Roberto & Me

by Dan Gutman

  “Do you know that the Constitution says that only Congress has the power to declare war?” Peter asked me. “And they never did! So tell me why 16,000 American kids were killed in Vietnam last year?”

  “16,000?” Sunrise said. “Are you kidding?”

  “No!” Peter said. “Look it up. I did.”

  “He always does this,” Wendy told us.

  “16,000 guys died, most of ’em under 21 years old!” Peter continued. “The whole war is a lie, y’know! North Vietnam didn’t attack us. They’re no threat to us. Does anybody even know why we’re fighting them?”

  “Because they’re Communists?” Sunrise asked.

  “So what?” Peter shouted. “It’s just a different form of government. The Vietnamese aren’t hurting anybody. Let ’em be Commies if they wanna be Commies!”

  “Peter could get drafted into the army any day,” Wendy explained. “If that happens, they’ll probably send him to Vietnam. So we’re fighting to end the war.”

  “It’s not just about me!” Peter said passionately. “The whole world is exploding before our eyes, man! They shot Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy last year. And did you hear about that guy Charles Manson who went nuts and murdered a bunch of people last week? It’s insane! We have discrimination against blacks, women, and gays. People are starving, homeless, can’t afford to go to a doctor when they’re sick. And what’s the government spending billions of dollars on? Sending astronauts to the moon!”

  “Peter, please calm down,” Wendy said.

  “Did you see that on TV a few weeks ago?” Peter continued. “Neil Armstrong stands on the moon and says it’s a giant leap for mankind. I’ll tell you what would be a giant leap for mankind—”

  “Enough already!” Wendy shouted. “You’re bumming me out, man!”

  Peter managed to calm himself down, but he wasn’t finished.

  “All I’m saying is, we’ve got infinite possibilities right here on this planet, man. We don’t need to go to the moon. Our generation is gonna change everything. We’re gonna end the war. We’re gonna get Nixon impeached. Just you wait and see. Peace and love aren’t just slogans, man. It’s gonna be a revolution. You two should come with us to San Francisco and be part of it.”

  Peter handed my baseball card back to me and said, “Or you can go watch Roberto Clemente hit a ball with a stick.”

  We all fell silent. Peter picked up the Nintendo again and started fiddling with it. I wasn’t about to go to California for an antiwar rally. But maybe he had a point. Maybe it was selfish of me to devote my energy to saving the life of one baseball player when there were so many bigger problems in the world.

  I had never taken hippies seriously before. It had never occurred to me that they were anything more than silly cartoon characters who said “Groovy” all the time and walked around with peace signs, flowers, and funny clothes. To me and my friends, they were a joke, a Halloween costume.

  As I was thinking about all these things, I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew, Wendy was shaking me awake.

  “Rise and shine!”

  I don’t know how long I slept. It had to have been a long time, because it was dark out. Peter was in the driver’s seat now, so they must have made a stop somewhere. Sunrise was still asleep, her head resting on my shoulder. It felt nice.

  The van pulled to a stop.

  “Where are we?” Sunrise asked, stretching.

  “At a rest stop outside Cincinnati,” Peter said. “We’ve been on the road for 11 hours.”

  We used the restrooms, and I asked Peter if he would be able to drop me off at Crosley Field, where the Cincinnati Reds played. He said he didn’t know where it was.

  “Do you have a GPS?” I asked.

  “A what?”

  “Forget it.”

  We piled back into the van, and Sunrise was able to direct us to Crosley Field, which was only about a mile from her house.

  “Can we drive you home?” Wendy asked Sunrise.

  “I’m not sure I’m ready to face my parents yet,” she said. “Can I hang with you a while, Stosh? Until I get my courage up?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I saw the big CROSLEY sign, and we pulled over in front of the ballpark. Peter and Wendy got out of the van to say good-bye.

  “Last chance,” Peter said. “You can still come with us to Frisco.”

  I shook my head. “Thanks, anyway,” I said.

  Peter and Wendy hugged both of us. They had been incredibly nice, driving us all the way to Cincinnati.

  “Hey, man, I gotta ask you,” Peter said, “if you’ve really seen the future, what’s gonna happen? Did we change the world? Will the war end? Did all our protesting make a difference?”

  I had been expecting him to ask that question. I wasn’t sure how to answer it. Of course the world changed since 1969. A lot. But I’m no genius. I didn’t know what caused the changes. Maybe hippies like Peter and Wendy were a part of it. Or maybe the changes would have taken place no matter what they did. Who really knows for sure?

  “The war is going to end,” I finally told them. “President Nixon is going to resign. The women’s movement and gay rights movement are going to really take off. And America is going to elect a black president in 2008.”

  “No way!” Peter said. “Far-out!”

  Peter and Wendy were ecstatic, jumping up and down and marveling at how their generation was actually going to make a difference and change the world for the better.

  I went to give Peter a high five and he went to give me a low five. We met somewhere in the middle.

  “I bet after this the government will never get away with starting a senseless, undeclared war against some country that was no threat to us,” Peter said. “No way America is gonna make that mistake again, huh?”

  “Uh…” I said, “listen, I gotta go find Roberto Clemente.”

  “Peace, man,” Peter said, giving me a bear hug.

  “Hey, Stosh, I want to give you something,” Wendy told me. She climbed in the van and came back out with a string of love beads and a headband. Wendy put the beads around my neck while Sunrise adjusted the headband.

  “There,” Wendy said. “Now you look like one of us.”

  I thanked them, and Sunrise took my hand. We were walking away from the van when Peter rolled down the window.

  “Hey, one more thing,” he called out. “If you really know the future, who’s gonna win the World Series this year?”

  The 1969 World Series. I tried to remember my baseball history. Oh, yeah. That was a famous one.

  “The Miracle Mets,” I told him. “They’re gonna beat Baltimore in five games.”

  “The Mets?” Peter said, bursting out in laughter. “You gotta be kidding me! I mean, I can believe Nixon resigning. I can believe there will be a black president. But the Mets winning the World Series? You must be joking! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

  I could still hear him cackling as the van pulled away.

  10

  Who’s on First?

  SUNRISE AND I WALKED AROUND THE PERIMETER OF CROSLEY Field, looking for an open ticket booth. It occurred to me that this was sort of like a date. I was going on my first real date with a girl!

  There was crowd noise coming from inside the ballpark. The game must have already begun. The first few ticket booths we walked past were already closed.

  “What’s the future like?” Sunrise suddenly asked me. “Do you have, like, a jet pack and stuff?”

  “A jet pack?” I said. “What’s a jet pack?”

  “You know, one of those things you strap to your back,” Sunrise said. “It’s like a backpack with a jet engine in it, and flames shoot out the bottom so you can go flying around. I saw one in a science-fiction movie.”

  “No, I don’t have one of those,” I said.

  I told Sunrise about some of the cool stuff that we do have in the twenty-first century, like big-screen, high-definition plasma TVs, DVDs, IMAX movies, iPods, cel
l phones, Google, Facebook, texting, and IMing. None of them seemed to impress her very much.

  “How about a flying car?” she asked. “Does your family have one of those?”

  “Uh, no,” I admitted.

  We finally found an open ticket window. A sign said box seats were $3.50 and general admission was $1.50. Man, stuff was cheap in 1969! Sunrise pulled out a few bills and asked for two general admission tickets. The guy in the ticket booth sneered at us, I guess because of our headbands and love beads.

  “They’re already in the third inning, y’know,” he grumbled.

  “What’s the score?” I asked him.

  “Nothin’ nothin’.”

  “Well, then, we didn’t miss anything,” said Sunrise cheerfully.

  Clearly, this girl did not know much about baseball. As soon as we were inside the ballpark, my nose was assaulted by the smell of hot dogs and roasted peanuts. It had been hours since I ate anything, and I wished I had taken my mom up on her offer to pack me a lunch. When Sunrise asked if I wanted a hot dog, I quickly accepted.

  “Hippies,” the vendor muttered as he handed us the dogs.

  We found some decent seats in the upper level, about halfway down the first base line. I scanned the field as I always do when I visit a ballpark for the first time. Crosley looked small to me, even smaller than Fenway Park in Boston. I doubted that it could hold even 30,000 people. It looked a little different from most stadiums too. Instead of a warning track around the outfield, there was a steep incline in front of the fence. I’d never seen anything like that before.

  “Now batting for Pittsburgh…” said the public address announcer, “…the centerfielder…Matty Alou!”

  Matty Alou came out of the dugout. He was wearing an orange helmet and a black sweatshirt under his uniform.

  “Booooooooooooo!” yelled the Cincinnati fans.

  “Why are they booing that guy?” asked Sunrise.

  “Because he plays for Pittsburgh,” I told her.

  “That’s not very nice,” she said.

  Matty Alou took strike one. He was a short guy, a left-handed batter.

  “You really don’t know a lot about baseball, do you?” I asked Sunrise.

  “Sure I do!” she insisted. “The guy who hits the ball is the hitter, and the guy who throws the ball is the…thrower. Right?”

  I slapped my forehead. This girl had a lot to learn.

  Alou took ball one. One and one.

  Sunrise admitted that she had never played baseball in her life, had never been to a game, and never even watched one on TV. I told her that she had a deprived childhood. No wonder she hated her parents.

  Matty Alou swung and missed the next pitch. One and two.

  “So, how do you score a goal?” she asked. “I mean, a point.”

  “It’s not a goal or a point,” I told her. “It’s a run. Are you new to this country or something?”

  “Okay, a run,” she said. “Same difference.”

  I explained that Alou would score a run if he advanced all the way around from home to first to second to third and back to home again.

  “So all he wants to do is get back to where he is right now?” Sunrise said. “That seems pointless.”

  Alou slapped a single up the middle and made a wide turn at first base.

  “Why did he run to that base?” Sunrise asked me.

  “Because you’re supposed to,” I told her. “You run to first base.”

  “What if he wants to run to third base instead?”

  “Why would he want to do that?” I asked her.

  “For the novelty of it,” Sunrise replied.

  “Well, he can’t,” I told her.

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’ve been running to first base for a hundred years!” I said. “That’s the rule.”

  Sunrise sighed and told me that rules are made to be broken.

  “Now batting for Pittsburgh…” said the public address announcer, “…the third baseman…Jose Pagan!”

  “Booooooooooooo!” yelled the Cincinnati fans.

  “More booing,” said Sunrise, shaking her head.

  On the first pitch to Pagan, Alou took off from first, made a mad dash, and slid headfirst into second base. The Cincinnati catcher whipped the ball to second and threw him out.

  “Ooh, that guy tripped and fell down!” Sunrise yelled excitedly.

  “He didn’t fall down!” I told her. “He slid into second base!”

  The Cincinnati fans erupted into cheers when the umpire signaled that Alou was out.

  “What happened?” asked Sunrise as Alou walked dejectedly back to the Pirate dugout.

  “They caught him trying to steal second base,” I told her.

  “Is he going to get in trouble?”

  I tried to explain the fundamentals of baseball to Sunrise, but she didn’t quite grasp them. It was like me trying to learn Spanish.

  “In baseball,” I explained, “the number three is very important. “There are three outs to an inning. Three strikes and you’re out. There are three bases. There are nine innings, which is three squared, and also nine players on the field.”

  “Okay,” Sunrise said. “I think I’m starting to get it.”

  When Pagan took the next pitch out of the strike zone, I told Sunrise it was a ball.

  “What’s a ball?” she asked.

  “That pitch,” I said. “It was a ball.”

  “Well, of course it was a ball,” she said, looking at me like I was a total idiot. “What else could it possibly be?”

  “No, you don’t understand,” I explained. “A pitch that’s out of the strike zone is a ball. Unless you swing at it.”

  “So if you swing at it, it’s not a ball anymore?”

  “Now you’re catching on,” I said.

  “I take it back. I don’t get it,” said Sunrise. “This is a very confusing game!”

  I was just glad I didn’t have to explain the infield fly rule to her. Pagan walked on four pitches.

  “How come that guy is running to first?” Sunrise asked. “He didn’t even hit the ball.”

  “The pitcher walked him,” I said.

  “So why doesn’t he walk to first?”

  I tried to explain to Sunrise that there was now a force play at second base, so Pagan had to run on a ground ball.

  “What if he doesn’t want to run?” she asked.

  “He has to,” I told her.

  “Well, that doesn’t seem very nice,” she said.

  “Now batting for Pittsburgh…” said the public address announcer, “…the left fielder…Willie Stargell!”

  I had heard of Stargell. He was a great left-handed power hitter. They called him Pops. He’s in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

  As Stargell stepped up to the plate, I noticed number 21 step out of the Pirate dugout.

  “Look! That’s him,” I said, pointing toward the on-deck circle.

  “Who?” Sunrise asked.

  “Roberto Clemente.”

  We were pretty far away. I squinted to see Clemente.

  “Why does he have to kneel in that circle?” Sunrise asked. “Is he being punished?”

  “It’s called the on-deck circle,” I told her. “He’s on deck.”

  “Like, on a boat?” she asked.

  Willie Stargell took ball one and ball two, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Clemente. He was kneeling, with three bats leaning against his thigh. One by one, he carefully picked them up as if they were fine china and wiped them off with a rag. Then he hefted each bat before deciding which one he felt like using.

  I barely noticed when Willie Stargell sliced a wicked line drive in the gap between left and centerfield. Jose Pagan, the runner on first base, got a good jump. The ball took a tricky hop off the wall; and by the time the Reds got it in, Pagan was digging for the plate. The Cincinnati shortstop took the relay and rifled a throw home. It was close, but the catcher slapped the tag on Pagan just before his foot touched the pla
te. The fans roared their approval. Stargell pulled into second with a double. Sunrise probably had no idea what was happening, but she got into the spirit and clapped her hands excitedly.

  “Now batting for Pittsburgh…” the public address announcer said, “…the rightfielder…Roberto Clemente!”

  11

  The Wild Colt

  CLEMENTE WAS LIKE A DOT TO MY EYES AS I STRAINED TO see him from the upper deck. I wanted to get a better look at him.

  “Hey,” I said to Sunrise, “let’s sneak down to the box seats!”

  “Is that legal?” she asked.

  “It’s like jaywalking,” I told her.

  I grabbed her hand and hustled her down the steps until we reached the lower boxes. There were a few security guards posted in the middle; but they were old guys and it didn’t look like they were paying much attention. I scanned the crowd, looking for empty seats close to the field.

  “I’m afraid we’re going to get caught,” Sunrise said as I pulled her along.

  “Just act casual,” I whispered. “Pretend you belong here.”

  Crosley Field was about half full—or half empty, depending on how you look at it. There were plenty of open seats, but most of them were in the upper deck. Finally, I spotted a few seats in the third row, near first base. We rushed over there.

  “What if the people who have these seats show up?” Sunrise asked.

  “They won’t,” I said, pulling her down into the seat next to mine. “It’s the third inning. If they’re not here by now, they’re not coming.”

  Fortunately, Clemente was not one of those guys who rushed up to home plate. So we didn’t miss a thing. When Sunrise and I sat down, he was still on his way to home plate, walking slowly, deliberately, like an old man. If I was the pitcher, I would be impatient. I glanced at Willie Stargell, the runner on second.

  Once he was in the batter’s box, Clemente wasn’t anywhere near being ready to hit. First he rotated his head and neck from side to side and then twisted it back like he was doing exercises. He didn’t look like he was very comfortable.