Bat 6

by Virginia Euwer Wolff

  I had once long ago thought maybe I could even be Most Valuable Player for our year. That was conceited of me, but I confess it did enter into my mind. Because I just loved playing ball, it felt so good when it went good. Not just when I was striking people out. Not just that. It was even more fun when the other team would have maybe a runner on first and their next batter up hit a long drive into right field, and I’d go over between third and home because the runner might get to third or she might even try for home but if I was there to catch the throw I could get her out. I don’t mean I wanted to take away the job of Darlene or Audrey on that play, but the truth is, you never know just how the throw will go.

  And that’s what kept my interest. Like some people like frogs or stamp collecting or something like that. I just loved playing ball.

  Here is the bad thing that happened and I thought I understood it but I didn’t. I should of caught on. It happened one morning before school and I promised God I would keep it a secret. I just didn’t catch on. Then.

  Even though it was cold and gray, me and Shazam was walking out to throw a ball around between the stump and the lightning tree, and Nob and Ruby Shimatsu’s little boy went running past, wearing a red sweater, tagging after Toby whose mother brought them to school that day. Shazam she took a look at that little 1st grade boy and she said to me, “Hey, there’s a Jap. Right in this school.”

  I told her we can’t say that word at our school. And besides, I point out to her Billy Shimatsu is just a little boy. Only 6 years old, he couldn’t hurt anybody even if he wanted to.

  “Don’t you remember Pearl Harbor?” Shazam says to me. She said it very patriotic, accusing me for not remembering Pearl Harbor, which I admit I did not remember all the time. It was something of our young childhood and it was all over and done with, thank the good Lord above.

  “That was way back in the war,” I reminded her. “There ain’t a war on anymore, not for a long time.”

  “I don’t want to go to school with Japs,” she goes on like I didn’t say anything.

  I tell her Billy was born in the U.S.A. just like we were. I tell her Beautiful Hair’s sister has baby-sat him before. He was just a little boy like others.

  “Maybe I’ll quit this school if they have Japs,” she says.

  I knew for a fact this was a cockeyed thing to say. Shazam was here with her grandmother for there wasn’t a single nother place to go with her own mother not on her feet yet.

  I said to her what about playing on our Bat 6 team, and her mouth gets sideways and lipped in.

  I backed up about five steps and I toss her the ball and she tosses it back. We do that a few times, each time backing up a few more steps till I was almost at the blackberry tangle, and we toss the ball till the bell rings. I wanted Shazam to cool off about little Billy Shimatsu.

  When the bell rang, we went slow toward the door, and I talked to her in a low voice. I tell her it’s a rule of our life, we can’t say that word she said, we’d get punished bad. And I tell her she’s a great ball player. I tell her Coach would not let her play on the team if she said that word. And besides, God hears everything we say, and God don’t like it when we say bad words.

  Shazam looked at me with those mystery eyes and then she looked away, and I couldn’t tell if she couldn’t catch on, or if she didn’t want to catch on, or if she caught on but wanted me to think she didn’t catch on, or if she was a Martian come from Mars to Barlow by mistake. But her mouth did not look that dangerous way no more. We went inside to school.

  I didn’t tell nobody what Shazam said out there, so she could play in the Bat on May 28. God heard her, but I couldn’t help that, it was already done.

  Brita Marie’s harmless uncle from the other war and Toby’s idle relative that always sat on the Barlow Store porch with him, plus the gimpy-legged dog that sat alongside them, the whole lot of them moved inside even before the time of the World Series.

  It looked like a cold winter ahead.

  Shazam, center field

  I try to remember those 7 times I keep seeing the fire dream my mom in that dress screaming the bombing. The 6 times too. Audrey says come on Shazam whats 7 X 8 I cant remember how to do it there is those bad bombers. Whats 7 X 6 Shazam them bad people bombing the harbor.

  Shadean, Daisy, and Vernell

  Shadean, pitcher

  My mom and dad started taking me to the Bat 6 game when I was in diapers.

  I said to myself at the very beginning of 6th grade, This might be the best year of my life. We live near the school and I had watched the big girls having their practices after school for many years. I had wanted to pitch our Bat 6 as long as my memory goes back to. And now I was getting to. Tootie and me had very good signals, we quizzed them to each other in notes in school and Mrs. Porter didn’t catch us.

  The Bat tradition is such an old one. Way back in the 1800s some pioneers came on the Oregon Trail and the first place they settled was down at the Barlow area. But things didn’t run smooth among the men, they disagreed about the road, then they disagreed about the sewer, then they disagreed about the church, and there was too much arguing all around. So one group picked up with their families and moved farther up the creek till they ended up here on the Ridge. And then one of the McHenry boys shot a bear right on the ridge, so they named it that. You can still see the bearskin hanging on the wall in the back of McHenrys’ Store, right above the desk, beside the pictures of all the McHenrys that have run the store and fought in both wars. So we live on Bear Creek Ridge, 14 and ⅔ miles up the creek from the first town which is Barlow, named after the Barlow Road, and that was named after Sam Barlow, a pioneer.

  And the men of the different towns went on not talking to each other. They didn’t even ride their horses down there to trade or anything.

  So the ladies decided enough was enough, they wanted peace between the 2 towns. After a bad winter they arranged a ball game in the spring. They agreed to use alder branches and a leather ball, and the ladies made teams to play against each other all in good fun. They thought, Well, the men can’t watch us playing our game for a whole afternoon and not say anything to one another, can they? And they arranged to take along baskets of food too. See, they were forcing the men to have a social.

  Guess what, they were right. That was in May of the year 1899. Not all at once in that same afternoon, but slowly the men began being friendly. By having their game all the ladies caused peace to break out.

  Doesn’t that show something?

  And one of the original ladies is still around. She played in that first game, her name is old Louella. She’s as you might say a hero for being so old and having her tragedies and coming to the game every year. She is very wrinkly. A brownish photograph of her in her old ballgame dress is in the trophy case. She was a Bear Creek Ridge girl but then she married a Barlow boy so she is an honor to both places. Then her husband died in the first war and her son died in the second one. Every year she comes to the game and sits in her rocking chair they bring along for her. She always cheers for both teams.

  So ever since then the girls of Barlow and the girls of the Ridge played a game in the spring. In the beginning it was girls and women, whoever wanted to play. Then it became only 6th-grade girls because that was all the farther their schools went up to in those olden days.

  And in those old times they didn’t have rules like ours. Not even regulation bats or anything modern.

  Even though the Ridge farmers got richer than the Barlow ones because of the better soil and less frost and closer water, the 2 towns stayed friendly in playing the game. There was hardly any bad feelings left by the time we got to 6th grade.

  I didn’t know I was going to end up telling the whole historical story. I didn’t mean to tell more than my share.

  By the time the big dogwood at the schoolhouse door had no leaves left, we knew we had to have more bats and balls, so we had a bake sale outside the Grange Hall on Election Day, and I was in charge of the money. We earn
ed $13.00, enough to buy three Spalding softballs, as well as three Wilson Champ bats. The big surprise was that Truman beat Dewey and he is our President again. My parents were happy but some were not.

  Mrs. Porter said I had to keep my mind on one thing mainly: to pitch more strikes than balls. This might seem too obvious. But it’s so important. My dad and me painted a strike zone target in the barn, and I practiced pitching to the corners of it.

  Tootie and I had worked and worked on this. Even the summer before. We’d go over to the school and pitch and catch for anyone who would join in. Sometimes we would find someone just hanging around McHenrys’ Store porch and they’d come over and try to hit my pitches. Grownups even. One day the minister from over at the church was at the store and Tootie just up and said to him did he want to come across the road and play with us. He put down the shoelaces he was buying and came with her. He helped chase some of the foul balls he hit, and once I struck him out with inside pitches. Then he went back to finish his grocery shopping.

  It was the very same summer Tootie discovered Aki and we got her on our team.

  Mr. Porter, our handsome assistant coach, told me I had good pitcher’s stuff. I said what did he mean and he said I concentrated quite good and I had different pitches, not all the same kind, and I had good endurance. In practices he kept wanting to have a runner — any runner — on third so as to make me pitch in all that nervousness. I did pretty good, too.

  And there was base stealing. We practiced over and over, second, third, and home plate, throwing to catch a base stealer. I think maybe we practiced this more than anything. Daisy and Kate and Tootie even begged people to come and practice with us. “You can steal bases so we get the practice.” They got some people to do it, Jerry McHenry and Piper and Darrell and Donald in our grade, but they lost interest quite easy and we had to bribe them with doing their lunch-table duties. Tootie and Kate and Daisy did not mind doing that.

  But Kate couldn’t come to practice on Tuesdays because that was her day to milk the cow. It was her father’s strict rule every child in their family had to milk one day. And in Kate’s only year to play the Bat, too.

  And Lorelei and Aki both had to miss practices because their fathers needed them in the orchard. Aki even got permission to miss whole days of school. Their orchard, being in so terrible condition from not being sprayed proper when the McHenrys were taking care of it and they couldn’t do everything at the same time, had poor little fruit and besides that, Aki’s father couldn’t afford to pay a lot of pickers. Her big brother Shig had to stay out of high school till the harvest was over. He only went to school on Mondays till the middle of October. The Mikamis had to sell their tractor when they went away, and Shig drove the McHenrys’ tractor that they were lending to them, up and down the orchard rows to pick up the full boxes of fruit and load them on the wagon to carry them to the truck that was the McHenrys’ also. Then one of the McHenry brothers drove the truck loaded with boxes of fruit to the packing house.

  Aki’s brother is so smart he doesn’t really need to go to school, I heard one of the teachers say at church, he could get his lessons in 2 seconds flat. It was just something I overheard.

  And then there was chicken pox. Daisy was the first one to get them. She must have brought them up from the Catholics down in River Bend where she goes to church. But Susannah probably brought them up here too, from her music lessons down there.

  It went right through the school.

  But we continued having our indoor drills after school anyway. And when it wasn’t raining, we had our practice games with whatever boys would play.

  The weather got wintery and nasty. We had early snow. Meaning I had to practice in the barn with the target on the wall. And my dad was so fussy about his shiny new John Deere tractor that was parked in there, I didn’t dare put a dent in it anywhere. He even polished that tractor, he was so in love with it.

  And then after the first snow we had bare roads for days and days. Mr. Porter went out running with us to strengthen our legs. “We don’t want to play the Bat with our tired winter legs, do we?” he said. The truth is that running along with Mr. Porter was fun, he is so handsome. Even with his arm partly gone from being in the war.

  Well, my mom and dad came back from the parents’ Bat 6 meeting all sad about how the farmers down there in Barlow got too much of their fruit frozen and how raggedy poor some of them are. Still, those parents did their part in volunteering for parent committees and voting on everything. It is just hard luck on them about the trees down there in the frost pocket.

  But we heard they had good luck too. They had a new girl that was a phenomenon. She came in on a Greyhound bus in time to go to 6th grade down at Barlow and she could hit anything, she could field anything. That’s what the people at the meeting told. They said she lived with her grandmother out by the gravel pit and because of this girl they were likely to take home the trophy that had been up here on the Ridge for 2 years.

  Well, we had our new girl too, but she was not actually new, she was back. Aki was so good to have, she was fun and she did her schoolwork excellent and she was super good at first base. And she was a hitter, too. Like Tootie said about Aki’s playing, “Hubba hubba ding ding.”

  I felt in my bones we were to have a great Bat 6. I felt it might turn out to be the best year of my life.

  I heard their pitcher down there at Barlow soaked her hands in pickle brine. I never heard of such a thing. I said to myself I wouldn’t do that for anything.

  Daisy, third base

  My name is Daisy. It never has been anything else.

  I hate being called Loose Lips, it was not anything I even understood way back then in 1st grade when Herby shouted out, and some of them called me that bad name ever since. No true friend would ever call me that. Nobody but Lorelei knew how many times I cried over it.

  Me and Lorelei got to be partners for the social studies countries, we chose Italy for it has many beautiful sculptures there. And gondolas, we would adore to ride in one and fall in love with the rowers. They sing songs.

  Lorelei’s father has scads of books on shelfs. Two of them are Italy books full of holy paintings and naked statues. So we went on the school bus to her house to study our report and her mother had such a good supper of chops from their sheep and mint jelly from their mint and apples. I ate so much my belly ached. Then when my dad came to their house to take me home, he would not even go inside their house because of Lorelei’s father. He sat in the driveway and honked the horn. He wouldn’t give an inch.

  I was so mad.

  My dad was in the war, I already told about that bad name I got called. That whole time my mom had us alone and he could get killed any moment. We did so many prayers for his life to be saved in the war and it came true, he came home all together, not torn apart like some men did.

  Well, Lorelei’s father he does not believe in no war so he had to go to a camp for those kind of people when wartime come. And my father said no man that wouldn’t fight for his country is a friend of his. He said you might as well be a traitor to your country if you wouldn’t do your manly duty overseas.

  Me and Lorelei were friends anyway, and I was so embarrassed about my dad.

  But my dad is so precious to me due to him being away for that long time. And I wanted to play extra good on May 28 for my father to see. I knew he wanted to be proud of me that day for all time to come.

  And for one other reason too I wanted to play extra good. I was thinking if our team would win, and everybody would be cheering and jumping up and down and hugging each other, everybody would be joyful and friendly even to those they didn’t know good.

  Well, my dad would get so happy and proud he would just all of a sudden be cheering and Lorelei’s dad would be cheering too, and my dad would accidentally speak to Lorelei’s dad, and the bad feelings would be gone, poof. Deep in my heart I wished this would happen.

  It would be like before, back in 1899, when they played the first Bat g
ame of all. The men started speaking to each other and let their grudges go.

  Lorelei and me were both different, due to her father and my religion that is Catholic, we go to church down at St. Mary’s way down at River Bend. I probably gave Lorelei the chicken pox. But then others got it too. It could of come with me from St. Mary’s where some kids had it, or it could of come with Susannah on her music-lesson day down there. I think I gave it to Vernell too because I shared my sandwich with her before I knew I had the pox. And she shared her chocolate milk with me like always. Poor Vernell, her mind has always wandered and then she got chicken pox and had to miss school when we learned how to multiply fractions and she was so mixed up about arithmetic anyway.

  I was almost sure we could win that game. I was glad to be playing third base, we practiced over and over again the drill of Daisy to Kate to Aki. If a Barlow hitter came to bat with a runner on first, if she hit in my territory I’d field it and send it to Kate as fast as I could, she’d put the runner out at second and then send it to Aki and Aki would put the runner out at first.

  How great it would be if we won because of something I did.

  My father would be so thrilled. So thrilled.

  He didn’t even know my mom traded Lorelei’s mom her ginger pear honey recipe for their chili recipe. He had been eating the chili of Lorelei’s family for 2 years and he didn’t know it. His own wife too. It just goes to show you, his resenting grudge was all in his mind.

  If the ball would come in my territory with the bases loaded and no outs. Daisy to Kate to Aki. It was so exciting to expect in the future.

  Mr. Porter was strict about everybody had to move on every pitch. “Nobody just stands there. Keep those Barlow players worried, keep our confidence up. They see us moving around, they know we mean business out there.” Well, I remembered. I remembered every time.