Painting the Corners

by Bob Weintraub

  On their short honeymoon, she told Bob that with the athletic ability they shared, she was certain they’d have a son who would play baseball in the Major Leagues. He smiled at her. “Rosie, honey,” he said — he was the only one who called her “Rosie,” and he did it all the time — “if they ever have a big league for gals, there’s no reason we shouldn’t have both a son and a daughter playing up there.”

  * * *

  Bob’s brothers stayed on to work the farm after his death, and his father came by often to make sure everything was okay. The Harrison family loved Roselynn and had no doubt that a girl with her beauty would find another husband in time. They hoped it would be someone who lived near Knoxville so they’d be able to see her and Bobby Lee as often as they liked.

  Roselynn grieved for her husband, but cried only when she was alone. For several months she was afraid to let Bobby Lee out of her sight, and insisted that he play inside the house when she had to be there alone. As tenderly as they could, Bob’s family helped her get over the feeling that harm would come to her son also.

  About a year after Bob’s death, as spring slowly moved in on what had been a severely cold winter, Roselynn received a letter from Etta Miller, her closest friend on the Memphis softball team and maid of honor at her wedding. Etta informed her that a southern league for women baseball players was being formed, to play within a five-state area, and that Memphis was going to have a franchise. She had already learned, she wrote, that home games were being scheduled for the city’s minor league park whenever the Gulls were playing on the road. The players would be chaperoned while outside of Memphis, she added, and wouldn’t have to travel for more than a week at a time. Etta intended to go to the team tryouts during the third week in April and urged Roselynn to join her there.

  Bob’s parents were enthusiastic about Roselynn being part of the team if she was still good enough to make it. Bobby Lee, almost four, could stay with them for the summer. Bob’s mother was certain that she could find plenty of things to keep her grandson busy. She had even gone to an old toy chest and taken out the small baseball glove they had given Bob when he was just a little older than Bobby Lee. Roselynn’s father said she was welcome to use her old room back in Memphis and kidded her about his being able to get a good meal for a change. For the next few weeks, she did a lot of hard running each day and threw hundreds of pitches to Bob’s brothers.

  The tryouts were long and difficult, but Roselynn knew before the end of the eight days of workouts that she would be playing for the Memphis Mudders. She was one of the better hitters among the group of over a hundred women who checked in on the first day in full or partial uniforms of every description. Some wore spikes, while others were content to perform in sneakers instead of making a risky purchase that might not pay dividends. Roselynn’s strong desire to play communicated itself to the surly four-man coaching staff that seemed to take pleasure in gloating over the lack of ability so many players showed during practice games. At the end of each workout, a group of aspiring players were thanked for their interest and told that they would no longer be needed.

  On the final day of practice, Etta was one of the last ones chosen for the team. She had been concerned that her “pleasingly plump” body and general lack of speed would be her undoing, but her ability to scoop balls out of the dirt at first base worked in her favor. She ran over to Roselynn after the final cuts and gave her a big hug. “Now you’ve got someone you can share all that bubble gum with,” she said. They both laughed, happy to have each other’s company.

  The Memphis Mudders were good, and Roselynn enjoyed the competition with the other teams in the league. The season began on May 15th and ended on the first Sunday in September. Roselynn played the outfield and pitched every fourth or fifth game. The Mudders finished second in their division the first year, then ran away with the division championship the following season and swept the playoff series with the Charlotte Wonders. Roselynn easily captured the league’s Most Valuable Player award that year and had a feature article written about her in the country’s most popular sports magazine. The accompanying picture showed her standing in the outfield in a typical pose, another bubble she had blown threatening to burst.

  During the off-season that followed her team’s championship performance, Roselynn met Sam Whitman, an insurance agent who had his own office in Tileston, a small town about halfway between Plainfield and Knoxville. The bank holding Roselynn’s mortgage had suggested that she increase the coverage on the farmhouse, which Bob’s brothers had expanded, and recommended Whitman to her.

  Roselynn made an appointment to see him the following Monday morning. She arrived a few minutes early and was pleased that Whitman didn’t keep her waiting. When he got up from behind his desk to shake hands with her, Roselynn could see that he was about an inch shorter than her and heavier around the waist than she liked a man to be. He had the soft look of someone who handled paperwork easily and hired others for whatever physical work had to be done. But Whitman was a pleasant-looking man whose best feature was the inviting twinkle in his blue eyes. Although his sandy-colored hair was obviously thinning, it was doing so evenly. No attention-getting bald spot had yet emerged. Roselynn found out later that he was 45 years old.

  Whitman had lost his wife to tuberculosis almost five years earlier — just a week before Christmas, he told Roselynn sadly — and had been raising his children alone since then. Sarah was twelve and Neal had just turned nine.

  Sam liked Roselynn from the start, and once he became familiar with her own situation, began courting her eagerly. He took her and Bobby Lee on drives with his own children on Sundays, and occasionally dropped by the farm on a weekday evening to have coffee and talk with her. Roselynn could see, from the size and location of his brick home and the new DeSoto he drove, that Sam was a wealthy man.

  On a Sunday in February, Sam and Roselynn were able to be alone together and enjoyed the luncheon buffet in the dining room of the new Roosevelt Hotel in Knoxville. Despite the fact that the room was crowded most of the time, he reached over and held her hand in his on several occasions. It was the first time he had shown his affection for her in public. During the ride home, after Sam described the business boom he expected the end of the war to bring, Roselynn told him that she would be leaving for Memphis in the middle of April to start preparing for the new baseball season.

  Several days later, Sam drove out to the Harrison farm in the middle of the afternoon and asked Roselynn to marry him. He wanted her to give up baseball and move into his Tileston home. Although she had suspected that the proposal would come at some time, Roselynn hadn’t allowed herself to think about what her answer would be. She felt that the spontaneity of the moment would guide her, but found instead that all she could do was promise Sam an answer by the weekend.

  It was a difficult decision to make. Roselynn knew how much she would miss Bobby Lee if she were away again, but had to admit that he did wonderfully during those months in the care of his uncles and grandparents. She had a strong desire to play another season and prove again that she belonged on the list of female all-stars, but was concerned about the future of the league. Roselynn figured that the return of the major-league veterans from military service would affect the turnout of fans in the women’s league significantly, hurting all the players whose earnings were based entirely on attendance at the games. She was afraid that the chain of events could ruin the team owners financially and force them to shut down operations long before the season was over. Her foremost concern, however, was Bobby Lee’s opportunity to continue his education after high school. Roselynn knew that Sam could provide that security. She convinced herself that she felt good enough about him to accept his proposal.

  Roselynn wrote to Etta, giving her the news, and asked her to be maid of honor again at the wedding in June. At first, Etta said she’d be there if the Mudders gave her the time off. But when its general manager refused to let her go even though Memphis had become one of the two wo
rst clubs in the division, she quit.

  “The season’s been no fun at all without you around,” she told Roselynn when she got off the train in Knoxville. “I’m just as happy they gave me a reason to quit. Now I can stay home, find myself a husband, and make babies.” They hugged each other a long time.

  Roselynn didn’t sell the farm after the wedding. Instead, she gave it to Bob’s brothers, who wanted to stay on, with the condition that there would always be room there for Bobby Lee if that’s what he chose.

  * * *

  The first ten years of Roselynn’s marriage to Sam went by quickly. His business success continued, with the establishment of a second and larger office in Knoxville. She assumed the role of the gracious hostess at the parties that Sam liked to throw for the wealthy Tennessee businessmen whose insurance matters he was handling. Sarah went off to the state university in Chattanooga, joined eighteen other debutantes at a ball in their honor just after graduating, and settled into her father’s Knoxville office with the promise of being put in charge after two years of training.

  Neal, paunchy like his father, had no athletic ability. The beard he had grown made his face look gaunt and gave him a stern appearance that belied his real personality. At home, he had a favorite leather wingchair in the den, and spent most of his spare time reading history. He was mainly interested in the biographies of famous world leaders.

  Roselynn told Sam that she was sure Neal would go on to teach history in high school or college, and probably would have been right if Sam had been content to continue accumulating his wealth on a steady basis. But he invested heavily in several real estate deals put together by some of his newer, brassier acquaintances, and found himself overextended when the ventures collapsed. A month after Neal completed his sophomore year at Ohio State University and returned home for a lazy summer, he left Roselynn at the country club one afternoon to pick up a book at home. The sound of a car engine inside the garage led him to his father, lying down in the back seat of the Cadillac, dead from carbon monoxide poisoning.

  * * *

  Bobby Lee had one year left in high school when Sam took his own life. By then, he could look back on eight years of having played baseball whenever he could find anyone who would pitch or hit ground balls to him, or just play catch with him. Roselynn had instructed him from the time he showed an interest in the game, and she made certain that he learned how to do everything right. Often, when his friends begged off or didn’t want to be on a ball field under a hot sun, Bobby Lee got his mother to play with him.

  When her son was twelve, Roselynn gave him the glove his father had used when he played for the Gulls. She had kept it in perfect condition with an annual application of neat’s-foot oil, wrapping it tightly around a baseball the rest of the time. That same year she showed Bobby Lee the scrapbook that recorded the highlights of her husband’s short minor league career, and the ones she put together about herself, long after leaving the Mudders. She had spent many nostalgic evenings sorting through a number of large envelopes of newspaper stories, pictures, and box scores she clipped and saved during her two seasons in the league. That was the year, of course, that Bobby Lee decided he wanted to be a major-league ballplayer.

  Sam’s will was read to the family about three weeks after his death. By then, Roselynn was aware of the extent of the financial reversals that had virtually wiped out their entire savings. Still, she was unprepared for the final decisions Sam had made just days before killing himself. He knew the business would be able to survive, and left it to Sarah and Neal as equal partners. The house was willed to Roselynn, Sarah, and Neal, with the provision that each had a lifetime interest in it while they were all alive. However, he stipulated that as soon as one of the three passed away, the survivors would own the house in two equal shares. Roselynn realized that the will assured her of a roof over her head in Tileston the rest of her life, if she wanted it. She also understood that in all probability she would have no financial interest in the house to pass along to Bobby Lee when she died.

  Sam also left the Cadillac to Neal and Sarah, and gave the five-year-old Chevrolet to his wife. Bobby Lee’s name was mentioned only once in the will, granted the right by his stepfather to live in the house as long as Roselynn was there. When the lawyer finished reading the document and looked up, he was momentarily nonplussed at seeing the large bubble Roselynn had blown and was about to pull back into her mouth. She said nothing to anyone that conveyed either the pain or disappointment she felt over what Sam had done.

  Roselynn used Sam’s business contacts to find herself another secretarial position, this time in a plant that produced cardboard boxes. She easily recaptured her old skills, and her good looks and personality were well received in the office.

  Bobby Lee completed his final year of high school, working most afternoons and weekends in a hardware store. He was the captain on the baseball team, leading it to an 18-3 record and into the semi-finals of the State tournament. Despite the fact that Tileston was eliminated at that point, Bobby Lee showed enough talent to have scouts for three major-league teams approach him.

  During his senior year, Bobby Lee had taken all the steps necessary to go on with his education, and had been accepted at two colleges. Each had an excellent baseball program and offered athletic scholarships. But shortly before his high school’s graduation exercises in June, he told his mother that he wanted to defer his studies for a while and start playing minor league baseball right away. Roselynn knew that he was good enough to make it. When Bobby Lee promised that he would work for a degree by taking courses in the off-season, she gave him her blessing.

  * * *

  Roselynn always did everything she could to be both a friend and a mother to Sarah and Neal, even though she was only 26 when she married their father. Her first two years in the Tileston house were the most difficult as she tried to overcome the hostility that the children, especially Sarah, showed toward her. Roselynn understood that their conduct simply reflected the feeling they had that she could never replace their real mother. She recalled how jealous and resentful she had been herself, as a teenager, when her father occasionally dated another woman. It was a time when she hoped that he wouldn’t marry again and force her to have to share his affection with someone else.

  Eventually, Sarah and Neal saw that Sam’s happiness had been rekindled. They also found that Roselynn could be trusted to keep their secrets and relied upon to support them in disagreements with Sam when she felt they were right. Roselynn never expected them to call her by anything but her name, and that’s what she got. Still, she knew she had gained their respect, and succeeded to some degree — enough to please her — in getting them to think of her as their mother.

  But although Roselynn derived a good deal of pleasure from her relationship with Sam’s children, she could see that Sarah and Neal refused to accept Bobby Lee in the same familial way. It bothered her that Neal, who was only three years older than her son, ignored him most of the time and preferred being alone to joining him in some leisure activity. It didn’t seem to matter that Neal had few other friends. Roselynn knew that Bobby Lee wasn’t cut out for the insurance business, in the event he didn’t succeed in baseball, but it disturbed her to realize that Sarah and Neal wouldn’t welcome him into the office.

  * * *

  Bobby Lee’s first three years of minor league experience were good ones. He received a small bonus to sign with the Pittsburgh Pirates, and was making steady progress in that organization. He played shortstop for the club’s Single-A team in Marriott, Georgia, but the decision was made to try and convert him to an outfielder when he was moved up to Double-A the following year and assigned to Wheeling, West Virginia. The experiment was a success, and Bobby Lee’s offensive and defensive statistics were a pleasant surprise to the organization. He returned to Wheeling for a second season, but was assured a promotion to the Pirates’ top farm club in Scranton at the midway point of the schedule if he continued his outstanding progress.
>
  Everything seemed to go right for Bobby Lee from Opening Day. In the team’s first game, he took the lead in home runs and runs batted in and kept expanding it during the first 45 games of the schedule. He was hitting .361 and leading the league in several categories when the Pirates accelerated the schedule they had in mind for him and sent him to Scranton. Bobby Lee continued putting big numbers up at the Triple-A level and became a crowd favorite. At the end of the season, the fans there chose him as the winner of the Tenth Player award, given to the player on the team who most exceeded their expectations by his performance during the year. At 21 years old, Bobby Lee was fast approaching the top of his game, and the Big Leagues were no more than a year away.

  But he never got to put on a Pirates uniform and go to bat in Forbes Field. During the third week of play the following season, when the Scranton ball club was entertaining the Rochester Tigers, Bobby Lee got hit in the face by a ball he never picked up when it left the pitcher’s hand. It came at him out of the glare of the sunlight that still spilled across the mound, and disappeared from his sight for just the barest moment before entering the area of shadow around home plate. The ball’s flight was redirected only slightly as it grazed the peak of his cap and smashed into the thin ring of soft flesh between his cheekbone and his right eye.

  The two weeks Bobby Lee spent in the hospital were followed by a series of examinations in Pittsburgh. Finally, after several months, the doctors determined that the spots and floaters he continued seeing whenever he concentrated intently on an object and put pressure on the injured eye would probably keep reappearing under those conditions. He was told that an operation would be dangerous and that it offered no more than a 50-50 chance of remedying the problem. Three specialists tested him exhaustively and came to the same conclusion. It was their strong opinion that he should never again stand in a batter’s box and try to hit a baseball coming in his direction at 90 miles an hour.