Ray & Me

by Dan Gutman

  This was all too much to absorb at once. Before this, I had never been seriously injured in my whole life. The worst thing that ever happened to me was that time in third grade when I ran into a tree chasing a Frisbee. But I never broke a bone. Never had to go to the emergency room. Never even had any stitches.

  On the table next to my bed was a stack of articles that had been clipped from magazines and newspapers.

  Nina Wallace

  “You’re famous, Butch!” my dad said.

  I was reading the article about myself when a doctor walked into the room. He was a tall African- American man, and he had a big smile on his face.

  “Doctor, he woke up!” my mother exclaimed.

  “I can see that!” the doctor said. “Like I told you; your son’s head is as hard as a rock! So this is the famous Joseph Stoshack, eh? It’s a pleasure to meet you awake.”

  The doctor shook my hand and told me his name was Louis Wright. He said he was a Yankees fan, like my dad.

  “Am I gonna be okay?” I asked him.

  “I’m not sure,” he replied. “Did you ever hear about the time Dizzy Dean got hit in the head by a ball?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “Dean was not exactly the smartest guy in the world,” Dr. Wright told me. “So after he was released from the hospital and it was clear that he wasn’t seriously hurt, one newspaper ran the headline: X-RAYS OF DEAN’S HEAD REVEAL NOTHING.”

  The doctor threw back his head and laughed. We all did.

  “Dr. Wright may have saved your life, Joey,” my mother said. “He’s one of the most respected brain surgeons in the country.”

  “Did you operate on my brain?” I asked.

  “No,” the doctor said. “We treated you with medication to reduce the swelling of your brain. And we put a pressure monitor on your skull to make sure we didn’t have to operate on your brain. We did stick a probe into your skull, though. That’s why we had to shave your head.”

  “Oh, man, I must look like a real dork!”

  “Joey!” Mom said. “You’re lucky to be alive!”

  “Your mother is right,” Dr. Wright told me. “In more severe brain injury cases where the brain swells, we have to remove part of the skull to relieve the pressure. Even then the patient doesn’t always survive.”

  I didn’t want to think about that. But I was grateful that I was in good hands.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Your mom was the real hero,” said Dr. Wright. “She knew exactly what to do. She made sure you weren’t gagging or choking or had your tongue blocking an airway to prevent you from breathing. Then she elevated your head and kept it stable in case there was a spinal injury. And of course, she got you to the hospital as quickly as possible.”

  “Any nurse knows to do that,” Mom said modestly.

  “But not all of them think of it in a crisis,” Dr. Wright said, “especially with their own child. Now, Joseph, I want to try a few simple tests to make sure your brain is functioning properly.”

  “Are you going to stick more electrodes into my skull?” I asked.

  “No, I just need to ask you a few questions. Let’s say you’re playing third base. There are runners on first and second. One out. The batter smacks a grounder to third. What do you do?”

  “That’s easy,” I said. “I glove the ball and step on third to force out the lead runner. If there’s time, I throw to second for the double play.”

  “Why not go for a triple play?” the doctor asked.

  “You said there was one out before the ball was hit,” I told him. “There can’t be a triple play.”

  “Very sharp,” Dr. Wright said. “What if you’re playing second base? Runner on first. One out. Grounder to your right.”

  “I scoop it up and flip the ball to the shortstop covering second,” I told him. “He throws to first to complete the double play.”

  “Good,” Dr. Wright said. “Now tell me this. Why is it quicker to run from first base to second than it is to run from second base to third?”

  He had me there. The distance between the bases is identical, of course. There was no reason why it should take longer or shorter to run between any two bases.

  “Uh, I don’t know,” I admitted.

  “Because there’s a short stop in the middle,” the doctor said, throwing back his head with laughter. “Get it? Short stop?”

  I got it. It was the oldest baseball joke in the book. How could I forget it?

  “You’ll be out of here in no time,” said Dr. Wright.

  “Will I be a hundred percent normal again?” I asked.

  “Yes, but do us all one favor, Joe.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Stick with shortstop,” he said. “You make a lousy pitcher.”

  4

  The Best Pitcher I Never Heard of

  I FELT LIKE I WAS ALL BETTER, BUT DR. WRIGHT INSISTED that I stay in the hospital for a few days so he could keep an eye on me. It was hard to sleep in that bed, and the food was terrible; but at least I had some visitors. A bunch of the guys on my team crowded into the room and had a great time making fun of my bald head. Instead of a get well card, they gave me the ball that hit me. Everybody signed it too. Nice!

  Just before visiting hours were over, the kid who hit the ball, Cameron Considine, showed up. He came with his parents. Cameron was all remorseful and apologetic, but I told him to forget about it. He didn’t mean to hit me. Accidents happen in sports.

  I’m not sure I convinced him that it wasn’t his fault. He was still quiet and kept his head down when he left.

  There was nothing good on TV, so I started looking through those articles my mom had clipped from the newspapers. It turns out I wasn’t the only pitcher to get hurt by a batted ball. In 2005, near Chicago, a kid named Bill Kalant was pitching, and he got hit in the head by a line drive. He was in a coma for two weeks, just like me. In 2006, a 12-year-old New Jersey boy named Steven Domalewski got hit in the chest with a ball, and it stopped his heart for a while. Domalewski lived; but his brain was damaged, and he’s paralyzed.

  In 2003, a pitcher in Montana named Brandon Patch died after getting hit in the head by a batted ball. The same thing happened in 2007 to a minor-league first base coach in Arkansas. In fact, between 1991 and 2001, 17 baseball players were killed by batted balls. So I was lucky.

  What happened to these other guys apparently had sparked a big discussion about metal baseball bats. Back in the old days, bats were only made out of wood, of course. Aluminum and other metal bats started showing up in the 1970s. They don’t break as easily as wood bats, and they have a bigger sweet spot. They’re also lighter, so you can swing them faster. And if you swing a bat faster, you can hit the ball harder. Everybody knows that.

  Because of what happened to kids like me, some leagues have switched back to wooden bats. In 2007, North Dakota banned metal bats at high school games entirely.

  I was reading about all this stuff when I noticed somebody standing at the door. I looked up and saw my coach, Flip Valentini. He had his hat in one hand and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in the other. Chunky Monkey.

  “I promised you I’d get you ice cream if you pitched…” Flip began. He put his hat down on a chair, and then he started to cry.

  It was a little weird. I’m not used to grown-ups crying, especially guys like Flip. I didn’t know how to react. I guess Flip took what happened to me harder than anyone. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. It took him a while to calm down and ask me how I was feeling.

  “Not bad,” I said, “but my shoulder is sore, and I can’t sleep in this bed. Last night I had a dream that I was hit in the head with a pitch, and then I woke up in the hospital. It was weird.”

  “After what you been through, it sounds normal to me,” Flip said.

  “How’s the team doing?” I asked him.

  “Fuhgetaboutit. We stink without you, Stosh.”

  “Ah, you’re just saying that to make me feel
better.”

  “It was my fault,” Flip told me. “I shoulda listened when you said you didn’t feel good. I shouldn’t put any kid on the field unless he’s a hundred percent.”

  “Hey, I should’ve caught that ball,” I told him. “Then none of this would have happened.”

  Flip told me that I was putting my glove up when the ball hit me. It was just coming at me too fast to react in time.

  I told him about the metal bat controversy, but he knew all about it.

  “If the kid hit that ball with wood, you woulda had a fraction of a second more to react,” Flip said. “They gotta get rid of all this new stuff—designated hitters, fake grass, domed stadiums, and fake bats. That ain’t baseball.”

  “The doctor told me if Cameron hit the ball an eighth of an inch up or down on the bat, I might have lost an eye,” I told Flip.

  “It’s a game of inches,” Flip said. “That’s what I always say. If you lost an eye, I don’t know what I woulda done. Stosh, you’re like a son to me.”

  Flip wiped his eyes again.

  “I’m gonna take some time off,” I told him. “I mean, before I play ball again.”

  “Don’t do that,” Flip said, and then he stopped himself. “Ah, don’t listen to me. Grown-ups ain’t always right. Especially old fools like me. Do what you think is right.”

  I had to laugh. I wasn’t sure if I should listen to Flip when he told me what to do or listen to him when he told me not to listen to him when he told me what to do.

  “Anything you say, Flip,” I said.

  He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his wallet. I thought he was going to give me some money, but instead he took out a small baseball card.

  “I wanna show you somethin’,” he said, putting the card on my bed.

  I didn’t pick it up. I know what happens when I pick up a baseball card. In a few seconds, I get this tingling feeling in my fingertips. The feeling moves through my hand, up my arm, and over my whole body. The next thing I know, I’m in a different place and a different time period—the year on the card.

  I leaned forward to look at the card. It looked really old. Because the word “Yankees” was in quotation marks, I figured that it must have been printed shortly after the Yankees got their name.

  “Carl Mays,” Flip said, after seeing the puzzled look on my face. “He played mostly with the Red Sox and the Yankees way back, almost a hundred years ago now.”

  “Never heard of him,” I said.

  “That’s too bad,” Flip told me. “He was a great pitcher. Good sinking fastball.”

  Flip opened up the ice cream and took two spoons out of his pocket so we could share. While we ate, he rattled off Carl Mays’s numbers.

  Carl Mays

  Library of Congress

  The guy had a lifetime record of 208-126, so he won nearly twice as many games as he lost. And his ERA. was just 2.92. That’s impressive. In 1921, he was 27-9 and led the American League in wins, winning percentage, games pitched, and innings pitched. He won 20 games in five seasons. He pitched 31 straight innings in the World Series without walking a batter. He pitched 30 complete games, in two seasons. One day, he won both games of a doubleheader.

  Wow. Carl Mays was phenomenal. I thought I knew a lot about baseball history, but Flip has forgotten more than I’ll ever know.

  “Mays was a great hitter too,” Flip added. “Hit .343 one year.”

  “Is he in the Hall of Fame?” I asked. He certainly had Hall of Fame statistics. But I thought I knew the names of all the Hall of Famers, and I’d never heard of Carl Mays.

  “Nope,” Flip replied.

  “Why not?”

  “There was this one little problem with Carl Mays,” Flip said.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “Well, one day in 1920, when he was with the Yankees, he killed a man.”

  5

  The Ultimate Sacrifice

  WOW. I KNEW THE YANKEE LINEUP IN THE 1920S WAS called “Murderers’ Row.” But I never knew that one of the Yanks actually killed somebody.

  Flip lowered his voice to a whisper, like he was telling me a secret.

  “Stosh, there’ve been more than 33 million pitches thrown in major-league history,” Flip said. “I figured it out on a calculator. But only one of ’em ever killed a guy.”

  “Who was it?” I asked.

  “He played for the Cleveland Indians,” Flip told me. “His name was Ray Chapman. Chappie, they called him.”

  “I never heard of him either.”

  “Hardly anybody remembers him,” Flip said. “It was August 16, 1920. The Yankees were playing Cleveland—”

  The door suddenly opened and Doctor Wright came in. He was carrying a clipboard. Flip stopped in the middle of his sentence.

  “It’s okay,” the doctor said. “I know all about Joseph’s…gift.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  I didn’t like the idea of every Tom, Dick, and Harry knowing I could travel through time with baseball cards. People might think I was some kind of freak.

  “Your mother told me,” said Dr. Wright.

  “What?!”

  “Now, don’t be mad at her, Joseph,” he said. “As your doctor, it’s important for me to know any abnormalities having to do with your brain functioning.”

  Dr. Wright told me that he didn’t believe my mother at first. The idea of somebody traveling through time sounded crazy. And using a baseball card as a time machine? That’s just nuts. Science fiction stuff.

  “Your mother is pretty convincing,” Dr. Wright said.

  Then he turned to Flip and handed him the clipboard, looking a little embarrassed. I thought it had some important medical information on it, but the paper was blank.

  “Mr. Valentini,” Dr. Wright continued, “I heard you were visiting Joseph, and I wanted to meet you. I’m sure you hate this, but my son is ten years old and he’ll be furious with me if I didn’t ask you for your autograph.”

  “Fuhgetaboutit,” Flip said as he took the pen and scrawled his name on the paper. “You a baseball fan, Doc?”

  “Oh, a big fan!”

  “Then pull up a chair,” Flip told Dr. Wright. “You ever hear of a fella named Ray Chapman?”

  “That guy on the Indians who died?” asked the doctor. “Sure. As a brain surgeon, I take special interest in cases like that.”

  Dr. Wright said he was supposed to be visiting other patients, but he could spare a few minutes. He brought a chair over to the side of my bed. I dug into the Chunky Monkey while Flip told the story.

  “It was a real tight pennant race between the Yankees, the Indians, and the White Sox in 1920,” Flip told us. “Cleveland was in first place, but just barely. It was August, so the season was almost over. The Yankees and the Indians were playing at the Polo Grounds in New York.”

  The Polo Grounds. I knew it like I know my name. I met the legendary Jim Thorpe at the Polo Grounds in 1913. But that’s a story for another day.

  “Wait a minute,” Dr. Wright interrupted. “Why would the Yankees be playing at the Polo Grounds? That was where the New York Giants played, and they were in the National League. Why didn’t the Yankees play at Yankee Stadium?”

  “Yankee Stadium didn’t open until 1923,” Flip said.

  “Aha. Go on.”

  “Mays was a submarine sinker baller,” Flip said. “He threw underhand and hard. I saw him pitch when I was a little kid. They used to call him Sub.”

  “Was he wild?” I asked. “Is that why he hit Chapman?”

  “Nah,” Flip said. “Just the opposite. Mays had great control. Hardly ever walked anybody. But he hit a lot of guys. He had a reputation as a beanballer. A headhunter.”

  “Was he trying to hit Chapman on purpose?” asked Dr. Wright.

  “I don’t think so,” Flip told us. “The Indians had a three-run lead. Chapman led off the fifth inning. The third pitch from Mays was way inside. Chapman didn’t try to get out of the way. He never move
d. Bang, right in the left temple.”

  I touched my left temple. It was exactly where the ball hit me.

  “No batting helmet?” I asked.

  “Not in 1920,” Flip said.

  “That would do it,” said Dr. Wright. “A fastball could very easily fracture a man’s skull. Do you know if they performed an operation on Chapman?”

  “I dunno,” Flip said. “But he didn’t make it through the night. He died at the hospital.”

  “What they knew about head trauma was very limited in 1920,” Dr. Wright told us. “If something like that happened today, the patient almost certainly would live.”

  Flip nodded. “Ray Chapman died, and Mays—well, part of him died too. For the rest of his life, nobody cared about his pitching. People only knew him for one thing—throwing the pitch that killed a guy. It kept him out of the Hall of Fame, if you ask me.”

  “Was Ray Chapman any good?” I asked.

  “Oh, yeah!” Flip said. “Chappie coulda been a Hall of Famer himself. “Flashy shortstop. He could turn the double play. Not a lot of power, but he hit over .300 three times. And fast? He just exploded out of the batter’s box. Stole 52 bases one year. In 1918, he led the American League in runs scored and walks. Great bunter too. He led the league in sacrifices three times.”

  “It could be said that he made the ultimate sacrifice,” said Dr. Wright.

  “You could say that,” Flip said. “Cleveland won the game by that one run.”

  “Talk about taking one for the team,” Dr. Wright said sadly.

  “Ray Chapman was 29 when he died,” Flip said. “He was in his prime.”

  “What a sad story,” Dr. Wright said, shaking his head. “That one pitch ended a man’s life and ruined the life of another man. One pitch. One little mistake. If the ball had hit him anywhere but the temple, I’m sure he would have lived.”

  Ray Chapman

  National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, NY