by Dan Gutman
“Let ’em razz me,” Mickey told me. “I can handle myself.”
“Oh, big girl,” one of the drunks yelled sarcastically. “She can handle herself. A woman’s place is at home!”
Mickey took off her mask and spit in the direction of the drunk guys. “Yeah, she said, “home plate.”
“Next thing you know,” the first guy said, “they’ll have a monkey at short, a giraffe at third base, and a trained seal in center field!”
He and his friends thought that was brilliantly clever, and they congratulated themselves on their originality by clinking beers.
“Ah, blow it out your rear end,” Mickey snorted, turning away from them to concentrate on Connie Wisniewski’s fastballs.
I wondered about the men in the stands. If the able-bodied American men were fighting the war in Europe or the South Pacific, who were these guys? They must be too old to be drafted, too young, or have something wrong with them, I concluded. I noticed a few guys in Army uniforms who were missing legs. They were probably just back from the war.
I was staring into the crowd when a kid came down to the first row right in front of me. He was about my size and looked about my age, but he was smoking a cigarette.
“I’m here,” he said to me. “You can take off the chicken suit.”
“Huh?”
“What are you—deaf? I said take off the chicken suit. I’m the new mascot. Get the picture? Now wise up and take off the suit or I’ll take it off for you.”
I don’t like being ordered around by kids, and I didn’t like this kid’s attitude. What was he going to do—jump over the fence and rip the chicken suit off me?
“You’re late,” I told him. “The early bird gets the worm, if you’ll excuse the pun.”
“Sez who?” the kid said. “They told me the job was mine!”
“Yeah, well, the next time somebody offers you a job, maybe you ought to think about showing up on time. They couldn’t depend on you, so they hired me.”
“That ain’t fair!”
“Hey, life isn’t always fair, pal,” I said.
“I’m gonna get you but good.”
Now he was getting me mad. I thought about throwing off the chicken head and showing him who was boss, but I didn’t want to get in trouble with Max Carey.
“Ah, blow it out your rear end,” I said, walking away from him.
I could feel my heart beating quickly as I walked across the field. Nothing gets my blood pumping better than the possibility of a fistfight.
I strolled over to Merle, who was playing catch with the girl Max Carey had called Ziggy. The more I looked at Merle, the more I liked what I saw.
“Hiya, Chicken!” she said. “What’s cookin’?”
“Did you mean it before when you said I was cute?” I asked bashfully.
“Honey, you look good enough to eat!”
My heart beat even faster. She called me “honey”! She likes me! I realized for the first time that fighting was not the only way to get my blood pumping.
I was in love.
7
A Strike for Freedom
THE ROCKFORD PEACHES WERE FROM ROCKFORD, Illinois. They had peach-colored uniforms, of course, with reddish socks. As they took infield practice, they looked just as smooth as the Chicks.
Tiby Eisen getting her hair done. Now there’s something you don’t see at a big-league game!
In the Chicks dugout, the girls busied themselves in preparation for the game. Connie Wisniewski put a brace on her knee, which she had twisted the week before. Tiby Eisen, the peppy left fielder, braided her hair. She said she did it before every game for good luck. Mickey Maguire put more tape on her leg. First baseman Dolores Klosowski was peeling potatoes and dropping them into a bucket of water. Max Carey, apparently, believed that peeling potatoes strengthened the wrists. Either that or he really liked potatoes. I sat as close as I could to Merle, trying desperately to think of clever things to say to her.
After a while, a microphone stand was carried out and placed on home plate. When a priest walked out on the field, the Chicks stopped whatever they were doing and lined up along the first-base line. The Rockford Peaches did the same along the third-base line, so the two teams formed a giant V shape that met at home plate. All the players removed their caps and bowed their heads.
I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to remove my chicken head or not. Max Carey had told me it was a league rule to keep it on, so I did.
“Will the crowd please rise,” requested the public address announcer.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the priest spoke into the microphone, his words echoing around the ballpark, “as we sit here in the safety of Borchert Field, our sons, our brothers, our husbands, and our friends are at this moment fighting for their lives on the beaches of Normandy. Our nation did not start this fight. We didn’t want to go to war. We fight this war because the most ambitious tyranny on earth has forced us to, and we would rather die fighting than live as slaves.”
Some of the fans clapped and cheered respectfully.
“The next few days will be critical to all human history. Victory will not be easy, but it will come. Good always triumphs over evil.”
More cheering and clapping arose from the stands.
“We can only pray,” the priest continued. “We pray for the soldiers we know and also for the ones we don’t. A few short years ago, they were all just young boys who needed our protection. Today, they protect us. We pray for them. We pray for ourselves too, who must face the dreadful waiting. And we pray for victory and a lasting peace. Amen.”
The priest mumbled some words in another language, and the opening strains of the National Anthem blared out of the speakers. Behind me in the stands, a woman sobbed. When the song was over, the umpire, dressed in a black suit, hollered, “Play ball!”
The Chicks jogged back to the dugout and gathered around Max Carey.
“Keep your eyes and ears open,” he advised. “Be unselfish, modest, humble, and cooperative. Win graciously and lose sportingly. Take the hard knocks as a matter of course, and blame none for your mistakes or shortcomings. Does everybody remember the signs?”
“You bet!”
“Good! Now let’s show ’em what we’re made of!”
The team whooped and ran out to their positions, with the home crowd cheering them on.
Connie Wisniewski whipped in a few warm-up pitches. The leadoff batter for the Peaches, a tall, skinny girl, watched carefully as if she was trying to figure out Connie’s delivery. She tapped her bat against each cleat twice before stepping into the batter’s box.
The positions of the Chicks.
I thought about going into the stands to rile up the fans a little, but Max Carey glared at me, so I sat down. With the Chicks in the field, he and I were the only ones in the dugout.
“Come on, Iron Woman!” Mickey Maguire shouted from behind the plate. “Put it in here, you big tomato! Hmmm, baby! She couldn’t hit you if she had a tennis racket!”
The game hadn’t even begun yet, and Mickey’s uniform was already smudged with dirt. She spit on her hand and wiped it on her dress.
“Strike one!”
The pitch came in so fast, I didn’t even see it. I just heard a hissing sound as the ball crossed home plate.
“Thatababy!” shouted Mickey. “Now give her your rise ball. Let’s see the old slingshot, Connie!”
The batter stepped out. She may not have seen the first pitch either. When she got back into the batter’s box, she had choked up on the bat and was crouching down. It was obvious that she was trying to make her strike zone smaller.
Connie windmilled her arm three times and let the ball fly. The pitch was a little high.
“Ball one!” called the ump.
Connie windmilled her arm three times and let the ball fly.
“Good eye!” somebody called from the Peaches bench. “Wait for a good one.”
“Give her your wrinkle now, Connie,” shouted Mickey. “S
he can’t hit the curve even if she knows it’s coming!”
Balls two and three followed, much to the dismay of Connie Wisniewski. Mickey whipped the ball back to Connie hard, like she wanted to shake her up. When the ump called the next pitch ball four, Mickey wheeled around and flung off her mask.
“Listen, you dim-witted blockhead!” she hollered at the umpire. “If you’d stop staring at the batter’s legs for a minute, you might see some strikes!”
“I ain’t starin’ at her legs,” the ump shot back in Mickey’s face, “and if you don’t shut up, you’ll be staring at the inside of the locker room!”
Mickey laughed and put her mask back on. The batter jogged to first. She did have nice legs.
The times I’ve played softball, there was no stealing bases, and runners were not even allowed to take a lead until after the pitch crossed the plate. But the runner on first danced off the bag right away and took off for second on the first pitch to the next batter.
Mickey caught the pitch and gunned it on a line to Ziggy Ziegler, playing second base. The runner slid in along with a cloud of dust. The plate umpire was the only umpire, so he made the call.
“Safe!”
“We had her by a mile!” Mickey hollered.
“I said safe,” asserted the ump.
“Ah, you’re blind as a bat!” Mickey complained.
“I’m warning you, Maguire! One more word and I’ll throw you outta here!”
Max Carey whistled for Mickey to come over.
“Mick,” he said, sweeping his arm across the dugout. “I don’t have any subs. We can’t afford for you to get ejected from this game.”
“I’m just fooling with him, Max,” Mickey said. “If I kick and scream about the close ones now, maybe he’ll give us a break when we need one later.” She threw him a wink before taking her position behind the plate again.
“Smack one outta here, Mildred!” somebody hollered from the other dugout as the next batter stepped up.
Mildred was a big girl, maybe even fat. But Connie Wisniewski wasn’t intimidated. She blew three fastballs by her, with the runner stealing third on the strikeout. Mickey’s throw was off line and she let out a curse. One out, runner on third.
It occurred to me that the game they were playing wasn’t quite baseball, but it wasn’t softball either. It was something in the middle. There was base stealing, and nine fielders, like in baseball. But the pitching was underhand, with a very large ball, as in softball. And when somebody hit a foul ball into the crowd, the fans threw the ball back onto the field.
The number-four batter for the Peaches stepped up. Max Carey waved for the outfield to move back a few steps, and I knew why. Managers always put their strongest power hitter in the number-four slot. That way, if the first three hitters get on, the cleanup batter might clear the fence and clear the bases.
This cleanup hitter didn’t clear anything, though. She tapped a little dribbler to the right side of the diamond. Connie rushed off the pitcher’s mound, but she was moving slowly because of her bad leg. Ziggy couldn’t get there in time from her position at second base. The runner was safe at first. The runner at third stayed there.
In the dugout, Max Carey didn’t curse or throw anything. He began to relay a series of signs to Mickey and the Chicks infielders. He touched the bill of his cap, stroked his elbow with the other hand, and wiped his hand across his chest.
“Watch for the double steal!” a fan shouted.
The manager of the Peaches was flashing signs back and forth with his base runners too. Something was up. The next Peach stepped into the batter’s box.
On the first pitch, the batter swung and missed. The Peach runner took off from first. Mickey made the throw, but she didn’t throw down to second. She whipped the ball right back to Connie on the pitcher’s mound. The runner at third had taken a few steps toward home. Connie whirled around and pegged the ball to third. The runner was dead. She didn’t even get back to the bag.
“Yer out!” called the ump. The hometown fans roared in approval.
“Ha-ha-ha!” Max Carey clapped his hands. “I love that play.”
The Peach who had been picked off third slinked back to her dugout in shame. Flustered, the batter popped the next pitch up to Merle—the love of my life—in center field for the third out, and the Chicks dashed off the field.
“Beautiful!” Carey cheered as the players filled the dugout.
“That was a nice catch you made,” I told Merle as I slid next to her on the bench.
“It was nothin’, darlin’.”
She called me “darlin’”! So far she had said I was cute, she called me “snookums,” “honey,” and now “darlin’.” I was in heaven. Trying my best to make small talk with her, I almost missed the public address announcement.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please direct your attention to the home plate area, where the Milwaukee Chicken will throw a strike for freedom!”
“I think they’re callin’ you, sweetie.”
She called me “sweetie”!
“Get on the field, Josephine!” barked Max Carey.
Two burly guys were carrying a piece of plywood that was about ten feet tall and five feet wide, with a hole in the middle about the size of a poster. When they turned the plywood over and stood it up on home plate, I could see there was a cartoony painting of a goofily grinning Adolf Hitler on it. The hole in the board was where one of Hitler’s teeth should have been.
“If Chicken can throw a ball through Hitler’s tooth,” boomed the announcer, “he will be throwing a strike for freedom!”
“Nobody told me I would have to throw a ball,” I complained, shrinking back into the dugout.
“Get out there,” Mickey said as she and the rest of the team grabbed me and pushed me out of the dugout, “and quit your bellyaching!”
The two burly guys—each of them had a name tag that said BOB on it—took me by my wings and half led, half dragged me out to the mound. One of the Bobs flipped me a ball. I kept shaking my chicken head.
“What are you, chicken?” a fan yelled, to the amusement of the crowd. That got the rest of them going, and in seconds the whole place was either jeering or cheering for me.
“Just to make things interesting,” the announcer said, “if Chicken throws the ball through Hitler’s tooth, each and every man, woman, and child in the ballpark tonight will receive a free pass to see Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis, now playing in air- conditioned splendor at the Palace Theater on Wisconsin Avenue.”
“Ooooooooooooooooooh!”
“B-but I need a warm-up,” I protested. “I haven’t practiced.”
“Shut up and throw,” one of the Bobs said. “We ain’t got all night.”
“Yeah,” said the other Bob, “and you better throw it through the hole, Chicken, ’cause I really want to see that picture.”
I toed the rubber and fingered the huge ball, doing my best to wrap my hand around it. I’ve always had a pretty good arm, but I wasn’t used to this kind of pressure. At our Little League games, usually only the moms and dads showed up. There must have been four or five thousand people watching me.
“You better not miss, Chicken!” somebody yelled.
“If he does, let’s fry him!”
“You can do it, sweetie pie!” Merle shouted from the Chicks dugout. “Concentrate.”
I looked over at her. She had her hands clasped together, like she was praying. Man, she was beautiful. I wanted to throw the strike just for her.
Right above Merle, in the third row behind the Chicks dugout, I spotted that kid who had shown up for the mascot job. He was giving me a dirty look.
The crowd began to clap their hands and stamp their feet in rhythm.
I gripped the ball and concentrated on Hitler’s face. I took a deep breath. It was hard to do a regular windup with the chicken suit on, but I did the best I could. As I let go of the ball, my forward momentum almost caused the chicken head to fall off.
T
he ball sailed two feet over Hitler’s head. The crowd let out a groan.
“Ohhhhh!” moaned the announcer. “Too bad, Chicken! Maybe next time!”
“Booooooooooooooo!”
“He’s a bum!”
“Get a new chicken!”
“Kill the chicken!”
I ran off the field, dodging lemons, bottles, and other junk that came flying out of the stands. Luckily, I made it back to the Chicks dugout with only a few small objects hitting me.
Connie, Merle, Mickey, and Tiby told me to forget about it. They said that hardly anyone can throw very accurately under the circumstances. Max Carey just looked at me.
“Pathetic,” he muttered. “Just pathetic.”
8
Trick Play
IN THE BOTTOM OF THE FIRST INNING, THE CHICKS offense exploded. A clean single, an infield hit, and an error loaded the bases for Mickey, who delivered with a double in the gap to drive in all three runs.
Dolores Klosowski got a double too, and Ziggy singled her home. Connie Wisniewski poked a grounder through the infield.
By then, the fans were going crazy. When Teeny Petras got hit by a pitch, they started booing. The manager of the Peaches came out to protest that the ball had hit Teeny’s bat, but she held up her left arm to show that the seams of the ball had made an impression in her skin. The umpire waved her to first. Tiby Eisen got hit too, on the hand. Max Carey made a quick splint out of two Popsicle sticks supplied by some fans, and Tiby stayed in the game.
The only bad thing that happened to the Chicks was that third baseman Doris Tetzlaff got called back to the dugout by the umpire and fined five dollars because she had forgotten to put lipstick on.
Mickey taking a cut.
When the inning was over, the Chicks had batted around and pushed six runs across the plate.
“You’re our good luck charm, sweetie pie!” Merle said as the Chicks piled into the dugout. Max Carey shot me a puzzled look and I just shrugged.
“I didn’t do anything,” I said.
“Well, keep not doing anything,” he replied. “Whatever you’re not doing, it’s working.”