Jackie & Me

by Dan Gutman

  Before opening the door, I hesitated. I knew that black people and white people used to have to use separate restaurants, separate hotels, even separate water fountains. Maybe I wouldn’t be allowed in this store. But there was no sign on the door saying I couldn’t come in, so I opened it.

  There was a man standing behind the counter, wiping it with a rag. I looked around the store. He sold a little bit of everything. Man, if only I could buy up all this stuff and save it for fifty years, I thought, I’d be rich.

  “Do you serve colored people here?” I asked.

  I wasn’t exactly sure how to word that. When I was younger, we used the word black, but as I grew older it became African-American. Jackie Robinson, I noticed, referred to himself as a Negro. And white people in his time, when they weren’t using the N word or some other mean word, usually said colored. It was confusing.

  “There’s only one kind of people I don’t serve, son.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Giants fans,” he replied. “You’re not one of them, are you?”

  “Oh no,” I said, “I’m for the Dodgers all the way.”

  “Good boy. So what can I do for ya?”

  “I want to buy some…bubblegum cards.”

  He looked at me like I had told him I wanted to buy some elephants.

  “Are you meshuga?” he asked.

  I didn’t know what that meant, so I didn’t say anything.

  “Are you crazy?” he translated. “I don’t sell bubblegum cards, son.”

  I was about to turn around and walk out, but he reached under the counter and handed me a pack of cards.

  “I give ’em away.”

  “You give them away?” I asked, astonished. “Why?”

  “Where are you from, son? Companies give ’em to me with their products. As promotions. To get people to buy stuff, y’know. I couldn’t sell ’em.”

  “Do you have any more I could keep?”

  “Whaddaya want ’em for so bad?” he asked, checking under the counter.

  “I’m a collector,” I replied.

  “Garbage collector,” the man mumbled to himself. He scooped up a few more packs and handed them to me.

  The door jingled open and a heavy-set delivery man came in. He was wheeling a dolly stacked with bread. On the back of his uniform was the word Bond. At first, I didn’t make the connection.

  “Where should I put these, Mr. Herskowitz?” the Bond bread guy asked.

  Mr. Herskowitz directed him to put the bread in the corner of the store. They both signed some papers. The Bond guy was about to leave when he stopped and turned around.

  “Oh, I almost forgot. You want any of these, Mr. Herskowitz? They told me to clear ’em out of the warehouse.”

  He held out a pack of baseball cards. Jackie Robinson cards.

  Bond Bread! That was the company that put out the Jackie Robinson card I used to travel back to 1947!

  There were thirteen cards in that pack, I knew. It would sell for five thousand dollars back home. My eyes must have bugged out of my head.

  “No thanks,” said Mr. Herskowitz, “but I bet this young man would take them off your hands.”

  “Here, kid.”

  The Bond guy flipped me the pack of cards. I missed it, but scooped it off the floor like it was a gold nugget.

  “How many of these do you have in the warehouse?” I asked desperately.

  “A few hundred, I guess,” he replied. “There are just stacks and stacks of ’em. Why? You want ’em?”

  Want them? I did a quick mental calculation. If one pack was worth five thousand dollars, ten packs would be worth fifty thousand dollars. A hundred packs would be worth…a half a million dollars. Two hundred packs…

  I started to feel dizzy. Dad would go meshuga when I showed up back home and handed him his suitcase with a million dollars’ worth of baseball cards in it!

  “I want them!” I said, my voice cracking a little.

  “Meet me back here first thing Thursday morning,” the Bond guy said. “I’ll bring you everything I got.”

  “Can I go to the warehouse with you right now and pick them up?” I asked hopefully.

  “It’s closed for the day,” he informed me, “and I gotta deliver all over the city between now and Wednesday. Just meet me back here on Thursday morning and I’ll take care of you.”

  I thanked the Bond guy about ten times before he left.

  “You must really love baseball cards,” Mr. Herskowitz commented.

  “I do,” I said, turning to leave. “By the way, you wouldn’t have any Mickey Mantle cards lying around, would you?”

  “Mickey who?”

  “Forget it,” I said, and closed the door behind me with a jingle.

  11

  FIGHTING BACK

  I WAS ON CLOUD NINE. I HAD MET THE GREAT JACKIE Robinson, just as I’d hoped to. I had been to Ebbets Field, and I even was a batboy for the Brooklyn Dodgers. To top it all off, soon I would have a million dollars’ worth of baseball cards.

  It doesn’t get much better than this, I thought as I rode the subway back to Jackie Robinson’s hotel.

  Of course, I was going to have to change my time travel plans a little. I couldn’t go home right away. I would have to stay in 1947 until Thursday to get the baseball cards from the Bond Bread guy.

  But that was okay. I knew from the last time that no matter how long I stayed in the past, I would return home and wake up in my bed the morning after I left.

  The New York Giants and Philadelphia Phillies were coming into town. I could batboy for the Dodgers for a few days, get the baseball cards on Thursday morning, and then go home.

  By the time I reached the McAlpin Hotel, it was dark outside. Mrs. Robinson was doing the dinner dishes when I knocked on the door. Jackie was playing peek-a-boo with Jackie Jr., trying to get him to stop crying, but it wasn’t working very well.

  “Joe, we need to talk,” Mrs. Robinson said seriously as I greeted them. “I tried to track down your mama. There’s nobody named Stoshack in Louisville, Kentucky. We need to know your real name and where you really live.”

  “I can explain,” I said. “My real name is Joe Stoshack. I live in Louisville, Kentucky, and I know it’s hard for you to believe this, but it’s the truth. I went back in time to get here. I live fifty years into the future. That’s why you couldn’t find my mom. She’s not there yet.”

  Mrs. Robinson looked at Jackie, then held the back of her hand against my forehead. That’s what Mom does when she’s checking to see if I have a fever.

  “Jack,” she said finally, “I think we should call the police.”

  “Don’t call the police!” I begged. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “You expect us to believe that you traveled through time?”

  “I don’t expect you to believe it,” I said sadly. “But it’s true.”

  “Ease up on the boy, Rae,” Jackie said. “He’s a good kid.”

  “Can I please stay with you until Thursday?” I asked. “Then I’ll go back home. Promise.”

  Mrs. Robinson didn’t have much fight in her. It was late. She was tired. The dishes weren’t done. Jackie was upset because he’d gone hitless on opening day. Jackie Jr. was upset because, well, because he was five months old and babies get upset for no particular reason.

  “Thursday?” Mrs. Robinson asked wearily.

  “After that you’ll never see me again,” I said honestly.

  “Okay, you can stay,” she said, putting the sheets on the couch for me. “But I don’t believe a word of that future stuff.”

  The Dodgers beat the Braves again the next day, 13-6. Jackie didn’t get good wood on the ball. He was pressing. It was obvious. He was nervous, anxious, and swinging at bad pitches.

  The next two games were against the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds. The Dodgers lost both—10-4 and 4-3. Jackie didn’t help much.

  I was getting pretty good at being a batboy, though. I had learned the rout
ine, which made everything a lot easier. After one of the Giants games, I even beat Ant in the daily shoeshine race.

  As if things weren’t tough enough for Jackie, all kinds of rumors were swirling around. I heard some whispers around the clubhouse that he wasn’t as good as the players expected him to be. Some newspaper articles said he might be sent down to the minor leagues for more “seasoning.”

  The St. Louis Cardinals—led by Dixie Walker’s brother Harry—were rumored to be planning a strike if Jackie took the field against them. On the Dodgers, the players were cordial toward Jackie, but certainly not friendly. Nobody invited Jackie out to dinner after a game. Nobody sat next to him or told him jokes. He didn’t join in the clubhouse card games. He was alone.

  The first road trip of the season was coming up, and word was passed around that the Dodgers wouldn’t be staying at their usual hotel in Philadelphia—the Benjamin Franklin. Negroes weren’t allowed there. The team would stay at the Warwick Hotel instead. Even at the Warwick, Jackie wouldn’t be allowed to eat his meals in the main dining hall with the rest of the team. He would have to eat in his room. And Philadelphia was called “The City of Brotherly Love!”

  Then there were the threats. Part of my job was to go through fan mail, sort it, and put it in each player’s locker. Nuts wrote to Jackie every day saying they were going to kill him. Somebody wrote that Jackie would be shot if he crossed the foul line to take the field the next day. There were threats to assault Rachel, to kidnap Jackie Jr.

  “Don’t tell Rachel,” Jackie said simply as he handed me this:

  Every time he stepped out of the dugout, Jackie looked up into the stands defiantly. It was as if he were daring somebody to take a shot at him.

  Jackie pretended that the pressure didn’t bother him, but I could tell it did. It showed in his hitting. He was in a deep slump.

  I got up extra early Thursday morning. The Robinsons were still sleeping. I threw on my clothes, grabbed my dad’s empty suitcase, and hopped on the subway to Brooklyn.

  The grocery store was closed when I arrived, but it wasn’t long before Mr. Herskowitz arrived and unlocked the door. The Bond truck pulled up shortly after. The delivery man hauled his bread out.

  “You’re here bright and early,” he said cheerfully as he rolled his hand truck into the store.

  “Did you bring the bubblegum cards?” I asked anxiously.

  “Yup,” he replied. “Lucky I got ’em, too, because my boss was about to throw ’em in the incinerator.”

  He went back to the truck and brought out a large cardboard box. I pulled open the flaps and there they were—hundreds of packs, easy, of brand new, never opened, mint condition, 1947 Bond Bread Jackie Robinson baseball cards!

  It took my breath away. I felt my heart beating furiously, and my forehead began to sweat. This must be what it felt like to the guy who started the gold rush in California, I thought. I thanked the Bond guy over and over again as I poured the packs of cards into my dad’s suitcase.

  As he climbed back in his truck, I walked over and handed him one of the packs of cards.

  “You’re going to think this is crazy, but save this,” I told him. “Give it to your kids. Tell them to pass it on it to their kids.”

  “Why?” the guy asked.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I said.

  “Okay, kid,” he shrugged, slipping the pack into his shirt pocket as he put the truck into gear.

  I had over a million dollars’ worth of cards in my suitcase. I could have taken the subway back to the Robinsons’ place and zapped myself back to the future with my treasure. But I was only a few blocks from Ebbets Field. The Dodgers would be hosting the Philadelphia Phillies at two o’clock. I decided to stash the suitcase in the back of Jackie’s locker and work one last game before going home.

  The Phillies have always been pretty terrible, I knew that. In over a hundred years they won the World Series only once, in 1980. That’s pathetic.

  But the Phils started the 1947 season pretty well, winning four of their first six games. They were in second place in the National League, just ahead of Brooklyn.

  As the Dodgers took the field in the first inning, Phillies manager Ben Chapman rose to the top of the dugout step. I saw him cup his hands around his mouth and holler, “Hey nigger! Why don’t you go back to the cotton field where you belong?”

  Other teams had razzed Jackie from the bench, but no more than they razzed the other Dodgers. For the most part, they kept the N word out of it. This was different. There was a hostility coming from Chapman that went beyond the usual baseball bench jockeying. This was pure hatred.

  The rest of the Phillies, taking their cue from their manager, joined in.

  “They’re waiting for you in the jungles, black boy!”

  “Hey snowflake, want some watermelon?”

  “We don’t want you here, brownie!”

  Their voices could be heard clearly in the Dodger dugout, which meant they could also be heard in the stands. The umpires didn’t do anything about it. The Dodger bench was like a tomb. Everybody looked embarrassed.

  At first base, Jackie didn’t make a peep. But he looked like a teapot just before it comes to a boil.

  Ralph Branca was the Dodgers’ starting pitcher. He was a young guy, about twenty-one. He threw hard.

  Branca got the Phillie leadoff batter to slap a grounder to short. Pee Wee Reese scooped up the ball and threw it to Jackie at first base in time to get the out. But the batter didn’t step on the right side of first base, like you’re supposed to. Instead, he aimed his foot for the left side, the side where Jackie’s foot touched the bag. The hitter’s spikes caught Jackie above the ankle. He crumpled to the ground like he’d been shot.

  I was sure Jackie was hurt bad and would leave the game. But he didn’t lie there. He bounced up right away. He didn’t want to give the Phillies the satisfaction of knowing they’d hurt him. A bloodstain spread slowly across Jackie’s white sock. The Dodger trainer came out of the dugout, but Jackie waved him away.

  “What’s the matter, blackie?” yelled Ben Chapman from the Phillie dugout. “Can’t handle a little blood?”

  “It’s red,” Jackie yelled back. “Just like yours.”

  The game continued. Branca had good stuff and the Phillies seemed powerless to hit him. The pitcher for the Phillies, Schoolboy Rowe, was just as sharp. A row of zeros crept across the scoreboard.

  As the innings went by, the insults coming from the Phillie dugout got nastier. Chapman and his players were shouting awful things I had never heard before and can’t bring myself to repeat. In the fifth inning, a few of the Phillies got up out of their dugout, pointed their bats toward Jackie, and made machine-gun noises. In the sixth inning, one of them tossed a live black cat out of the dugout and yelled, “Hey Robinson, there’s your cousin!”

  The Dodger bench had been quiet the whole game, but after the cat was captured and removed from the field, Eddie Stanky suddenly stood up.

  “Listen, you yellow-bellied cowards!” he shouted. “Why don’t you work on somebody who can fight back? There isn’t one of you has the guts of a louse!”

  It was the first time I’d heard any of the Dodgers stand up for Jackie.

  “Stanky’s a nigger lover!” one of the Phillies shouted.

  After seven innings, it was still a scoreless tie. Branca and Rowe were pitching beautifully. Jackie was set to lead off the eighth inning. As the insults rained down on him from the opposing dugout, I handed him his favorite bat in the on-deck circle.

  “How can you take it?” I asked him. “Why don’t you fight back?”

  “I fight back in my own way,” he said. He took the bat and walked up to the plate.

  “Shine my shoes after the game, Sambo!” one of the Phillies yelled.

  Schoolboy Rowe’s first pitch was up and in. High up, and far in. Jackie dove backward to avoid taking it on the skull. His bat went flying as he hit the dirt.

  Jackie dove
backward to avoid taking it on the skull. His bat went flying as he hit the dirt.

  “Ball one!” called the ump.

  Jackie got up off the ground. There was fire in his eyes. He looked ferocious. He wouldn’t let anyone intimidate him. He was fearless. I retrieved his bat and handed it to him.

  “Charge the mound!” I urged him. “Go get him!”

  “No,” he said firmly. “That’s not how I operate.”

  It wasn’t the first time I’d seen somebody throw at Jackie’s head. Pitchers had been making him eat dirt on a daily basis.

  “I see you’ve got the guts to knock me down,” Jackie yelled at Schoolboy Rowe. “Do you have the guts to throw the ball over the plate?”

  Jackie had told me that after throwing a beanball, nine out of ten pitchers will throw a curveball over the outside corner. Most hitters are so intimidated by the beanball that they’re too afraid to lean over the plate and get the hittable pitch.

  Rowe’s next pitch was a lazy curve over the outside corner. Jackie went out and got it, ripping a single up the middle that just about took Rowe’s head off.

  As soon as Jackie reached first base, everybody in the Dodger dugout slid to the front edge of the bench. Whenever Jackie got on, you just knew he was going to try something.

  As Gene Hermanski stepped into the batter’s box, Jackie took a lead at first base. An impossibly long lead. Rowe threw over and Jackie dove to the bag just ahead of the tag.

  He sprang right up and took the same lead again, maybe even a step further. Rowe glared at him. Jackie glared right back. Rowe threw over to first again, and again Jackie dove back to the bag just ahead of the tag.

  “I’m stealing on the next pitch!” he shouted at Rowe in that squeaky voice of his. “Do anything you want, you can’t stop me!”

  Rowe did his best to concentrate on Hermanski, but he kept peeking at Jackie out of the corner of his eye. Jackie was dancing up and down the base path, daring Rowe to try and pick him off. He never stood still. He would dash up the line in a full run as if he were going to steal. But then he’d stop and go back to first base.