team made up entirely of men from one family: the ten Stanczak brothers of Illinois.
When the team reached the front of the line, a man popped up from behind the desk, an unnaturally wide smile on his face. He stepped forward and pumped Mr. Churchill’s hand.
“Hap Dumont,” he said. “I’m the one who put this little shindig together.”
“Glad to meet you,” Mr. Churchill said. “How do we sign up?”
Hap’s smile shrank a few inches. “Well, there are a few men who want to have a little chat with you first.”
“What kind of chat?” Mr. Churchill asked.
Hap glanced over his shoulder instead of answering, and three men dressed in suits marched up to the desk. They weren’t smiling.
“This is Dan Winters, a member of our board,” Hap said, nodding his head at the shortest man. “And the other two gentlemen manage teams in the tournament.”
Mr. Churchill glanced at the three men and then looked back at Hap. “Is there a problem?”
“Maybe,” Hap said. “These men have raised some objections to the idea of an integrated team playing in the tournament.”
“It isn’t just us,” Dan said. His voice was a low growl. “A lot of people don’t think that black folks and white folks should be competing for the same prize.”
“That’s nonsense,” Mr. Churchill said brusquely. “You’ve got a bunch of black teams and a team filled with Japanese. Why aren’t they a problem?”
“Because they aren’t integrated,” Dan said.
Mr. Churchill folded his arms across his chest and glared at Hap. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You begged my team to come all the way down here from North Dakota, and now that we show up you say that we can’t play?”
“These gentlemen aren’t representing my point of view,” Hap said. “I want you to play. But they also have rights.”
“We might be willing to consider a compromise,” one of the other men in suits said. “We’ll let everyone on your team play except for him and him and him.”
The man’s finger moved from Satchel to Double Duty to Chet, who together gave Mr. Churchill a matching set of bemused looks.
“Why not them?” Mr. Churchill asked.
The man opened his mouth to answer, but Satch cut him off. “I’ll tell you why,” he said. “The man don’t object to playing against black folks. He just wants to win and thinks he won’t have a chance if we’re playing.”
“And he’s right,” Double Duty said quietly.
Nick expected the three men to object, but they just shrugged. “Those boys could play in the big leagues,” one of the managers said. “And this is a semipro tournament.”
“It ain’t my fault that they won’t let me play big-league ball,” Satch said. “So until they change the rules and the New York Yankees give me a call, I’m semipro. And that’s a fact.”
Dan ignored him and looked at Hap. “There are several teams that are prepared to pull out of the tournament if they play.” He flicked his head at the two men standing beside him. “Including theirs.”
Mr. Churchill looked at the third man in a suit, who hadn’t said anything yet. “Where are you from?” he asked.
“Fort Smith, Arkansas,” the man said in a low drawl.
Mr. Churchill snorted. “If you think anybody in this town is going to shed a tear because they can’t watch some team from chicken country, you’re crazy.” As the man stiffened, Mr. Churchill shifted his gaze to Hap. “You know the drill,” he said. “My team will get you the gate because people want to see if my boys are as good as advertised. If the great Satchel Paige really could be a big-league pitcher. That’s why you paid us the appearance fee and that’s why you’re going to keep us in the tournament, even if it means losing a team from the teeming metropolis of Fort Smith, Arkansas.”
Everyone stared at Hap—Satch, Mr. Churchill, the rest of the team, and the three fuming men in suits. After a very long moment Hap reached down and pushed a piece of paper across the desk to Mr. Churchill.
“Sign here,” he said. “First game is tomorrow.”
That game turned out to be against the ten Stanczak brothers, who looked so similar that when they ran onto the field Nick felt like he was watching a funny cartoon. Satch was the starting pitcher, and he gave up two ugly runs in the third on a rare throwing error by Joe Desiderato. The team was losing 3–2 in the seventh and the crowd was buzzing with the possibility of an upset, but Bismarck rallied for four runs and won 6–4.
After the game Nick walked past a thick pack of reporters who were interviewing Julius Stanczak, and he overheard someone ask whether Satch had been throwing hard. Julius’s laugh boomed over the sound of flashing bulbs and chatter from the players still on the field. “Throwing hard?” he asked incredulously. “I saw Double Duty put a steak in his glove so Satch wouldn’t take his hand clean off. So, yeah . . . I’d say he was throwing plenty hard.”
Chet Brewer started the second game, which was against a team from Missouri, and in the sixth inning he uncharacteristically walked the bases loaded with Bismarck leading by just one run. Satch entered in relief and struck out the side, and the team went on to win 8–4. Games three and four were against the Wichita Watermen—the hometown team—and a team from Shelby, North Carolina. Satch dominated in the first game, aiding his cause by driving in two runs, and Brewer pitched a two-hitter in the second.
The fifth game was against the Duncan Cementers from Oklahoma. They were a brutish team with sluggers up and down the lineup, and to that point in the tournament they had been averaging the stunning total of thirteen runs per game. Mr. Churchill sent Satch to the mound, and he poured cold water on the Cementers’ hot bats, striking out sixteen batters in a 3–1 victory. When the team poured into the small locker room beneath the stands after the g
ame, Mr. Churchill clambered onto a chair and cupped his hands to his mouth.
“That’s five wins and five thousand dollars!” he shouted to the cheers of the players. “Just two more and we win the whole darned thing!”
Nick watched from the corner, exhilarated yet also drained. He had spent almost every waking hour over the previous two weeks watching baseball—so much, in fact, that for the first time in his life he sometimes found his attention wandering during the late innings of lopsided games. When Bismarck wasn’t playing, his father was scouting the other teams, and Nick had spent days perched next to him behind home plate as his father made careful notes in his little moleskin book. They almost never talked. Nick nevertheless liked the feeling of sitting together, and he actually didn’t mind the silence. It was easier to enjoy the rhythms of baseball when you were quiet.
Nick was therefore surprised when late in one of the games they were scouting—an error-ridden slugfest between two mediocre teams—his father turned to him.
“The pitcher’s tipping,” he said gruffly. “Can you spot it?”
Nick was quiet as he watched the next four pitches. He looked for anything unusual—a flare of the glove, a finger pointing toward the sky, a double clutch during the stretch.
“I think he wiggles his shoulders before a curveball,” Nick finally said. “Kind of like a shrug.”
His father nodded. “Yeah. Do you know why?”
“Maybe he’s reminding himself to stay on top of it,” Nick said. “Or maybe his shoulder is tight and he’s trying to get it loose.”
“It’s because he doesn’t trust his curve,” his father said. “But he knows they’re sitting fastball so he has to try.”
Nick nodded. That made sense. They watched another few pitches in silence, and then Nick glanced at his father out of the corner of his eye.
“Satch told me how he reads batters,” he said.
His father kept staring at the pitcher. “Yeah?”
