Shoeless Joe & Me

by Dan Gutman

  Joe and Katie looked at me blankly.

  “What’s a commissioner?” Katie asked me.

  “There’s no commissioner of baseball?” I asked weakly.

  They both shook their heads. That’s when I realized that the first baseball commissioner took office after the Black Sox Scandal. In fact, it was the Black Sox Scandal that prompted baseball to appoint a commissioner to keep the game free of gambling.

  “And they say Ah’mdumb,” Joe muttered.

  “You could tell Commy,” Katie suggested. I remembered that Commy was Charles Comiskey, the owner of the White Sox.

  “Commy’s a crook,” chirped the bird. “Cheap Commy.”

  “Commy ain’t gonna do nothin’,” Joe said, hanging his head.

  “You have to try, Joe!” Katie urged. She stuffed the money back into the envelope and stuffed the envelope into Joe’s hand. Then she opened the door and gave him a shove. “Go! Tell him where you got this money!”

  “Can I come?” I asked.

  “Take the boy with you,” Katie told Joe. “I need to go to sleep.”

  Reluctantly, Joe took the envelope and put it in the pocket of his bathrobe. He tightened the robe around himself and we left the room.

  The Sinton Hotel must have been pretty big, because Joe led me up four flights of stairs and down a hallway that must have had at least twenty rooms. The hallways were empty except for us. A few dim lightbulbs lit the way. It occurred to me that fluorescent bulbs probably didn’t exist yet.

  “What room is your ma and pa stayin’ in, Stosh?” Joe asked me.

  “My ma and pa aren’t here.”

  “Well, where are they?”

  “In Louisville.”

  “You mean to say you came all the way from Louisville by yourself to see the Series?”

  “Yup.”

  “You got any money?”

  “My mom gave me twenty dollars.”

  “That oughta hold you for a spell. Where were you plannin’ on sleepin’ tonight, Stosh?”

  “I guess I didn’t think about it,” I admitted.

  “Stosh, you are dumb. Every hotel in Cincinnati is full ’cause of the Series. People are sleepin’ in the parks.”

  “So I’ll sleep in a park.”

  “Nothin’ doin’,” Joe said. “The park ain’t safe for a kid your age. You’ll stay in the room with Katie and me.”

  “Okay, if you say so.”

  Finally, Joe stopped at Room 703 and knocked lightly at the door. There was no answer.

  “Ah guess Commy ain’t in,” he said, turning to leave.

  “Maybe he’s asleep,” I advised. “I think you have to knock harder.”

  Joe gave the door a good rap and stood there awkwardly. After a few seconds we heard some rustling inside, and the door opened. An older, gray-haired man blinked his eyes in the light of the hallway. He was wearing flannel pajamas, and he had a big nose.

  “Mr. Comiskey, sir—”

  “Jackson, what are you doing up this late?” Comiskey snapped, like a teacher scolding a kid he caught playing hookey. “You should be getting your rest for tomorrow. I’m counting on your bat to beat the Reds. And who’s this kid?”

  “My nephew, sir. There’s somethin’ you oughta know, Mr. Comiskey,” Joe tried to explain. “The Series ain’t on the square. Some of the boys sold out.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!” Comiskey thundered. “My boys would never sell me out. You woke me up to tell me this nonsense?”

  “But, sir, Chick gave me this envelope. Look, it’s stuffed with money.”

  “I don’t care if it’s stuffed with macaroni! Go to bed, Jackson. And send that kid home.”

  “What should Ah do with the money, sir?”

  “Buy yourself some brains!”

  Then he slammed the door in Joe’s face.

  14

  Scrap Paper

  WHEN JOE AND I GOT BACK TO HIS HOTEL ROOM, KATIE was already asleep. The room was dark, and I couldn’t see a thing. Joe pulled some matches out of his bathrobe pocket and lit a candle. He placed it on the dresser. Then he pulled a chair over so it was about four feet from the candle. He sat on the chair and stared at the flickering flame in silence.

  I wasn’t sure what to do. Joe was sort of an unusual guy. Maybe this was some kind of religious ceremony to him. For all I knew, maybe he slept sitting in a chair. Maybe he had trouble sleeping, and staring at a candle helped him nod off. I was feeling pretty tired myself, but I didn’t think that crawling into the bed next to Joe’s wife would be the right thing to do.

  “What are you doing, Joe?” I finally whispered when my curiosity got the better of me.

  “What’s it look like?” he replied. “Ah’m lookin’ at this candle. Sheesh, are you dumb about some stuff!”

  “I mean why are you looking at the candle?”

  “It sharpens my battin’ eye,” he said, covering one eye with his hand. “Half an hour every night. Fifteen minutes with one eye and fifteen minutes with the other.”

  I couldn’t argue with the guy. His lifetime batting average was .356. One year he hit .408. Maybe all ballplayers should hold bats up in the air for a half an hour and stare at candles.

  “Where do you want me to sleep, Joe?”

  “There oughta be some blankets and pillows in the dresser drawer,” he said, without moving his gaze away from the candle. “You can spread ’em out on the floor next to the bed.”

  I did as he said, making a little bed for myself. I took off my clothes except for my underwear and hung them carefully on the chair. I would have to wear them the next day. Then I went into the bathroom to pee and brush my teeth.

  I hadn’t thought to bring my toothbrush with me, so I just squeezed some of Joe and Katie’s toothpaste onto my finger and rubbed my teeth the best that I could. Instead of Crest or Colgate, they had some stuff called Dr. Sheffield’s Creme Dentifrice. It tasted awful.

  When I came out of the bathroom, Joe was still staring at the candle. I slipped into my homemade bed. Even though I was tired, I didn’t want to go to sleep yet. I couldn’t get past the fact that I was with the great Shoeless Joe Jackson the night before the first game of the 1919 World Series.

  “Is it okay to talk to you while you do that?” I whispered, trying not to wake Katie.

  “It don’t bother me none.”

  “What are you going to do tomorrow night?”

  “Ah dunno,” Joe replied. “You wanna go see a movie or somethin’?”

  “Isn’t the first game of the World Series tomorrow night?”

  Joe shook his head, almost losing his gaze on the candle.

  “And they say Ah’m dumb.” He snorted. “How could we see the ball if we played at night? Don’t you know nothin’?”

  I smacked my head with my hand. How could I be so stupid? There were no night games in 1919!

  “What I meant was, what are you going to do in the game tomorrow?” I corrected myself.

  “Only thing Ah can do—try my durndest. Ah’ll win it by myself if Ah have to.”

  I lay back on my pillow thinking things over. Watching Eight Men Out and talking to Flip Valentini had led me to believe Shoeless Joe Jackson had willingly taken the money from the gamblers. Now I knew that was wrong. He didn’t ask for any money to throw the World Series, and he turned it down when it was offered to him. When the money was literally thrown at him, he tried to give it to the owner of the White Sox and tell him what was going on.

  Shoeless Joe had done all he could. If the Black Sox Scandal was going to be stopped, I would have to stop it myself the next morning.

  “Can I ask you a personal question, Joe?”

  “Shoot,” he replied, still staring intently at the candle.

  “Why didn’t you learn how to read?”

  Joe’s left hand clenched into a fist.

  “There were eight kids in my family,” he said softly. “Six boys and two girls. Ah was the oldest. My daddy didn’t ha
ve no money. He worked in a cotton mill. He needed my help. Ah was workin’ in the mill when Ah was eight years old. There was no time for school. None a my family never had schoolin’.”

  “But you could learn now,” I suggested.

  “Ah play ball,” he stated simply. “It don’t take no book learnin’ or school stuff to help a fellow play ball. Don’t need to read to hit the curve. Don’t need to write to throw a guy out at the plate or catch a line drive. Ah make more money playin’ ball than a whole lotta folks who can read ’n’ write.”

  “What about after your baseball career is over?”

  Joe quickly turned away from the candle and looked at me. There was a trace of anger in his eyes.

  “Look, Ah’m only thirty,” he said. “Ah got ten good years left if Ah stay healthy. Ah got a long way to go.”

  I knew something about him that Joe didn’t. Within a year, he would be thrown out of professional baseball for the rest of his life. His career would be over very soon. I knew he didn’t want to hear that.

  “But if you learned to read and write—”

  “You think Ah like havin’ everybody think Ah’m stupid?” he snapped. “You think Ah don’t notice when Chick told Katie that maybe Ah don’t know how much money twenty grand is ’cause Ah’m too dumb? You think Ah don’t know Commy wouldn’t listen to me ’cause he thinks Ah’m dumb? You think Ah don’t hear the stuff people shout from the stands? You think Ah like bein’ humiliated? Ah hate it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was only trying to help.”

  “Ah tried to learn,” Joe said, more quietly. He hung his head a little. “Katie tried to teach me. Ah just couldn’t do it. Here, look at this.”

  I crawled out of my homemade bed and went to where Joe was sitting. He opened the drawer and took out a fountain pen and some sheets of paper. All of the sheets were blank except for one. The one that wasn’t blank looked like this:

  My eyes opened wide. It looked exactly like the signature Flip Valentini had shown me in his book of famous autographs. Block letters. All capitals. The A was the same. The loop in the J was the same. I remembered that Flip had told me Joe Jackson’s signature was one of the rarest in the world and that it was worth a half million dollars.

  I held my breath as Joe picked up the pen awkwardly and began to write on a blank sheet of paper. He copied the letters slowly and carefully, sticking his tongue out as he labored over the paper. I could have written the words in a few seconds, but it took Joe at least ten minutes. He looked like an artist working on a painting.

  When he was finished, he held the paper closer to the candle so he could see it better.

  “Awful,” he muttered, taking the sheet and sticking the corner of it into the flame.

  “Don’t burn it up!” I shouted, pushing his hand away from the candle. The tip of the page was charred, but it didn’t ignite. Katie rolled over in the bed behind us but didn’t wake up.

  “Why not?” Joe asked, surprised.

  “You’ll set off the smoke detectors,” I explained.

  “The what?”

  Oops! I had made another dumb mistake. There were no smoke detectors in 1919. Buildings used to burn down all the time back then.

  “You might start a fire,” I explained.

  Joe shook his head, as if to say I was nuts. He dropped the piece of paper into the little trash can next to the desk. As it fluttered into the basket all I could think of was that he had just thrown away a half million dollars. I tried not to react.

  “That didn’t look so bad,” I said, encouragingly. “Try it again.”

  Joe took another sheet of paper and started over. Again, he painstakingly copied the autograph letter by letter. He didn’t like that one very much either and tossed it in the trash.

  I was counting in my head. That was one million dollars sitting in the garbage. I felt my heart racing in my chest.

  “You’re doing great,” I said gently. “Why don’t you try another one?”

  Joe got as far as the word “best.” When he messed up the T, he crumpled up the piece of paper in disgust and threw it away.

  “Oh, heck, Ah just ain’t no good at this stuff, and that’s all there is to it. Everything they write about me in the newspapers is lies anyway, so what’s the point in learnin’ how to read or write?”

  Joe blew out the candle and climbed into bed next to his sleeping wife. I slipped into my bed on the floor.

  “Good night, Joe.”

  “G’night, Stosh.”

  I lay there for a long time thinking. Not more than five feet away from me there was a wastebasket with the equivalent of a million dollars in it!

  I could buy a lot of stuff with a million dollars. A new house and car for my mom. A motorcycle for my dad. He’s always wanted one. And for me, well, I could pretty much clean out a sporting goods store.

  Should I take the autographs out of the garbage? I lay there thinking. Those autographs didn’t belong to me. They didn’t belong to anybody. They were garbage. Joe Jackson didn’t offer them to me. He threw them away. His intention was to burn them. Maybe it would be wrong for me to take them.

  Or maybe it would be right. I mean, who would it hurt if I kept a couple of pieces of paper that were in the garbage? Nobody. Technically, I wouldn’t be stealing anything. It would be more like scavenging or picking up a penny somebody had dropped in the street. I could always get Joe’s permission in the morning. Besides, I told myself, he never told me that I couldn’t have the signatures.

  It seemed so long ago that I had been hired to clean out the attic of Amanda Young, the old lady who used to live next door to me. That was where I found the valuable Honus Wagner card I had used to take my first trip through time. Back then, I thought long and hard about whether the right thing to do was for me to keep the card for myself or give it back to Miss Young. In the end, I decided to give it back to her.

  Once again, I had a decision to make. I lay there for a long time trying to decide what was the right thing to do.

  Joe’s breathing got slower, and in a few minutes he began to snore. Joe and Katie were asleep.

  I crept on my hands and knees in the dark until I was able to find the trash can. I picked out the two scraps of paper and put them inside the pocket of my pants.

  15

  Wake-up Call

  THE FIRST THING I NOTICED WHEN I WOKE UP IN THE morning was that my nose wasn’t running anymore. I was going to take one of my flu pills, but decided not to. I was all better.

  The second thing I noticed was the sound of the telephone ringing. I looked at Joe and Katie’s bed. It was empty. The shower was running in the bathroom, so I figured one or both of them were in there. I picked up the phone.

  “This is your wake-up call,” a gruff voice barked before I could even say hello.

  “Huh?” I asked, glancing at the clock on the night table. It was nine o’clock.

  “Where’s Jackson?” the voice on the phone asked.

  It occurred to me that this might be one of the gamblers who had locked me in the closet.

  “Jackson’s not here,” I said, trying to disguise my voice.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m his nephew,” I lied. “Who is this?”

  “Never mind who I am,” the guy said. “You just tell your uncle Joe to make sure everything goes according to the plan today. Or else.”

  “Or else what?” I asked.

  Click. The guy had hung up.

  I had a pretty good idea of what he meant, and I didn’t like it. The guy must be some gambler putting his money on the Cincinnati Reds to win. “The plan today” had to be that the White Sox were going to lose the first game of the World Series. If they won, the guy on the phone was going to lose money. And if he lost money, he was going to do something bad to Joe. That’s what “or else” had to mean.

  I put the phone down, disturbed. But my mood brightened considerably when the bathroom door opened and Katie walked through it. She was drying
her hair with a towel. Otherwise, she had nothing on. I realized that I was still in my underwear.

  “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!”

  Katie hastily wrapped the towel around herself.

  “What are you still doing here?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry!” I said, feeling my face flush with embarrassment. I started pulling on my clothes. “Didn’t Joe tell you? He said it was okay for me to stay over last night. I slept on the floor on the other side of the bed. I guess you didn’t notice me.”

  “How come you always seem to be around when I’m naked?” Katie asked, somewhat amused.

  “Just lucky, I guess,” I replied. “Where’s Joe?”

  Katie looked around the room.

  “Black Betsy isn’t here. Joe probably walked over to Redland Park. He likes to get to the ballpark early for batting practice.”

  “I’ve got to talk with him,” I said, tucking my shirt in. I rushed out the door before she could ask me why.

  The doorman in the hotel lobby told me how to get to Redland Park. It was less than a mile from the Sinton Hotel. The street was already clogged with people, and cars belching smoke. There was a sense of excitement in the air. I glanced at a newspaper a guy was selling on the corner.

  About five blocks from the hotel, there was a park. Just like Joe had said, people were camped out there. Some of them were cooking breakfast over little stoves. Others were still sleeping.

  At one corner of the park was a baseball diamond. A bunch of boys around my age were tossing a ball back and forth. I went a little closer to get a better look.

  That’s when I saw Joe.

  He was in his street clothes, playing “pepper” with the boys. I had heard of the game, but I’d never played it. In my time, nobody played pepper.

  Joe had Black Betsy in his hand, and six or seven boys were lined up about ten yards away from him. A boy would flip a ball to Joe, and he would slap a one-hopper back at the line of boys. Whichever one fielded the one-hopper would toss it back to Joe, who would slap it again. Only a few of the boys were wearing mitts, but they were pretty good fielders anyway.