Storming Heaven

by Denise Giardina

  “Damn!” Isom said. “That there is an outfielder’s arm. But let’s try a couple more grounders.”

  Two balls skittered past me, one right between my legs. “Shit!” I muttered.

  Then there come a ball that jumped halfway to me, ran on, and leaped again just before it reached me. I followed it with my eye, poked my glove at it and caught it with a smack that set my palm to tingling.

  “Good!” Isom yelled. “Had it all the way!”

  I wiggled my shoulders around, cocky-like, and turned the ball over in my hand. It was hard but warm. Throwed with enough force it could kill a man if it hit him in the head. But I had stopped it, damn straight I had. I admired the smoothness of its skin.

  “Back up and I’ll hit you some flies,” Isom said.

  I stood high upon that centerfield and felt like I was riding the hill, a frozen wave that would crush everything in its path once it was unleashed. I learned to judge the fly balls and seldom missed one. Then I throwed the ball to home plate, pretending they was a coal operator standing there and the baseball sliced him right in half.

  I took batting practice, swung viciously.

  “Level it out,” Isom said. “Smooth it out. You aint tryin to bash in somebody’s head. Watch the ball in.”

  After while he couldn’t get one past me. I didn’t care where the ball went, over Isom’s head or straight up in the air. It was soothing to beat on that ball.

  “You swing at ever damn thing,” Isom complained. “Real pitcher would tie you in knots.” But he sounded happy. Then I hit three straight pitches over the left field fence.

  “C.J., you got to play,” he pleaded.

  “Aint I too old to start this?”

  “Thirty-six,” Isom said. “We got two guys older than you. You can play a few year.”

  They give me number 33, a gray flannel uniform trimmed in red. We are the Annadel Redlegs, named after Cincinnati. My first year in the Independent League I hit twenty-five homers. Little boys followed me around town, and I’d set them down and tell them about how the coal companies stole the land.

  By 1918 folks was wondering who had the best baseball team in the Levisa coalfield—Davidson of the Miners League or Annadel of the Independent League. (Actually, I reckoned the best team was the Justice Cardinals of the Negro League. We played them in pre-season games and they took three out of four.) Lytton Davidson wasn’t happy with the idea of our teams playing each other. He had put too much money into his ballteam to be embarrassed by Annadel. Davidson was from Philadelphia and was buddies with the owner of the Athletics. He hired on a full-time manager, Tiny Sanders, a former A’s coach who washed out on account of his drinking. A Davidson miner who played ball got special treatment, like outside work or a foreman’s job down in the mine. Mario Angelelli, the legendary Davidson shortstop, had not seen the inside of a coal mine in ten year, and his son, Carmello, the second baseman, was a section boss even though he was only eighteen. This was to be Carmello’s last year in the Miners League. Tiny Sanders had arranged a tryout with the Philadelphia Athletics and they agreed to pick him up for the 1919 season.

  The main reason Davidson didn’t want to play us was politics. Like all the coal operators, Lytton Davidson hated Annadel. “Redlegs” was too tame a name for us, he said, because we was red right up to the tops of our heads. Besides that, it was humiliating to see Negroes and white men playing on the same team, and to risk seeing white men beat by coloreds. Sam Gore was our best pitcher, Doc Booker played first base, and five other Negroes was on the team as well. Davidson never would have played the game if there hadn’t been such a clamor from the fans. All the American Coal Company miners wanted to play us bad, and Davidson didn’t like to look a coward, so in late August of 1918, after we both had won our leagues again, a game was set. Davidson wouldn’t come to Annadel to play. That’s all right, we said, we’ll beat you anywhere.

  The Davidson field is up Marcums Branch, not a quarter of a mile from where our cabin set. We’d had a canebrake in that field, I recalled, and a molasses wheel. It all looked so different now, with the ballfield, the electric wires, the houses climbing the holler and on out of sight. Lytton Davidson, the man who stole it all, set in the dugout and watched while his boys took warm-up. He was short, with a fleshy, babyish face. I tried to feel hate for him, but it didn’t seem worth the effort, like trying mightily to despise a worm. You aint got to hate somebody in order to whip them.

  Nearly everybody I knowed in the world was at that ballgame, including Clabe Lloyd, who coughed and spat with every other breath. He stood with Talcott behind the outfield bleachers.

  “How’s it goin, Clabe?”

  “Hit aint, but I aint complainin.” His laugh ended in a wheeze.

  “Workin hard?” I thought what a stupid question it was, but everybody always asked it.

  “Hell, yes. That there youngun I got for a buddy aint as good to work with as this one here.” He put a purplish hand on Talcott’s shoulder. “Oh, Kerwin tries hard. I aint complainin. But you know.”

  “Kerwin here?”

  “Him and Mommy wouldnt come,” Talcott said. “Ball games is the Devil’s playground, Mommy says.”

  “I seen that preacher Freeman from Felco over by third base,” Clabe said.

  “He lives down the row from me,” Talcott said. “He dont believe in Hell so he can do anything he wants to. Wonder ifn we can git him to save Mommy?”

  “You cant git saved but oncet,” Clabe said.

  “Kerwin been saved six times,” Talcott answered. “He gits saved ever time nobody else does. Says it hurts the preacher’s feelins ifn nobody answers the altar call.”

  Talcott was just back from the war, where he’d spent six months in the trenches. He hadn’t changed much, and when I asked him once what it was like over there, he shrugged and claimed they was nothing he hadn’t seen before, and that a German’s head was a lot bigger target than a squirrel’s.

  “Yall better git a seat,” I said. “Them bleachers is fillin up fast.”

  “Wont be much to see,” Talcott said. “Davidson will kick your ass.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Hey, I know. And I aint happy neither, cause I bet five dollars on you yesterday. Pricie like to clawed my eyes out over it. But Daddy here told me this morning they done brung in a ringer.”

  “What?”

  He smirked, pleased to be the first to give me the bad news.

  “Look at number 21. Aint never seen him before, have you?”

  “Mickey O’Malley,” Clabe said. “Sits the bench for the Philadelphy Athletics. Power hitter. Two homers this year as a pinch hitter.”

  “They cant do that!”

  “He’s a coal operator,” Talcott said. “He can do anything he damn well pleases.”

  “Davidson claims that feller is on the payroll,” Clabe said. “Goin to dig coal first thing tomorry. Course he’ll likely come down with a sore back from this here ball game and quit the mines.”

  “Me, I’m goin under the bleachers here with my buddies, drink a little moonshine, and kiss my five bucks goodbye.” Talcott patted my back sympathetically and went off with his daddy.

  I told the boys. You aint never heard such cussing.

  “We got to protest,” Doc said. “We got to leave the field if that ringer plays.”

  “That’s what he want,” Sam Gore said. “Then he can say Annadel is scairt of Davidson. He can say niggers is scairt of white men.”

  “But you cant pitch to no goddamn Philadelphy Athletic,” Isom moaned. “He’ll take you so far up the creek you wont never git back.”

  “He’s just one man,” I said. “He gits four bats, maybe five. Ifn they aint nobody on base, we can walk him intentional. If they are men on base, well, we can score seven or eight on them, cant we?” I looked around, clapped my hands. “Well, cant we? We got eighteen offn Iaeger! We can get six offn Davidson.”

  “Hell yes!” Isom cried. “Hell yes!”

  They wa
s nothing for it but to play them. The bleachers was packed behind home plate and in the outfield, and the fans was four deep along the fence down the baselines. The Justice Clarion had sent a sportswriter and a photographer. Our families was there, Ermel and Annadel, Violet with Gladys and Evelyn, Sam’s wife in the colored section in left field.

  We come to bat first, and I knew we was shook. Isom and Sam struck out, and Antoine Jones, one of our town policemen, popped up to Mario Angelelli at shortstop. We was a gloomy bunch when we took the field in the bottom of the first.

  Sam walked the first man, Carmello Angelelli, and the Davidson fans sensed a rout. Mario Angelelli bunted back to the mound and Sam throwed him out, but the runner advanced. Joe Tibbs, who usually batted cleanup for Davidson, swaggered to the plate and waggled his bat. But he smacked a line drive right to Doc at first, and Doc almost caught Angelelli off the bag at second. That brung up Mickey O’Malley.

  They was no swagger to him. He was all business. He took a practice cut, squeezed the rosin bag, tapped the toe of each shoe with his bat, and stepped right in. Even from centerfield I could tell he had two inches and fifty pounds on me. The crowd hushed. Sam turned and looked at us, and I knew he would pitch to him. I hunched over and talked.

  Hum tha hum tha hard baby hum tha

  The pleadings rose from all over the field like foreign folks praying to some outlandish god. Sam reared back, his red cap bright in the sunlight.

  O’Malley rode the first pitch over the left centerfield fence. It bounced off the railroad track across the creek and disappeared in the bushes on the mountainside.

  OK Sam OK only two only two

  The Davidson right fielder popped up to third and we retreated to the dugout, shaken. We poked each other to make sure we was still yet alive.

  “C.J. up!” Isom hollered.

  I stepped in to face the Davidson pitcher, Froggy Lester. Froggy was all right. He worked at Felco oncet and come to Annadel to drink his beer and shoot his pool before he moved to Davidson. I pretended he was Lytton Davidson. He worked me to three and two, and I sent a high fastball over the left fielder’s head and all the way to the fence. I went into second standing up. Acrost the way I heard Violet shrieking above the noise of the other Annadel fans. She stood and waved her arms. I raised my cap.

  Doc sacrificed me to third and a long fly by Ralph Day brung me on home. We couldn’t do nothing else and trailed 2–1 going into the bottom of the second. But scoring had relieved the pressure, like puncturing a boil. Sam settled down and started in to pitch the game of his life. I never seen him throw so hard before or since. He struck out one in the second, and three straight in the third. When O’Malley come up in the fourth, Sam took a while with his pitch. O’Malley went after the first one again, but this time it carried high into the deepest part of centerfield and seemed to drift in the wind. I got under it, leaped, caught it as I banged against the fence. Lytton Davidson stood up in the dugout, stuck his hands in his pockets, and turned his back. I held the ball high over my head and brought it off the field like a trophy of war. Isom leaped on my back.

  “Holy shit! What a catch!”

  “We may win this jump!” Antoine Jones bounced up and down.

  “Well,” I drawled, “that’s one quarter of Mister Davidson’s investment that he done lost.”

  “It was inside,” Sam gloated. “He got trouble inside. His wrists aint strong, I can tell.”

  We all laughed because we knew, especially Sam, that O’Malley had hit the hell out of the ball, that the wind held it up and even then it had been close.

  Still we was stirred up enough to make our move in the fifth.

  With one out and one on, Isom hit a home run over the right field fence and we went ahead 3–2. Then Sam singled and Antoine doubled him home. I flied out but Antoine went to third and Doc hit one over the first baseman’s head. 5–2. Tiny yanked Froggy and a new pitcher warmed up.

  Talcott Lloyd pushed his way through the crowd near the dugout.

  “Isom! C.J.! You’re a-doin it! Shit, you’re fuckin em ten ways to sundown! Shit!”

  He reached out and grasped our hands.

  “Ever damn miner from Felco is rootin for Annadel! You better believe it! Davidson dont tell us what to do!”

  “You wasnt so cocksure before the game,” I teased.

  “Hell, I didnt know you’d hit Froggy like that. Damn, you boys owned him.”

  “Come on and sit the bench,” Isom said. “Bring us luck.”

  “Naw! Me and my buddies is workin somethin up. We got our pistols with us, and after you win, we’re goin to shoot em off. Scare the hell outen old man Davidson.”

  “He’ll fire your ass!” I said, alarmed.

  “Dont care! I’ll kick his.”

  We watched him sort his way back through the crowd.

  “Damn fool crazy when he’s drinkin,” Isom said. “And sometimes when he aint drinkin.”

  “He worse since he come back from France?”

  “Let’s just say he dont seem to care about much.” Isom spat a brown stream of tobacco juice. “One thing he aint done yet is beat Pricie. Long as that’s so, he’s still yet my kin by marriage.”

  Sam Gore tired in the seventh. I could tell the zip was gone offn his fastball, and he hung a curveball that Carmello Angelelli slashed for a triple. Carmello’s daddy homered and it was 5–4, Annadel. Then Joe Tibbs took four straight balls and trotted to first base.

  We gathered around Sam, who kicked at the mound and wouldn’t look at any of us. His eyes glistened with tears.

  “Had to expect it,” Doc consoled him. “You cant shut down them Angelellis forever.”

  “Arm’s hurtin,” Sam muttered. “It’s weary.”

  “Better bring in Antoine,” said Ralph Day, our catcher.

  “Jesus!” said Antoine. “O’Malley up.”

  “Wait!” Isom held up his hands. “I got an idea. Let Sam pitch to O’Malley.”

  “You crazy?” We screamed it together.

  “But look here,” Isom insisted. “We know O’Malley can hit good pitchin. What we dont know is, can he hit bad pitchin. I bet he cant. He been in the majors too long.”

  “Play ball!” the umpire cried.

  The Davidson fans cheered, clapped impatiently, rhythmically. A group in the corner of the first base bleachers chanted, “Choke niggers choke! Choke niggers choke!”

  “You want him, Sam?” Isom asked.

  “Sure I want him.”

  “Give him change-ups. I mean real change-ups, like a girl would throw. Put an arch in it, drop it in.”

  “Sam,” Doc said. “You dont have to prove nothin. Walk him if you want to.”

  “And move Tibbs into scorin position?” Sam shook his head.

  The umpire strolled toward the mound.

  “Let’s break it up, boys,” Isom said. He swatted Sam on the rump.

  I backed up all the way to the fence. Sam stood watching O’Malley, his arms dangling at his sides. The fans still chanted. O’Malley stepped out of the box, came back.

  Sam didn’t lunge off the mound. He took a tiny step, lofted the ball in a high, slow arch. It looked like it had been thrown underhand. As far away as I was, I seen O’Malley’s mouth hang open.

  “Strike!” the umpire cried.

  The second pitch was just the same. O’Malley watched it, hungered for it, his shoulders bunched tight and the bat held high. He started to swing, realized it was too soon, checked, then swung half-hearted. The ball was already past him.

  The stands was in an uproar. Lytton Davidson charged out of the dugout but was persuaded to return by Tiny Sanders. Then Sam Gore reached down for one last fastball.

  He blew it right by him.

  O’Malley went down on his knees like he was praying. Sam ran straight for the dugout and we all piled in after him, hollering and carrying on. The veins of Sam’s forehead stuck out.

  “You see that white boy beat the air!” he yelled. “I struck me out a Ph
iladelphy Athletic!”

  Sam went to bat and promptly struck out himself, but he didn’t mind. We added a run in the top of the ninth to go up 6–4. But in the bottom of the inning things started falling apart.

  Antoine replaced Sam on the mound and had control problems. He had walked two in the eighth but got out of the inning without any runs scored. In the ninth he walked the leadoff batter, then give up two singles. It was 6–5, two on, no outs. Carmello Angelelli flied out to center, and my throw held the runners. But Antoine walked Mario Angelelli to load the bases. Joe Tibbs come to the plate. The fans rose to their feet. Ralph Day walked to the mound to settle Antoine down, went back to his squat.

  Antoine struck Joe out.

  That left two outs and O’Malley. Ralph called a conference.

  “Walk in the tyin run, or take a chance on him cleanin the bases.”

  “I aint walkin in no tyin run,” Antoine declared. “We play to win, dont we?”

  “Hell, yes,” Isom said. “Let’s go for it.”

  Back in centerfield, I wet my finger, held it up. The wind was still blowing in, a hopeful sign.

  Ay batter ay batter batter batter

  Antoine threw two balls, both high and outside. The Davidson fans commenced their clapping.

  The next pitch, a curve ball, hung like it was drapes and O’Malley was on it. There was a crack, and the ball towered over the outfield. The wind had it again but it would do no good this time.

  A second crack. The ball disappeared. Black fragments sprayed in all directions. Something struck my upturned face and fell to my shoulder. I plucked at it, held it up. It was a singed strip of cowhide.

  The crowd was stunned into silence. I heard a high whoop beyond the outfield fence.

  “Ball game’s over!”

  Talcott Lloyd held his pistol high over his head. He whooped again.

  “Ball game’s over, Mr. Davidson! You dont run things no more!”

  All hell broke loose. I was scared that the Davidson police would shoot Talcott, but when I leaped the fence I saw him toss down the pistol. He spied me and yelled, “C.J.! Did you see that shot? Them’s ten to one odds, brother! Hot damn!”