by Dan Gutman
I swept around the locker room until I found Ray Chapman’s locker over in the corner. He was sitting on a bench going through a stack of fan mail. He didn’t pay any attention to me.
The door to Chapman’s locker was open, and there was a photo taped to it. I got as close as I could without being too obvious and then strained my eyes to see the photo. It was a picture of a bride and groom. The girl was pretty. Even though the photo was black-and-white, I could tell she had light brown hair. Below the photo were these words:
Kathleen and Ray, October 29, 1919
I did a rough calculation in my head. Ray Chapman and his wife got married eight months earlier.
I had waited a long time for this moment. At any second, the players could be called out to the field to start the game. This might be my only chance to talk with Ray Chapman one-on-one. I worked up my courage.
“Excuse me, Mr. Chapman?” I asked quietly.
“Yes, son?” he said, looking up at me with kindly eyes. He had no accent. I remembered that Flip said he came from Kentucky, like me.
“I want to give you something,” I said. I pulled the batting helmet out of my bag and handed it to him.
“What the heck is this contraption?”
“It’s a helmet,” I began. “This is going to be hard for me to explain; but in the game today, Mr. Chapman, you could get hit. I mean, you’re going to get hit. Hard. In the head.”
Ray looked at the helmet, turning it over in his hands. He tapped it with his knuckles.
“Where’d you get this thing?” he asked.
“I…uh, had it in my garage,” I explained.
“How do you know so much about the game today?” he asked, smile lines forming at the corners of his eyes. “Where’s your crystal ball? Are you one of those fellas who predicts the future?”
“Not exactly…”
What could I say? That I came from the future? He’d never believe the truth in a million years. A lie was more believable.
“…I get hunches about things,” I continued. “I’ve got a hunch that if you wear this helmet when you’re batting today, it will save your life.”
“Are you crazy, son?” he asked. “Because you sure sound crazy.”
“I’m not crazy,” I explained. “I’m—”
Ray Chapman took my batting helmet and put it on his head. It fit. He stood up and laughed.
“Hey, fellas!” he shouted. “Look at this!”
Tris Speaker and some of the other Indians came over.
“Nice hat, Chappie!” somebody said, and they all broke up laughing.
“This young fella says it’ll protect me when I’m hitting,” said Chapman.
“You might as well wear a dress too, Chappie!” somebody said, which caused the Indians to double over.
Ray took off the helmet and tapped it with his fingernails.
“What’s this thing made of?” he asked.
“Plastic,” I answered, instantly regretting it.
“Plastic?” Ray snorted. “What’s plastic?”
“It’s this really strong stuff,” I said. “But it’s not too heavy.”
“Strong?” Speaker said, grabbing a bat from Ray’s locker. “Let’s see. Toss that thing to me, Chappie.”
Speaker got into a batting stance, and everybody stood back to give him room. Ray underhanded my batting helmet to him from about ten feet away. Speaker took a full swing.
Crrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaccccccccckkkkkkkk.
Pieces of my batting helmet went flying across the locker room. The Indians collapsed all over each other in hysterics.
“It don’t look so strong to me,” Speaker said.
So much for that idea. I had blown my mission. Again.
12
The Good Old Days
STUPID! THAT’S WHAT I WAS. STUPID!
What was I thinking? That a player in 1920 would just willingly put on a batting helmet with no questions asked?
I should have known better. I mean, I don’t know as much about baseball history as Flip, but I do know that athletes didn’t start wearing protective gear for a long, long time. My dad once told me that when he was a kid, hockey players didn’t wear helmets. It wasn’t considered “manly.” Baseball players didn’t even wear gloves when the game began.
Bringing Ray Chapman a batting helmet was a dumb idea. I might as well have brought him a cell phone.
The Indians must have thought that busting up my helmet was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. While they fell all over themselves laughing, I slinked out of the locker room. Nobody seemed to care.
Why do I do this? I asked myself as I wandered through the tunnels of the Polo Grounds, looking for an exit. Why do I take it upon myself to save the world? Nobody cares. Even if I was able to change history, nobody would notice. Because they would never know what would have happened if I had left things the way they were.
I should have whacked Carl Mays with a bat when I had the chance. That would have been the simple solution. Heck, I could have whacked Ray Chapman with a bat and knocked him out of the lineup! That would have saved his life too.
I was disgusted. I figured I’d just find a quiet spot, take out one of my new baseball cards, and go home. There was no point in hanging around the Polo Grounds any longer. Chalk it up to experience.
But suddenly, I caught a whiff of something. Something good. It was the smell of roasted peanuts. Man, that’s a good smell! They don’t roast them at the ballpark anymore. Now you just buy peanuts in plastic bags. It’s not the same.
I didn’t have any money, but I couldn’t resist following the smell. It led me to a door; and when I pulled it open, there was the field.
You can talk all you want about the Grand Canyon, the pyramids, and all those other wonders of the world. But for me, there’s nothing more beautiful than walking up the ramp to see the grass of a ball field. It just hits you in the face with green.
I’ll just stay for a couple of innings, I told myself.
It was my dad who’d taught me the fine art of “sneaking down” at a ball game. He could never afford good seats, so he would buy the cheapest tickets available. Then, inning by inning, we would sneak our way closer to the field as we spotted better seats that nobody was sitting in. By the ninth inning, we would usually be in the first row. Of course, that was before he got hurt.
It’s even easier to sneak down when you’re alone, because you don’t have to find two seats together.
I grabbed the first empty seat I saw, to establish a base of operations, and scoped out the Polo Grounds from there.
The ballpark was about three quarters full. It looked pretty much like a modern-day ballpark, with a few exceptions. Foul territory was really big. There was a narrow dirt path leading from home plate to the pitcher’s mound. Old-time cars were parked beyond the outfield. Ads on the fences were for products that didn’t exist anymore, like THE EVER READY SAFETY RAZOR. And all the men in the stands were wearing straw hats. Nobody wears hats anymore in the summertime. I wondered why they ever wore them in the first place.
I had to be careful sneaking down. There were security guards roaming around. And they weren’t old, retired guys like the security guards at home. These were big, ugly guys with police nightsticks. Getting caught by one of them would not be a good thing.
Carefully, I moved down a few rows, ping-pong-ing my way from one seat to the next one. Finally, I found a nice location—about ten rows off the field and directly behind the Yankees dugout. I plopped down in a seat next to a kid with red hair. He looked about my age.
“Hey, that’s my sister’s seat,” he said to me.
“Is she coming back?” I asked.
“She didn’t come at all,” he replied. “My sister hates baseball.”
I turned to look at the kid. He had so many freckles on his face that it looked like one big freckle. The kid had more freckle than he had face. He said his name was Ronnie.
Ronnie was clearly a serious fan. He had a sco
recard on his lap and a bunch of baseball cards in one hand.
“This is a good spot to catch a foul ball,” I pointed out to Ronnie. He just looked at me. The kid was weird.
Vendors came around hawking hot dogs and soda pop for five cents. Five cents! Too bad I didn’t have a penny. Ronnie got up and cheered as the Yankees took the field. A light rain began to fall. Not enough to hold up the game though.
The first thing I noticed was the players’ gloves. They were tiny, and there were no laces holding the fingers together. It looked like it would be very hard to catch a ball with one of those things.
Ronnie stood up and cheered when Carl Mays walked slowly to the mound and started to warm up.
Carl Mays was a submariner, and he nearly scraped his knuckles against the ground before releasing the ball.
National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, NY
I had seen video of other pitchers who threw underhand—Ted Abernathy, Dan Quisenberry. The motion is strange. As he wound up, Mays sort of hid the ball behind him until the last possible moment. Then he swung his arm down and just about scraped his knuckles against the ground as he slingshotted the ball to the plate. I sure wouldn’t want to look at a fastball coming at me from that angle. Mays threw hard, and grunted so loud with each pitch that you could hear it in the stands. Just watching him pitch made me sweat.
“Mays is going for his 100th win today,” I said, trying to show Ronnie that I knew a thing or two.
“Everybody knows that,” he replied.
The crowd stood up while a band played the national anthem. A guy with a megaphone came out and announced that Charlie Jamieson would lead off for the Indians.
“Boo!” Ronnie yelled. “Indians stink!”
Jamieson came out of the Cleveland dugout and strode up to the plate. He didn’t look like he was intimidated by Carl Mays.
Jamieson swung at the first pitch and fouled it off. Before I knew what was happening, the ball was flying right at me.
“Watch out!” Ronnie yelled.
For maybe a millisecond, I was frozen. All I could do was think about Hammerin’ Cameron nailing me in the head with a ball.
At the last possible instant, I unfroze and dove out of the way. The ball slammed into the back of my wooden seat and bounced off. It was rolling around near my feet. I grabbed it and held it in the air for everybody to see.
I was expecting at least a smattering of polite applause. Nothing. Instead, one of those big security guards hustled over.
“Gimme the ball,” he demanded.
“But…it’s mine,” I protested.
“You want I should bust your head open?” he asked, holding up his nightstick. “That ball is the property of the New York Yankees.”
I handed him the ball and sat down, humiliated. He threw the ball back on to the field. It rolled near Carl Mays, and he picked it up.
“You thought you could keep it?” Ronnie asked, shaking his head. “Ain’t ya never been to a ball game?”
Slumping down in my seat, I barely noticed when Jamieson singled. I wondered what year they started letting fans keep foul balls.
“Now batting for Cleveland,” the megaphone man boomed, “the shortstop, Ray Chapman!”
Chapman stepped up to the plate. In the fifth inning, in about an hour, he would be a dead man. I was the only one in the world who knew it. And there was nothing I could do about it.
“How’s Chapman doing?” I asked Ronnie.
“He’s batting .303,” he replied, looking at his scorecard, “with three homers and 97 runs scored.”
Chapman took a few warm-up swings.
National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, NY
Chapman glanced at the runner on first as he tapped his bat against his spikes. The third baseman moved in three steps, like he was expecting a bunt. Chapman took a couple of warm-up swings, and then he positioned his left foot inches from home plate. His right foot was a few inches back. He held the bat way back and completely motionless. There was no waggle.
Mays wound up, and Chapman squared around to bunt. With Chapman leaning over the plate like that, it looked like it would actually be possible for Mays to throw a strike and still hit him in the head.
The pitch was outside, but Chapman stabbed at it with the bat and dropped a perfect bunt in front of the plate. The catcher pounced on it and threw to first for the out. Jamieson advanced to second.
“Chapman will kill you with those bunts,” Ronnie said, as he marked the play on his scorecard. “He’s leading the league in sacrifices, again.”
The Indians had a runner in scoring position, but they couldn’t bring him around. Tris Speaker flied out to centerfield. So did the next Indian. Three outs.
“Mays is looking sharp,” Ronnie remarked, as the Yankees jogged off the field. “This could be his lucky day.”
“I don’t think so,” I replied.
The Indians took the field, and the megaphone man announced that their pitcher was Stan Coveleskie. I knew that name, because he is in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
“Boo!” Ronnie yelled. “You stink, Coveleskie!”
Stan Coveleskie was a legal spitballer. When the pitch was banned—just this year, in 1920—he and 16 other guys who were throwing it were allowed to keep throwing it until the end of their careers. After that, there would be no more spitballs. Or legal ones, anyway.
Before each pitch, Coveleskie put two fingers in his mouth. That didn’t mean he threw the spitter on every pitch, but you never knew when he would throw it. That’s why he was so hard to hit. Sometimes he pretended to throw the spitter but threw a fastball instead. Pitchers have to be psychologists too.
Anyway, the Yankees couldn’t hit Coveleskie. They went down one, two, three in the bottom of the first. The fans got all excited when Babe Ruth came up to bat, but he hit a weak infield pop-up to end the inning.
“You’re a big bunch of cheese!” somebody hollered as Ruth ran off the field.
“So’s your old man!” he yelled back.
I found myself enjoying the game. Here I was, sitting in the legendary Polo Grounds watching a day game played in 1920. No artificial turf. No designated hitters or steroid-inflated hitters. No exploding scoreboard or fancy computer graphics. This was real baseball, the way Flip always told me the game should be played. I was in the middle of the good old days. I wished they would never end.
Stan Coveleskie
One of the interesting things about baseball, they say, is that it has no clock. With football, basketball, soccer, hockey, and most other sports, the game ends when time runs out. But time never runs out in baseball. There’s no time limit. A team can’t build a lead and then just run out the clock. If you could keep getting hits and scoring runs, the game would go on forever.
The Yankees quickly jogged onto the field to start the second inning. They didn’t have to wait for the TV commercials to finish. There was no TV in 1920. They didn’t even have radio yet. This game was going to go fast.
I put my feet up on the seat in front of me and put my hands behind my head. And then reality hit me. I reminded myself—a man is going to die here, very soon.
My dumb plan to supply Ray Chapman with a batting helmet hadn’t worked. But I was sitting no more than 30 yards from where Chapman was going to get hit. I couldn’t just go home after a few innings. I had to do something. I had to come up with a plan.
If I was going to do anything, I’d have to do it soon. Maybe baseball didn’t have a clock, but Ray Chapman’s life did. And it was ticking away.
13
A Serious Disturbance
“MAN, BALLPLAYERS SURE SPIT A LOT,” RONNIE SAID, AS THE Indians came up to bat in the second inning.
I ignored him. There were other things on my mind. Like saving Ray Chapman’s life. I had gone over all the possibilities in my head. There weren’t a whole lot of options.
My batting helmet was shattered, so there was no way to protect Chapman’s skull from the b
all. I would have to come up with a way to stop Mays from throwing the ball in the first place.
I had to distract him. Interrupt the game somehow. Maybe I could throw something on the field. No, that would only postpone the inevitable. I would have to cause some kind of a serious disturbance.
In the twenty-first century, crazy people charge onto ball fields to disrupt games all the time. Usually the cops get to them pretty quickly and drag them away. But charging the field would probably be a novelty in 1920. I bet nobody had ever done that before. The cops wouldn’t be able to react in time. That might be my only option at this point.
Then another thought crossed my mind. Streaking! I could streak! That would totally blow their minds if I ripped off my clothes and ran across the field.
No, streaking might be going a bit too far. I would probably be beaten up by people in the stands before I even got my clothes off. And where would I put my new pack of baseball cards? I couldn’t lose it.
I looked around. About ten yards away was that security goon who took away my foul ball. He was eyeing me suspiciously.
There was only one thing I had going for me—knowledge. I knew exactly when Chapman would get hit. He would lead off the fifth inning. The third pitch from Mays would hit him in the head.
I was lost in thought when suddenly the Cleveland batter hit a long drive to leftfield. It cleared the fence for a home run.
“Boooooooooooo!” yelled the Yankees crowd.
“Who was that?” I asked Ronnie.
“Steve O’Neill,” he replied. “The catcher.”
Never heard of him. O’Neill circled the bases to a chorus of boos and was congratulated when he went into the Indian dugout. The fan who caught the ball threw it back onto the field. Ronnie marked the home run in his scorecard. The Indians were ahead, 1-0.