the prince of leather smitters, the score being 2 to 1. Ruth played first base for the losers and a crowd of 10,000 saw him make a job of it.”
“The Bambino failed to spank a home run off Gransbach, but he did score Ascension’s only run hurling his huge bulk over the glad gum in the ninth inning.”
“It was a great game from beginning to end, and Ruth, one of the nabobs of baseball, must have felt perfectly at home.”
The article gave a detailed account of the game, but did not really catch the spirit of what had really happened at Boger Field on that day.
I folded the two newspapers up and placed them neatly on the kitchen table, so that they would be waiting for my father when he got home from work. As I started to walk out of the kitchen I realized it might not be a good idea to let my father know I bought both newspapers, wasting the two cents was never a good idea in our household.
I picked up The Inquirer and left The Bulletin in the exact spot right in front of my dad’s chair. Up to my room, I hid the Inquirer under my mattress.
Lunchtime came and I was anxious to go over to Johnny’s and see what we wanted to do. Maybe he would come over and read the two newspaper articles about the game. Perhaps he would want to go to our clubhouse and play since this was the last day of our summer break from school.
There was no answer as I knocked on his door. I waited for a few seconds and then knocked again. I waited for another minute or two, but it was obvious that no one was at home. I started to walk away from his house, saddened by the thought of not being able to spend the last day of our vacation playing with Johnny.
As I started walking towards the corner, to see who else was outside to play with, I happened to glance back towards Johnny’s house. As my eyes moved upstairs to the window outside Johnny’s bedroom, I saw the curtain quickly fall down. It was as though someone had been looking out, but quickly had pulled the curtain down just as I looked back. Maybe I was just being paranoid, but I was sure that someone had been in that bedroom watching me as I walked away from the house.
33
Here it was, the last day of our summer break. We had to enjoy it to the fullest. Slowly I walked, all alone to the cemetery field, hoping to find some of the kids playing baseball. Luckily, we never officially retired the field at the cemetery, even after they had opened Boger Field. We still needed a small field, closer to home, where we could play. As long as the caretaker did not chase us away, it was still a magical place.
I strolled through the headstones and reached the clearing where the field lay. There were already eight or ten kids mulling around the field. Most of them were sitting on the ground, and two of the bigger kids were standing facing each other. When I reached them, I saw that the two kids were Woody Wilson and Buzzard McGeer. They were picking teams to play a game of stickball.
The traditional way that we divided kids for any game was to have two captains choose the players. The order of picking players was decided by having the captains shoot out. One of the captains would choose odds and the other would be evens. On a count of three, they would stick out either one or two fingers and the winner was determined by whether the total finger count was odd or even.
I got there just as they were shooting out. Buzzard, obviously a nickname, won the shoot out and got to choose first. Almost everyone in our neighborhood had a nickname. To the point where there were many kids that played ball with us, whose real names I had never actually heard.
Buzz picked Lefty Jimmy Ryan as his first pick. Woody then picked Snitzer Wagner as his first teammate. Then alternated picks, back and forth until the only players left to choose from were Snuffy Drob and me. This was not a good thing; I usually was picked much earlier than this. Typically I was picked somewhere in the middle, and that was at least respectable. Being the last picked for anything was a black mark on your reputation, and hurt your standing in the neighborhood.
Come to think about it, most times we played Johnny was usually a captain, and he always picked me first. Maybe it was a mercy pick, I thought he was picking me because I was one of the better players, but maybe he was just trying to make sure my feelings didn’t get hurt.
Snuffy and I stood side-by-side, waiting for the last name to be called. If he did not call my name, I would be the leftover, ending up on the team that had the last pick. That was the embarrassment of it; the last person wasn’t really picked by anyone at all. I waited for a moment and finally Buzz called my name. Well, kids usually only remember the kid who wasn’t picked, so maybe my stock in the neighborhood stickball market wouldn’t sink too low.
We played five stickball games that day. Different kids would come and some would leave, but the games continued. We changed the sides after each game, but there were no more choose outs. The captains just traded a player or two and the games would continue. Even though I was getting very hungry, I stayed at the field until the games ended. The only reason we stopped playing at all was that the sun was going down and it was getting too dark to see.
I walked home from the cemetery with a few of the other kids. We talked about Tuesday’s baseball game.
“What was it like meeting Babe Ruth?” Buzz asked.
“I heard you got to drive in the car with him,” Woody said.
“It was pretty exciting but it all happened so fast,” I answered.
I tried to downplay how great it was, not wanting to make anyone jealous. Just then, Michael O’Brien walked into the cemetery. This caught me by complete surprise, since Michael never played baseball with us. I could not remember ever seeing him at the cemetery field before.
“Hey Mike, we heard you got to ride in the car yesterday with the Babe,” Buzz said.
I was glad to see Michael show up since it took the focus away from me.
“Yep, it was unbelievable,” he answered. “It was the greatest single moment of my entire life. I’ll have stories to tell for the rest of my life.”
I smiled as Michael answered questions for the next ten minutes; at least it took the pressure off me. We talked about a bunch of different things as we started our walk home; we talked about everything except no one once mentioned school. It was not until we reached our street that we all looked at each other, and sadly acknowledged that this was the end of our summer.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you in school tomorrow,” Woody Wilson said to me.
“Yea, unfortunately you will.”
We all shook our heads, with a bit of resignation and lot of sadness. When you are thirteen years old there isn’t much sadder than the end of summer break and the beginning of a new school year. At least we were only ten months away from the next summer vacation.
34
Thursday dawn, the first light of the 1923-1924 school year, was a dreary morn. My mom woke me before sunrise and I got dressed and ate breakfast, all with my head still in a fog. She had bought me a new composition book to keep my notes in, and new pencils. She had everything organized so that I could not possibly forget any of the supplies that I needed.
“You better hurry with your breakfast, you’re gonna be late,” she said.
“I’m fine, I got plenty of time.”
“Seventh grade is a big deal, you don’t want to start it off on a sour note, let’s go.”
Mom and dad were both waiting at the door to see me off as I left the house. The first day of a new school year always seemed to create more than its share of drama. For me it was just a miserable start to another long and arduous annual trek. For my parents, it seemed to be some kind of milestone, a benchmark that they had reached. I guess for them, just surviving another year here in Kensington was something of an accomplishment.
My parents set up a gauntlet that I had to pass through before I could get out the front door. I got through with the mandatory number of hugs and kisses, and was out the door right on time. It was a cool September morning, the sun just starting to rise, its orange din barely visible through the clouds. It was the kind of morning it would be nice to just stay in b
ed.
Tradition always had Johnny and me always walking to school together on the first day. We would meet on the front steps of his house and leave together. If I got there first, I waited until he came out of the house. If it was more than five minutes, I usually knocked on his door to hurry him along.
I stood at the bottom of his stoop and tried to see if I could detect any movement going on inside. There didn’t seem to be any activity that I could see. As I waited, I glanced down the street and could not believe what I saw. About halfway down the block I could see that Johnny was walking down the street, already on his way to school. At least it looked like him.
How could he leave without waiting for me? I raced down the street, making up ground very quickly. When I got to within fifty feet, I could tell for sure that it was definitely Johnny. He was walking at a brisk pace, but at the rate that I was running, I caught up to him within just a few seconds.
“Why didn’t you wait for me?” I yelled as I got a step or two in front of him.
I rarely yelled at Johnny, but I was really mad. He left without me, and I really did not want to walk to school by myself on the first day. I felt vulnerable enough going into the unknown of another school year, let alone walking into it all by myself.
Johnny answered, “I thought you already left.”
“Are you crazy? I never leave without you. We been walking