Keeping Score

by Linda Sue Park

  Treecie

  George?

  That was eleven altogether. Maggie doodled a tiny baseball diamond on one corner of the page while she thought.

  Tickets alone wouldn't be enough. She would need bus fare for everyone, and it would be nice if she could buy snacks at the game—hot dogs, maybe, or at least peanuts. Thirty dollars ought to do it. I'd need ten dollars more.

  Her allowance was now twenty-five cents a week, which meant twenty cents was left after she put a nickel in the church plate. If she saved every cent—if she didn't spend a single penny on anything—it would take her fifty weeks to save ten dollars.

  Fifty weeks was too long.

  Okay, so no snacks. If I say just tickets and bus fare, then I wouldn't need thirty—twenty-five dollars would be enough.

  Five dollars more. Twenty-five weeks instead of fifty.

  She jumped up from the bed and went downstairs to look at the kitchen calendar. It was the third week of January. Maggie counted, flipping the pages. She lost track once and had to start over again. This time she counted out loud.

  "Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four..."

  In twenty-five weeks it would be the middle of July. She could do it: There would still be plenty of games left in the season.

  The calendar hung a little crookedly now. Maggie straightened it, and straightened her shoulders, too. July seemed awfully far away—a long time to have to save every bit of her allowance.

  And saving the money would be the easy part.

  That Saturday Dad gave Maggie two dimes and a nickel, as usual. The nickel would go into the church offering plate on Sunday. The dimes were for saving. Maggie was glad it was dimes. Of all the coins, they jingled the best.

  Maggie took the dollar bills out of the sock and stacked them with her confirmation money. She held the sock's top ribbing wide open. With her other hand she dropped in a dime. She did the same with the second dime, which landed with a sweet clink on its cousin. Then she gave the sock a shake to hear the jingle.

  Two thin little dimes. It felt like it would be forever before she had enough.

  In the afternoon she passed by Mr. Aldo's shop. Through the window she could see the jars of candy on the counter. Licorice sticks, her favorite. I could go home and get a dime. Just one, not both of them.

  But an instant later she scolded herself: Margaret Olivia Theresa Fortini, you will not spend that dime.

  Maggie was shaken and a little ashamed at how easily she had been tempted to cheat. She decided not to tell anyone about the plan—not Treecie, not Joey-Mick, not Mom. What if she couldn't do it? What if she told people and then didn't manage to save the money? Then she would have everyone else's disappointment to face on top of her own. No, better to keep it a secret, and that way it would be a surprise, too. As she hurried home, she resolved to try not to walk past Mr. Aldo's or the drugstore if she could help it.

  But she did share her plan, just once. With Charky. She told him all about it on one of their walks.

  "I can do this, Charks," she said. He barked in complete agreement, and she gave him a big hug.

  The baseball season began in mid-April with a two-game series against the Giants in the Polo Grounds. The Dodgers lost the first game and won the second. And the next several weeks were sheer craziness—not just for the Dodgers and Giants. The Phillies and the Cardinals and the Braves were right in there too, all battling for the top spot and so close together that a team could go from first place to fourth in just a few games.

  Vin Scully was now Brooklyn's regular radio announcer, which Maggie felt was a personal insult to both her and Red Barber. She missed Red's gentlemanly southern drawl and the familiar expressions she had heard so often: "can of corn" for an easy fly ball, "sittin' in the catbird seat" when the team was playing well. After about a month, Maggie finally gave up hope that Red would ever return, and she even had to admit that while Mr. Scully's broadcasts could never be the same as Red's, he was doing a fine job.

  The Dodgers spent two weeks of June in first place, but in the middle of the month they were overtaken by the Giants. The Bums seemed to play well only in streaks—winning five in a row, then losing the next four, winning four, then losing three. Maggie had begun making a single diagonal line from corner to corner across the entire spread of her scorebook whenever Brooklyn lost. That way, when she wanted to refer to an earlier game, she could see at a glance whether they had won or not. And slashing that line across the pages seemed like a perfect fit for her mood after a loss.

  Willie Mays was back with the Giants, and having an unbelievable year—batting well over .300, hitting homers and driving in runs as if he was trying to catch up on the hundreds of games he had missed while in the army. Maggie started a special page in her scoring notebook to keep track of his statistics.

  It was great to have Willie playing again ... but it also reminded her that Jim hadn't yet returned to his old job.

  Maggie could hardly believe it. She had to say it aloud to herself: "The end of July." And then, "I did it."

  All those weeks and weeks turning into months and months, and now, at last, the sock in her drawer held enough dimes. After supper one evening she sat on her bed, held the sock out at arm's length, and gave it a shake. The weight of the dimes stretched the sock out in a very satisfying way, and the jingle sounded nice and crowded.

  But Maggie was pleased with herself for only a few moments. She thought about the next part of her plan: It would either go ahead or be stopped dead in its tracks now.

  The family was in the living room, Mom knitting, Dad and Joey-Mick talking about baseball. Maggie walked in carrying the bills in one hand and the sock in the other. She put them down on the coffee table.

  "Everybody," she said. Her voice came out high, almost squeaky. She cleared her throat. "I got something I want to ask."

  Mom kept the knitting needles in her hands, but she lowered them to her lap. Joey-Mick stopped thunking the ball into his glove. Already they seemed to sense that what she had to say was important.

  "This"—she pointed to the neat stack of bills—"is twenty dollars. And this—" She picked up the sock, turned it upside-down, and poured out the dimes. They made a silvery sound as they exited the sock. "This is five dollars in dimes. Twenty-five dollars altogether."

  She looked right at Dad. Her next words came out in a steady stream, but not too fast—she wanted to be sure he heard every word. "I want to go to Ebbets Field to see a game, August fourteenth, Dodgers against the Giants, and I want to take the whole family plus some other people. Grandstand tickets are a dollar seventy each and I have enough here for the tickets and for bus fare for everybody, and I especially want to take Jim, because he loves baseball and he loves the Giants and maybe seeing a game will help him get better."

  Maggie heard Joey-Mick's breath quicken. She couldn't tell what Mom was thinking; her face didn't change one bit. But what they thought didn't matter.

  Only one person mattered.

  Dad spread his hands out in front of him. "Maggie-o, it's not the money," he said. "It's never been the money that's the problem."

  Maggie was ready for that. "I know. But I had to think of—of some way to show you how much I want this." She clasped her hands and leaned forward a little. "Dad. Most of that is my confirmation money. From January. I didn't spend hardly any of it this whole time. And I been saving my allowance since then too. I never bought a single Hershey bar or gum—or anything—and the only thing I spent money on was the ice cream soda I got Joey-Mick on his birthday."

  Silence.

  "I saved enough for Jim's sister and her family, too. If they want to come. And George, in case you want another fireman to be there. You know, to make it safer."

  More silence, Dad's face as unreadable as Mom's.

  "Dad, I didn't do this for my own self. I mean, I always wanted to go to a game, but I—I know what you think about it, and I'd never be asking if it weren't for Jim. He's the reason I want to go. Well, the main
reason anyway."

  Next to her Joey-Mick bounced a little, then burst out, "Dad, if you and George go, we'd all be safe!" His voice slipped and skidded on the last word.

  Maggie's stomach felt like the inside of a baseball— miles and miles of string wound up hard as a rock. But on hearing Joey-Mick, something loosened just a little, and she almost felt like hugging him. She had been right not to let him in on the plan. It was lots better; he was way more eager now than he would have been if he'd known about everything in advance.

  Then Mom spoke. "Ought to be able for seats near an exit, if you buy them early enough," she said.

  Maggie's mouth fell open. She stared at her mother—first in disbelief, then in speechless gratitude. But Mom was already knitting away again, as if the conversation were about any old ordinary thing.

  Maggie was suddenly exhausted. There was nothing more to say. She looked down at her hands without seeing them and waited.

  The tiny clicking sound of Mom's needles nibbled at the silence. Joey-Mick fidgeted but didn't say anything. He was probably thinking the same as Maggie: Dad would decide now one way or the other, and that would be that.

  Dad stirred the dimes on the table with one finger. "Guess you're not little kids anymore," he said at last. "You're old enough, the both of you, to understand and—and listen and do something the second I say so. In an emergency."

  Maggie stopped breathing.

  Dad picked up a dime and examined it closely. He turned it over and stared at the other side too, as if he had never seen a dime before in his whole life. At last he raised his eyes and looked at Maggie.

  "I'll have to call Carol and see what she thinks."

  "Dad!" Joey-Mick shouted and jumped to his feet. He banged into the table and almost fell over. The dimes hopped and slid a little.

  Unable to speak, Maggie took the biggest breath she had ever taken in her life.

  "Now, you be getting that money off the table before you lose any of it," Mom said.

  Maggie gathered the dimes back into the sock. She was surprised to find that her fingers were all trembly.

  "Catch, Maggie-o."

  Dad winked at her and tossed her the last dime. And even though her hands were shaky, she caught it just fine.

  THE PLAN, PART TWO

  The pennant race was still a mad scramble among four teams, with the Giants in first place. Maggie had Dad purchase the tickets for the game—the game—a week in advance. With the race so close, she was afraid that all the seats would sell out. And the timing suited Dad, too; he was able to choose seats in the lower deck along the third-base line, in the second-to-last row. Near an exit.

  Seven tickets. Maggie and the family, that was four. And Treecie and Jim and Jim's sister, Carol, three more. George had been invited, but he would be on duty that day. Maggie had worried that her dad might change his mind when they found out George couldn't go, but nothing more had been said about it.

  Carol had told Dad that she would leave her boys at home with her husband.

  "It's gonna be Jim's first real outing," Dad said, "so she figures it'd be better if she could concentrate on helping him. Without the boys there."

  "Did he say anything?" Maggie asked. "I mean, did Carol say he said anything, when she told him about the game?"

  "I don't know," Dad said. "Well, not that she mentioned to me."

  Maybe Jim had said something, or at least responded in some way. Or maybe he hadn't, and he didn't really care, and it was Carol making him go. But Maggie couldn't quite believe that. Jim loved baseball and especially the Giants. Of course he would want to go to a game.

  At any rate, everyone else was excited. Joey-Mick kept talking about catching a foul ball. Treecie was going to bring her camera and take pictures. "Action shots," she said. "They might not come out very good, but it'll be good practice."

  Dad decided on the seating arrangement. "I want kids sitting next to adults," he said. "I'll take the aisle seat. Rose, I want you at the other end. Then Joey-Mick, then Carol and Jim. Maggie-o, you'll sit next to Jim, and Treecie will sit next to me. Everybody got that?"

  Perfect. Treecie on one side of her, Jim on the other, without even asking. They would all be together. In Ebbets Field. At a Dodgers game!

  The morning of the game, five of them—the family plus Treecie—went on ahead to Ebbets Field. Carol and Jim had to drive in from New Jersey, so it was decided that they would park near the firehouse to avoid the traffic downtown. They would pick up their tickets, which would be left at the firehouse. Then they would take the bus and meet the rest of the group at the ballpark.

  Maggie had been disappointed when she learned that Jim and Carol would be arriving at the game separately. But it turned out to be a good thing, because when she first got to the ballpark, there was so much to see—she couldn't possibly have paid attention to Jim at the same time.

  Once off the bus, they joined the streams of fans walking to the park's entrance. Everyone was in a good mood, it seemed. The talk was all about baseball; Maggie felt like even the air she was breathing was full of baseball somehow.

  So many people! Maggie thought in pairs: Men / women; young / old; rich / poor; black / white ... She spotted a priest in his collar and, a few moments later, two nuns in their habits. An enormously fat man, a bunch of really skinny boys. Ladies in suits and hats and gloves; men in worn caps and stained dungarees. It seemed as if the whole world loved baseball.

  Treecie jabbered away at her side; Maggie listened without really hearing. She couldn't speak herself; she just kept looking and looking....

  "Over here," Dad called. He and Joey-Mick led the way, and as they walked side by side in front of her, Maggie noticed how tall her brother had grown lately. He'll be taller than Dad any day now.

  Maggie had expected that Ebbets Field would be special, like magic almost, but she still wasn't prepared for what she saw as they walked into the entrance rotunda.

  Where to look first—at the dazzling height of the ceiling that rose several stories above her head? At the enormous chandelier that had baseball bats for arms and big glass globes shaped like baseballs? At the marble floor, so smooth underfoot, a Dodgers baseball logo in the middle, with even the stitches made out of tiles—who had thought of that? Maggie had never seen a building as wonderful as the rotunda. Only the library came close.

  People were swirling every which way; there didn't seem to be any kind of order to where they were going. But Dad had it all worked out. He led them through the rotunda toward one of the entrances to the stands. Maggie hardly noticed that they had to wait their turn for the crowd of fans to funnel their way through the entrance; she was too busy trying to make sure she saw absolutely everything there was to see.

  Soon they were in what seemed like a maze—ramps and corridors and stairs that kept leading upward. It was darker here, all steel beams and dull brick and concrete floors. After the majesty of the rotunda, Maggie felt a little pinch of disappointment, but she did her best to ignore it.

  "It's like a mystery!" she shouted to Treecie.

  "What?" Treecie shouted back.

  "Never mind." Maggie's thoughts didn't want to come out in words.

  Elbows and shoulders bumped her. Someone stepped on her heel; her shoe almost came off, but she managed to stamp her foot and get it back on. Thank goodness—it would have been scary to have to bend down in that crowd.

  Dad strode up a set of concrete steps, then turned aside to let the rest of them pass. He was grinning, looking right at Maggie. She grinned back, then glanced beyond him.

  One more step, and—

  After the darkness of the corridors, the sunshine was suddenly, blindingly bright. After the cramped and closed-in ramp, a huge free space opened out before her.

  GREEN!

  Maggie gasped. Her heart began pounding, her knees trembling. For a brief breathless moment she thought she might faint.

  The perfect green diamond of the infield, outlined by white lines and base paths so
precise they looked like a painting.... The great expanse of the outfield, trimmed by the warning track and held in by the wall, the grass fresh, smooth, greener-than-emerald, stretching on and on.... And the sky was an enormous bowl of purest blue overhead. Maggie had never seen so much grass and air and space in one place!

  Maggie stared at the field every second as Dad herded them into their seats. She could have looked at that vast open greenness for years and years and never gotten tired of it.

  "Look!" Joey-Mick leaped to his feet. "It's Jackie! Look, over there!" He pointed at a door in one corner of the outfield from which the players were beginning to emerge.

  It was Jackie, all right. And Pee Wee, and Gil, and Campy, and the Duke.... Maggie had seen their pictures in the paper, and she thought they looked exactly like she had imagined they would look, only more so. Not as...fancy, but in a good way. Like ordinary guys who happened to be really good at baseball.

  Then part of the crowd began booing, but it sounded almost friendly. Maggie turned her head to see the Giants coming onto the field. Mixed in with the good-natured boos were some cheers from the Giants' fans scattered throughout the stands.

  Maggie watched as more Giants came out, their gray visiting-team uniforms trimmed with black.

  There.

  Loping across the grass to catch a ball that had been tossed to him by a teammate.

  Number 24. Thanks to the photo Jim had given her, she'd have known him anywhere.

  Willie Mays.

  For the first time since they had arrived at the park, Maggie wondered where Jim and Carol were. She wanted to turn to Jim's empty seat and shout, "Jim—d'you see him? It's Willie!"

  She looked behind her at the steps to see if they were coming. Why were they so late? The game would be starting soon—they might miss the first pitch....

  But in a moment Maggie was distracted again—Russ Meyer, the Dodgers' pitcher, was warming up along the foul line; the umpires came out; the teams began making their way toward their dugouts.