[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
there was excruciating frustration as they watched us lose
without getting buried.
We probably would have lost the fourth game to the
Indies, too, if it hadn t been for Zion.
On the morning before the final game, Zion was
scheduled to run a baseball clinic for Little League-age
children in Wilmington. She asked some of us to go with
her.
I rode up with Zion, S.B., Stryker and Mac, but the best
news was that Cranny was going, too. The doctors finally
had cleared her to play again.
104
We drove to the Judy Johnson baseball field at Second
and Du Pont Streets. It was named for William Julius
Judy Johnson, a star third base player in the old Negro
Leagues and the first Delawarean enshrined in the Hall of
Fame. Every inner-city kid who could walk, bike, hop a bus
or cadge a ride seemed to be at that park, waiting for us.
The kids were too excited to listen, so Zion declared
open season on autographs until they settled down. We
signed baseballs, gloves, scraps of paper, T-shirts, photos
clipped from newspapers anything they thrust at us.
Zion finally got the clinic going. She was the ringmaster,
and we were the performers amidst dozens and dozens
of tiny, happy-go-lucky baseball players with miniature
mitts and oversized batting helmets and a colorful array of
T-shirts, usually with the insignia of either the Philadelphia
Phillies or the Delaware Blue Diamonds on them.
S.B. talked about how to play the infield. Mac spoke
about the outfield. I demonstrated running the bases,
stealing and sliding. Stryker gave pointers on pitching.
The kids were enthusiastic, but they saved their biggest
cheers for Cranny. This baseball-crazy crowd knew she was
just coming off the disabled list, and they shouted joyously
as Cranny wiggled, mugged and moaned her way into a
catcher s crouch to show off the tools of ignorance.
We were laughing, too.
For the pice de rsistance, Zion asked Cranny and me to
hit against Stryker.
She ll be throwing for real, Zion said, as Stryker toed
the pitcher s mound and smirked at us. Oh, God, groaned
Cranny.
She ll make fools of us, I said.
That s the idea, Zion said.
105
We were nothing if not good sports. Cranny pulled
seniority on me, so I had to go first.
The kids filled the bleachers. They were attentive but
fidgety and looked like hyperkinetic ants. Zion chose some
of the more coordinated of them and sent them out to
play the field in the unlikely event that Cranny or I hit
anything.
I went to the plate, and Zion took the umpire s spot to
call balls and strikes.
Swing at everything, Stryker called to me. I m just
throwing strikes.
Big clue. That s all you ever throw, I grumbled. I
hadn t been on the receiving end of Stryker s pitching since
I left the Boston Colonials, and I knew I wasn t up to hitting
the stuff that she had.
In came the first offering a fastball that had more action
to it than a bump-and-grind strip tease. I whiffed obligingly
as the kids squealed with delight. I counted myself lucky to
foul off the second fastball, then came up with a clean miss
on a slider that radar couldn t have followed.
Strike three! You re out! said Zion, as if everyone in
the ballpark didn t already know it. I dragged off.
Cranny made the sign of the cross before settling
herself in the batter s box, but it didn t help. She didn t do
any better than I did two fastballs and a slider and she was
gone. Stryker blew her a kiss.
Zion stood in front of the plate. Okay, kids, that ends
it unless you want to see Mac hit, she said.
The little fans went bonkers. Out of their mindless
screaming and jumping, there emerged a heartfelt chorus:
We want Mac! We want Mac! We want Mac!
Mac strolled to the plate, as easy as a schoolgirl on the
106
first day of summer vacation. She didn t seem to care at all
that it was Stryker out there.
Maybe Stryker never intended to throw Mac her real
stuff. Maybe Mac s posture persuaded her. Whatever the
reason, I saw her smiling at Mac and sensed the batting-
practice pitches coming.
Zion did, too. She gestured her impromptu fielders
backwards. Sink out, she said. They took a few steps
toward the fences and stopped. Sink way out, she said,
and they backed up a little farther; but I knew and the rest
of the Blue Diamonds knew it would never be far enough.
Stryker laid the first pitch in there. Mac s muscles
rippled, and the ball arced in an electric charge across the
cadmium sky, so high that the little fielders simply gaped at
it as it ripped beyond the perimeter of the field.
Then they sat down. No one told them to; they simply
did it, somehow knowing that their presence was no longer
required.
Stryker served up the pitches, and Mac rocked into a state
of primal rhythm and finesse. From her bat shot fireworks
and lightning bolts, shooting stars and flaring rockets a
circus of brilliance that dazzled the children who had never
seen it before and us who thought we had seen it all.
When Mac finally held up her hand to say she was
finished, the kids swarmed her from the bleachers, and she
lowered herself laughing to the sweet-smelling turf and was
lost among them like Gulliver amidst the Lilliputians.
A toddler, someone s younger sister, made it to the
center of the heap and sat soberly on Mac s chest, her grave
brown eyes staring at Mac s face.
Pinned down by the child, Mac reached out and tickled
the youngsters who sported like puppies around her and
107
ruffled their hair. We had never seen her so unburdened
and free.
Children have a lot of energy, but never much at one
time, and by and by they became exhausted and drifted
away. The last to leave was the toddler, when someone took
her by the hand and drew her off Mac s chest.
Zion, Stryker, Cranny, S.B. and I looked down
wonderingly at the grass-stained hero, still prone on the
field.
What the hell was that? Cranny said.
I had almost forgotten, Mac said, how much fun this
game can be.
108
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Indianapolis Indies never knew what hit them. S.B.
and I grounded out without a fuss when we led off the last
game of the series. Then Mac walked slowly to the plate,
her head down.
Bobbie Allen, the Indies pitcher, winked at her catcher
and jauntily adjusted her cap. She was sure she was
encountering a slumping team, with Mac the most slump-
ridden of us all.
But I knew why Mac s head was down. She was
remembering the feel of the bat and the swarm of children
just hours ago at the Judy Johnson baseball field, and she
was afloat on the talent rising within her like an answered
109
prayer.
S.B. nudged me with her elbow as she sat beside me
on the dugout bench. I wouldn t want to be Bobbie Allen
right now, she said.
Neither would I.
Bobbie Allen kissed the outside of the plate with a
fastball, but it was a kiss of death. Mac s shoulders hitched,
and she hit a screaming banshee of a shot that missed
clearing the right field fence by about a foot. Mac sprinted
into second base with a stand-up double, and Bobbie Allen
stood on the mound shaking.
Shakespeare singled Mac home, and the Blue Diamonds
turned into a wrecking crew. We smashed the Indies 7-2.
Mac finished up with two doubles and a home run, and the
fans hollered themselves hoarse for her.
We bounded into the clubhouse after the last sullen
Indianapolis player was out, and surprise, surprise, Miss
Jewel was standing there like a magic charm to greet us.
She was a little bit thinner and a little unsteady, but she
caught Mac in a huge hug and held her dearly. We yelped
and hugged Miss Jewel and one another, too. We were
family again.
Miss Jewel said she wasn t allowed to work yet, but she
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]