Me, Johnny, and The Babe

by Mark Wirtshafter

kill you right here! I’ll take this stick and bash your ugly head in. I’ll smash your skull and break your arms and legs,” Johnny screamed.

  Johnny continued yelling. “I’m not afraid of you, I have nothing to lose. I don’t care if I live or die and I’ll take you down with me. I should have killed you a long time ago, but I’m gonna kill you right now!”

  I looked at Johnny’s face and it was red with rage. He was not bluffing, he was gonna kill Billy. He did not show a hint of fear and began to move forward towards where Billy stood.

  Billy was caught totally by surprise. Everyone had always backed away when Billy had confronted them.

  “Come on Billy you piece of crap! I’m gonna crack your skull wide open with this piece of wood,” Johnny’s voice level rising as the rage inside of him heightened.

  There was no stopping this. Johnny would not back down. He was ready to fight Billy and I don’t think he cared if he died doing it.

  “I’m not kidding, you’re gonna be dead on the street right here and I don’t give a crap what happens to me after!” Johnny yelled as the fury within him continued to grow by the second.

  Then it happened; Billy started to back away.

  “I don’t want to go to jail for killing a little piece of garbage like you, Johnny Garrity,” he said. “There will be a time when there won’t be so many witnesses around and then I’ll take care of you, you little shit head.”

  Billy motioned his friends to return to their game of dice.

  Johnny stood there for another minute, and cautiously backed away from Billy. We slowly began walking backwards. Johnny never took his eyes off Billy. He held on to the wood beam and pounded it into the open palm of his opposite hand as we walked away. Billy and his friends returned to their gambling and did not look back at us. Johnny did not take his eyes off Billy until we got to the next corner.

  My heart was pounding, as we turned left on Tulip Street. Johnny and I looked at each other and he gave me a big smile. We both let out deep breaths, turning and ran home as fast as we could. About half way down Tulip Street Johnny threw the wood board into the sewer. At first, it didn’t seem to fit, but Johnny kicked it with his foot and jammed it in.

  When we reached home, we parted. Johnny and I gave each other our secret handshake that we had begun doing as little kids. Instead of shaking hands, we would grab each other forearms just below the elbow and shake. It was our secret handshake. We made sure that we did not do share it with anyone else, and never did it in front of anybody. We had not done it in a long time, but on this occasion, we both instinctively grabbed each others forearms and squeezed extra hard.

  17

  In the weeks following the incident with Billy Brannigan, I developed a new respect for Johnny. When we walked around the neighborhood together, I was no longer afraid of any of the local kids. There was no more crossing the street to avoid running into the local tough guys. When Johnny got angry there wasn’t anyone that he could not handle.

  I also found out some interesting gossip about Billy Brannigan.

  One night at suppertime, for some odd reason, his name came up in my parent’s dinner conversation.

  “Ever since that fire destroyed the Brannigan place that Billy Brannigan has been getting’ into trouble,” my dad said.

  “He was no damn good when his parents were alive, he certainly no good now,” said my mom.

  “I can’t believe the boy had no relatives to go live with after the fire killed his parents,” he replied. “They say he’s living down near the river, in that old abandoned railroad office.”

  “I just hope the police arrest him for something before he goes and kills somebody,” said my mom as she walked away from the table.

  I do not know how I had missed all of that. All this was new information to me. Things seemed to change after our run in with Billy. From then on, I rarely saw him around the neighborhood.

  “I got some interesting news for you,” my mom said as she returned from her Thursday night volunteers meeting at the church. “Reverend Casey has decided to take out a loan out from the bank to get the rest of the money he needs to build the baseball field. He hopes that he can pay off the loan by getting extra money in the weekly collection plate.”

  I really didn’t care where the money was coming from; I only wanted to play baseball on a real field.

  Over the next few weeks, construction got underway. With the funding in place, the project moved quickly and in no time at all, the field was finished. It was beautiful. Standing on the fresh mowed grass, I felt like I was in the big leagues. On the day Reverend Casey officially dedicated Boger Field, we officially retired the cemetery field. It was like moving from the minor leagues up to the majors.

  Everything seemed perfect, except that the parishioners still were not able to come up with the extra money to pay off the loan Reverend Casey had taken out. I know this was weighing heavily on him, as he would plead each Sunday to try to get everyone to dig a little deeper.

  June came and the school year finally ended. Having the field to play on was a Godsend. Most of our summers were spent, on the sweat-filled streets of Kensington, with nothing to do. That summer we would meet at the field every morning and play baseball until sundown. We usually had enough kids show up to field two full teams. If not, we found creative ways to cover the field. We would have a steady pitcher that would pitch for both teams, or have only two outfielders who would play in left center and right center. If we were short more kids, we would play left side of the field only, where you had to hit the ball to the left of second base or it was a foul ball. The only player standing on the right side of the field was the first baseman. It was an ingenious way to play a game even if we only had ten or twelve kids.

  When my mom returned from her first Thursday meeting in July, she told me that Reverend Casey had a grand scheme.

  “Reverend Casey has a brilliant idea for raising the money to pay off the loan for the baseball field,” she said. “He is going to organize a charity baseball game and he is going to get Babe Ruth to come play in it.”

  “If Ruth will play, Reverend Casey is sure that he could sell enough tickets to pay off the loan completely,” she finished.

  As my mom spoke, she looked at me as though she was waiting for me to get excited. How could I get excited? There was no way that Babe Ruth was coming to the Ascension of Our Lord Field, and play in a baseball game with the local parish team. This was a crazy scheme, which would never get off the ground. Nobody in his or her right mind would believe that this was ever going to happen.

  “If Reverend Casey says he can do it, I certainly believe him,” my mother said. “After all, you know he is the team chaplain for the Philadelphia Athletics and he has direct access to all the players. He’s also very close to the owners of the team and they have great respect for him.”

  “I know that, but Babe Ruth? Do you really think he could get the Babe?”

  Listening politely as my mother spoke, I began to realize that she had so much faith in Reverend Casey that she believed he could do anything that he said that he could do.

  As crazy as it seemed I knew that he had gotten to meet many of the players from visiting teams that had come into town to play the Athletics. Maybe he could meet Ruth, and maybe he could convince him to play one game for charity.

  Reverend Casey knew that the Yankees were coming to town next week to play the Athletics in a three game series and that was when he planned get to Ruth. The Yankees were the two time defending American League champions and there was great excitement whenever they came to town.

  Reverend Casey knew that the twenty eight year old Ruth had grown up at St. Mary’s which was a Catholic orphanage located in Baltimore. By all reports, he also had a very soft spot in his heart for kids. This was the path of persuasion; he would use to convince Ruth if he ever got the chance to talk to him.

  The fate of our beloved field hung in the balance. If Reverend Casey could not get the money to pay off the
loan then surely there would be no money to pay for the maintenance necessary to keep the field in playing condition. If his charity baseball game scheme failed then Boger field would end up as another abandoned empty lot, with tall weeds and filled with garbage. It would become a place where bums would sleep, where danger would lurk, instead of being our field of dreams.

  18

  While we were walking home from school, I told Johnny about Reverend Casey’s plans to get Babe Ruth to play in the charity game.

  “That sounds like a stupid idea,” he said. “There’s no way in hell that Babe Ruth is coming here to play in a dumb game to help pay for our field.”

  “He is the team chaplain for the Athletics,” I said. “And besides Reverend Casey is not the kind of person that usually comes up with crazy schemes.”

  He looked at me unconvinced and said, “we’ll see what happens.”

  There were only a few days left before the Yankees would be in town. At the Thursday night church meeting, Reverend Casey presented his plans for the charity game.

  “We will schedule the game for the first week in September when the Yankees are back in town,” he said. “The game will be played in the early evening, after the Yankees finish their game against the Athletics.”

  “Hopefully, we’ll be able to sell so many tickets, that we will have enough money to pay off the bank loan for Boger Field.”

  Of course, all of