Maggie scissored the two pages carefully out of her notebook. She taped them together along the cut edges so the pages would open like a card. Then she wrote Happy Birthday, Joey-Mick, from Maggie on one of the blank sides. She thought about drawing balloons on it, too, but decided he would think that was babyish.
On Friday they had ice cream for dessert, Joey-Mick's brick with a candle stuck in it. Then he opened his presents. Dad gave him the coveted genuine Dodgers' cap. Mom had made two pennant-shaped banners for him to hang on the wall above his bed. One was dark blue with white lettering—DODGERS. The other was red with black letters—WILDCATS, the name of Joey-Mick's own team. Mom was good at sewing and knitting and things like that, and the banners looked almost exactly like store-bought ones.
Maggie handed Joey-Mick the score sheet and watched eagerly as he opened it. She saw his eyes move as he glanced down one page, then the next.
He looked up and grinned at her. "Thanks, Mags," he said.
That was all, but she had seen the pride in his grin. It was exactly what she'd been hoping for. It meant he had seen the little box with the play in the third inning, which, thanks to a brilliant idea from Jim, now looked like this:
A few days later, Maggie stood on the front stoop watching as Joey-Mick slammed the ball against the bottom step. "That's the dumbest thing I ever heard!" he yelled.
The ball rebounded at a crazy angle, flew through the air, and hit the rear fender of the car parked nearby. Mr. Marshall's brand-new Buick. If he wasn't driving it, he was outside wiping it down with a cloth or inside staring at it from the front window. It was a nice car all right, long and gray with sleek fins that made Maggie think of a shark. But the way he fussed over it, you'd have thought it was a puppy or a baby or something.
Maggie glanced anxiously over at Mr. Marshall's house. She held her breath for a moment, but it seemed that he wasn't sitting at the window. Meanwhile, Joey-Mick ran over and checked the car's bumper. No mark.
He glared at her. "See what you made me do?" he said over his shoulder as he went to fetch the ball.
"I didn't make you do it," she protested. "You threw the ball your own self."
"Yeah, but it was your fault! You say stupid things like that, what am I supposed to do?"
"It's not stupid!"
"For gosh sake, Maggie!" Joey-Mick retrieved the ball from the gutter. As he walked back toward her, he took off his cap and wiped his brow with one angry swipe of his arm. "You think you know so much about baseball—well, this just proves you don't know hardly nothing!"
"It's not like there's no rule about it, Joey-Mick"
"Yes, there is! Just because something's not written down somewheres don't mean it's not a rule! You can't have a favorite player who's not on your favorite team! It don't make any sense!"
His face was red now from all the yelling he was doing. "Besides, it's double stupid to pick a player on your worst-enemy team! Any idiot would know that!"
Maggie sighed. She knew it was no use arguing with him, but she couldn't stop herself from trying. "Look, I got it all figured out. I always root for the Dodgers to win. Cross my heart and hope to die." She crossed her heart with a quick motion. "But I can root for him to do good at the same time. Even if they're playing each other, he could have a good game and the Dodgers could still win, see?"
"No, I don't see! I mean, you're the one who don't see! If he does good, then the Giants do good too, don't you get it?" He began thunking the ball into his glove the way he always did, but much harder than usual, as if it could help him pound some sense into her. THUNK—THUNK.
Maggie shook her head and stuck out her chin. She could be just as stubborn as him when she wanted to be.
Joey-Mick stopped thunking the ball into his glove long enough to put his hand on her shoulder. "Look, Mags," he said, his voice gentle now. "You gotta keep Campy as your favorite player, okay? You were so-o-o smart to pick him, and look how good he's been doing! You can't switch now—it's bad luck for the team, and I know you wouldn't want that."
Maggie pulled away from his hand. She'd rather he kept yelling; she hated when he talked to her all kind and patient like that. Like she was a baby.
"Treecie's still got Campy as her favorite," she said, her own voice rising now. "You just mind your own business. I'm telling you, Willie Mays is my favorite player, and there's nothing you can do about it!"
She spun away from him and went into the house, slamming the door behind her.
Willie Mays. She had learned all about him while scoring Giants games with Jim. The way he played, for one thing. Fast—whether in center field or on the base paths. The radio announcers said that he ran so fast, he sometimes ran right out from under his cap. Maggie loved hearing that; it was as if there was so much joy in his playing that he couldn't contain it—and since he couldn't quite fly himself, his cap flew instead.
His hitting was good—not spectacular yet, but Jim said that would come with time. "Heck," he said, "the kid's only twenty years old. You just wait. He's gonna be one of the greats"
Maggie believed him, and she believed in Willie Mays. Already there were lots of stories about him. Like how he could hold five baseballs in one hand. "That's how come he can throw the ball so good," Jim said. "Them big hands—he can really get a grip on the ball, put any kind of spin on it he wants."
Like how his batting average had been an incredible .477 with his minor-league team in Minneapolis. And even though he'd only been with that team for a couple of months, the fans there were crazy about him. When the Giants called him to come to New York in May, their owner, Horace Stoneham, took out a huge ad in the Minneapolis newspaper, explaining why he was taking Willie away.
Like how in Minneapolis Willie once hit a ball so hard that it went right through the board fence in the outfield, and they didn't fix the hole—they left it there for the rest of the season and even painted a circle around it.
Like how he hadn't been sure about leaving Minneapolis and going to the Giants because he didn't think he could hit big-league pitching, and in the beginning it looked as if he might be right. He got only one hit in his first twenty-six tries—it was a home run, but still, only one hit in all those at-bats—and he was so discouraged that he thought maybe he should go back to the minors. But Giants manager Leo Durocher kept him in New York, and Willie finally started hitting and didn't stop. Maggie had felt an almost terrified relief when Jim told her that story. If Willie had gone back to the minors in May, she would probably never even have heard of him; she hadn't started listening to the Giants games until July.
Now he was her favorite player. He gave her the same kind of shivery feeling she got when she heard Jackie Robinson's name during the broadcast of a game. Something was going to happen—maybe something good, but even if it wasn't good, it would be something exciting. That was what it was like with Jackie and Willie.
She had known that picking Willie as her favorite would cause trouble with Joey-Mick and sure enough, she was right. Now she was going to have to tell about arguing with him when she went to confession on Saturday.
She hoped it would be Father John in the confessional. Maybe he would go easy on her; of all the parish priests, he was the biggest baseball fan.
In August, the Giants had won an amazing, unbelievable sixteen games in a row. The Dodgers' gargantuan lead of 13 games over the Giants in the standings was shriveling away, bit by agonizing bit.
It wasn't that the Dodgers were playing all that badly. During the Giants' winning streak, the Dodgers won nine games and lost eight. Not wonderful, but not a disaster either—still above .500.
But the Giants! It was like they had forgotten how to lose!
And Willie—Willie was part of making it happen. Maggie's score sheets for the Giants' games were littered with exclamation points for his terrific plays in the outfield. On the bases, he ran so hard that he turned singles into doubles—twenty-two of them, fourth best on the team, even though he was only a rookie—and doubles
into triples, that rarest and most exciting of hits. Five of them that year, when most players were lucky to hit five in a lifetime. Jim said that if Willie didn't win Rookie of the Year, he'd eat his hat.
"My work hat," he said, and pointed to his fireman's helmet hanging on the wall. Maggie had laughed at the time, but she wasn't laughing now. Joey-Mick's words were haunting her.
If he does good, the Giants do good, too, don't you get it?
You can't switch now, it's bad luck for the team....
In desperation, she tried a new tactic: not listening to Giants games. She knew how to score almost everything; she hardly ever had to ask Jim for help anymore, and if she didn't know something, she could always ask him later.
Only Dodger games from now on. Maybe that would help get them out of their slump.
She told Jim that she wouldn't be coming to the firehouse for the Giants' broadcasts, at least for a while. He nodded in understanding.
"But don't be a stranger around here, Maggie-o," he said.
"I won't," she promised. "I'll stop by so you can tell me how Willie's doing."
He cocked his head at her. "We can do better than that," he said. He went into the firehouse and came back with a newspaper.
"There's a story about the Giants every day," he said, holding the paper out toward her. "Dodgers, too. Handy if you can't hear the game, but even if I do, I like to read what the paper says anyways."
"You don't have to give me yours," Maggie said. Dad stopped at a newsstand every evening on his way back from work and brought the paper home.
"Fine, but just lemme show ya," Jim said.
They sat down and looked at the paper together. The biggest stories on the front page were about President Truman at some meeting in San Francisco, and the war in Korea. Jim showed her where the table of contents was, in tiny print near the bottom. "This way you can go right to the sports pages," he said.
To Maggie's delight, there were not only stories about the games played by the three New York teams but also the box scores for every major league game, and statistics for batting and pitching. Of course she had known there was baseball news in the paper. But the newspaper had always seemed like something for grownups; she had never thought of reading it herself.
Overnight Maggie became a newspaper addict. Not the whole paper, of course. Just the sports section. And just the baseball part of the sports section. Dad always gave the paper to Mom when he got home, and Mom put it aside until after dinner, when she could sit for a while and read it in peace. She was cross when she caught Maggie taking the sports pages.
"Leave that paper be," Mom said.
"But it's only the sports," Maggie said.
"I don't like the paper messed with. You leave it be until I'm done."
It wasn't fair. Why should Mom care so long as Maggie took just the sports pages? But she had to wait until Mom was finished. After that, Maggie could do as she pleased with the paper.
She started clipping articles about the Dodgers and kept them in her scoring notebook. Listening to the games on the radio, scoring the games, reading the articles, clipping them—she was doing everything she could to help stop the Dodgers' lead from dwindling away.
PLAYOFF
None of those things mattered. At the end of the regular season, the Dodgers and the Giants were tied for the lead in the National League. That thirteen-game lead was gone, as if it had never existed. The two teams would play an extra three-game series to determine the league champion.
Maggie bought a new notebook especially for the playoff games. She thought maybe a nice clean notebook—getting away from the losses recorded in the old one—would bring the Dodgers good luck.
She decided to try something else too, to help the team.
The night before the playoffs, Maggie turned off her bedside lamp, crossed herself, laced her fingers together, and closed her eyes.
When she was little, bedtime prayers had been part of getting tucked in. Either Mom or Dad would sit on the edge of the bed as Maggie squeezed her eyes shut and folded her hands and said, "Dear God, please bless Mommy and Daddy and Joey-Mick and me and all our friends and relations and the most abandoned souls in Purgatory. Amen." The sheet got pulled up and her forehead got kissed and the light got turned out, the same routine every night. Maggie was too old now for tucking-in, but she still said her prayers.
She lay there and took a breath before starting. Then she whispered the words into the darkness. "Please God bless Mom and Dad and Joey-Mick and me and all our friends and relations and the most abandoned souls in Purgatory and—and the Dodgers. Amen."
Maggie squeezed her hands together a little harder. Would God be cross with her for praying about baseball? After all, it was just a game.... He had an awful lot of more important things to take care of. Every week in church, Father John or one of the other priests asked for intercessions, and then everyone prayed for other people. Usually the intercessions were for people who were sick or hurt. Or had lost their jobs, or gone off to Korea to fight in the war. A few times, Maggie's dad had asked for prayers for a fireman who had been injured at work.
And once, Mom had done the asking. When Dad got hurt.
Maggie opened her eyes. In the darkness there were darker shapes—the dresser, the chair with her robe on it.
She had never heard anyone ask for prayers for a sports team.
But just suppose that God didn't mind hearing prayers for sports teams. Wouldn't Giants fans be praying to Him, too? Did God like one team more than another?
If that were true, then God had to be a Yankee fan.
For a moment, Maggie felt almost angry. But the anger was mixed up with confusion and, well, fear. You weren't supposed to get mad at God.
"Sorry," she whispered.
She felt a tiny bit better, but not any less confused.
If God did care about baseball, then it sure looked like He cared more about the Yankees than the Dodgers. And what about teams like the Pirates, who year after year lost more games than they won—a lot more. Didn't God care about the Pirates or their fans at all?
The morning of the first playoff game, Joey-Mick spent a good few minutes trying to figure out which shirts he had been wearing during the Dodgers' wins and losses; he wanted to throw the losingest one away. Mom rescued the green striped shirt as Joey-Mick was going out the door with it, headed for the garbage can back behind the house.
"I never heard such nonsense," she scolded. "That shirt cost good money—do you think your father works so hard just to have you make a fuss over a silly game!" She flapped the shirt angrily.
"I'm not wearing it ever again," Joey-Mick muttered.
Maggie left her mother and brother glowering at each other in the front hall and ran up the stairs to his bedroom. She opened one of Joey-Mick's drawers in the bureau, found what she was looking for right on top, and took it downstairs.
"Here, Joey-Mick," she said, holding out a blue-and-white plaid. "You should wear this one." He had been wearing it the day before when the Dodgers beat the Phillies, 9–8, on an impossible, incredible, game-winning home run by none other than Jackie Robinson. It had taken the Bums fourteen innings to win—Maggie's score sheet covered four pages of the notebook instead of the usual two—and the victory had kept them in the race. If they had lost, the Giants would have won the title outright, without the need for the three-game playoff.
She handed Joey-Mick the shirt. "It's the right color too," she added. Dodger blue.
He took it and stomped off. Maggie sighed. They hadn't talked about Willie Mays since their argument, but she knew that Joey-Mick was still mad at her. The whole thing probably would have blown over if it hadn't been for the way the pennant race was going. Every time Red Barber announced another Giants win during the broadcast of a Dodgers game, Joey-Mick would glare at her and shake his head.
Usually Maggie ignored him. It was just a coincidence that she had picked Willie as her favorite player right as the Giants started winning like crazy
. Her choice didn't make one bit of difference to the way they were playing—it wasn't like Willie knew she had picked him. Or that he'd play any better if he did know.
But sometimes she caught herself feeling a little guilty. Could picking Willie as her favorite player really have put a jinx on the Dodgers?
It was too late now anyway. Willie was her favorite, and there wasn't anything she could do to change the way she felt. If she had said that she was going back to Roy Campanella, it would have been a lie; inside, Willie would still be her favorite, and then she'd have the lie as well as the jinx on her conscience.
There was one thing she could do, though. During the playoffs, she planned to cheer for Brooklyn as hard as she possibly could. Willie had already had a great season. Three more games weren't going to change that.
She would cheer for the Dodgers, not for Willie. Every minute of every game.
Maggie ran home from school as fast as she could in an effort to catch at least the last inning. Treecie ran with her as far as the corner, then had to turn down the street to go home and look after her sisters. "Go, Dodgers!" Treecie shouted as Maggie raced away. Maggie waved over her shoulder.
At home she rushed into the living room. Mom was sitting on the sofa, knitting, and Joey-Mick was there, too. Not only that, but the game had just ended: The Dodgers had lost, 3–1. At Ebbets Field—their own home ground.
Joey-Mick yelled at Maggie that it had been a dumb idea for him to wear the blue plaid shirt. Maggie yelled back that she hadn't made him wear it; he could have worn something else. Joey-Mick ripped off the shirt so fast that two of the buttons popped. Then he threw it at Maggie. It didn't hurt, but she started to cry anyway, which made Mom put down her knitting.
Maggie flung herself at Mom and held on, sobbing.
"For shame, Joseph Michael, making her cry so," Mom said as she patted Maggie's back with one hand and moved her knitting out of the way with the other.