Dominion (64 page)

“I’ve read about Satchel Paige,” Manny said. “And I saw his picture in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.”

“You been there? Always wanted to go,” Obadiah said. “Always thought I’d go with my son the sportswriter. Maybe someday we’ll make it there still, hey Son?”

No way you’ll ever see it now, Daddy. Time isn’t on your side anymore.

“Ol’ Satchel, he could pitch a greasy pork chop past a hungry coyote. He’d throw a no-hitter and be grumpy about it ’cause too many batters grounded out!” Obadiah’s eyes glazed off to bygone days, his memory of the distant past incredibly sharp. “A showman, Satchel was. Used to call in the outfielders and have ’em sit on the bench. Then he’d finish the inning with just the infield—sometimes sat down the infield too. You know what that does to a batter to have a pitcher so sure he’s got your number he sits his whole team on the bench? Well, I know. ’Cause when I was playin’ in Kansas City and Satchel was with the Pittsburgh Crawfords, he did it to me. Big ol’ smile on his face. I was hittin’ .320 that year, so I wasn’t exactly mulch on the flowers. But ol’ Satch, he calls in the whole team. And it takes ’im three pitches to get me. Got me on an outside fastball, a four-day creeper, and a Satchel pitch.”

“What’s a Satchel pitch?” Ollie asked.

Obadiah shook his head and laughed. “Can’t tell you to this day. Never seen another pitch like it. Called it a bat dodger, Rube did. That ball did things no ball is entitled to do. You know, after the war ol’ Satchel finally got to pitch in the majors. He was somethin’ like forty-five years old by then, though he claimed to be younger. Oldest rookie there ever was. Pitched for the Cleveland Indians. Chosen Rookie of the Year, can you imagine? Course he’d lost most his stuff by then. Still had enough that he only lost one game that season, though.”

“Forty-five and he lost
one
game?” Manny asked.

“Yeah, he was 6 and 1. He felt terrible bad about that one loss too,” Obadiah chuckled. “We changed baseball, you know. Changed the majors even though they didn’t let us in.”

“How do you mean?” Manny asked.

“Buntin’ and slidin’ and base-stealin’. They all come out of the Negro Leagues. And sign stealin’, that was perfected by Judy Johnson. Called him Mr. Sunshine ’cause he was always so happy. Ol’ Judy, he’d watch the other team’s hand signals a few innings and break the code. Then he’d whistle his own coded message to let us know what was gonna happen next. The Pittsburgh Crawfords, now that was a team. One of the best I played on. Gus Greenlee owned the Crawfords. He was a black businessman. Most stadiums wouldn’t let coloreds use the locker rooms. Ol’ Gus, he asked ’em, ‘What you afraid coloreds gonna do in those urinals that white men aren’t doin’ already?’ I gots me a Crawford team picture in my room.”

“No kiddin’? I’d love to see it,” Ollie said.

“Well, come on over and take a gander, Mr. Detective. You too, Mr. Manny. No charge. Got some other stuff you might like to see. By the way, ol’ Gus decided to build his own stadium so we coloreds could be at home. First stadium ever built for a black team. Then he bought us a topflight bus. Got a picture of that too.”

“You seem like such an even-tempered guy, Mr. Abernathy.” Ollie said. Clarence suspected he might be contrasting father and son. “Did you ever get mad at anybody when you played ball?”

“Well, one time I was battin’, and it was a full count. The ball was way low and outside, so I drops the bat and trots off to first for the walk. Then behind me I hears the umpire call, ‘Strike three, you’re outta there.’”

“What did you do?” Ollie asked.

“Well now,” Obadiah said, “I went right up to that umpire and looked him straight in the eye. Then I proceeded to thank him sincerely for doin’ such a difficult and thankless job.” He held a straight face, but when he finally broke out into a grin, Ollie and Manny laughed out loud.

“We’re here, gentlemen,” Clarence said, pulling into the stadium parking lot.

“Already?” Ollie sounded disappointed. The three hours had flown by.

“Mr. Abernathy, did you know Jackie Robinson?”

“Yessuh, I knowed Jackie. Knowed him well.”

They got out of the car, Obadiah proudly putting on his Mariners cap Jonah got him last Christmas. Ollie and Manny walked on each side of Obadiah as if they were his escorts.

“Tell us about Jackie,” Ollie said.

“Got to knows him three years ’fore I left baseball. Jackie was the grandson of a slave. See, those days, some of our parents was born slaves, like mine was, and nearly all our grandparents was slaves. Anyways, Jackie growed up in an all-white neighborhood in Pasadena. The white kids threw rocks at the Robinson boys until Jackie and his brothers said enough of this and threw rocks back at ’em. That stopped it real quick ’cause them Robinson boys, they knowed how to throw! Then he went to college and he was a star in everything—football, basketball, track, baseball. Set a national record in long jump. Then he went to the war. One good thing comin’ outta that war was the signs coloreds held up at the baseball stadiums. They said, ‘If we can stop bullets, why not balls?’”

Obadiah was breathing hard, and Clarence was about to suggest he stop talking till they got inside, but he didn’t want to take away his father’s moment in the sun.

“After the war, Jackie come straight to the Kansas City Monarchs, where I was playin’. I roomed with him a couple of months. He’d last been stationed in Texas. A military bus driver told him to sit in the back of the bus. He refused. They told him they’d arrest him. He still refused. He was court-martialed, but they found him innocent. He got an honorable discharge and come to the Monarchs. Mr. Branch Rickey saw him there. He was lookin’ for the right man to be the first colored in the majors. The time was right, and Jackie was right.”

As they walked slowly through the parking lot, Ollie asked, “You have any idea what it was like for Jackie Robinson?”

“At first the fans would yell, ‘Nigger’ and ‘Go back to the cotton fields.’ It hurt Jackie bad. Almost had a breakdown, he told me later. Once some fans started in on Jackie, and ol’ Pee Wee Reese come over and put his arm around Jackie’s shoulder and looked at the crowd. Pee Wee was a favorite, and most of the fans shut their mouths. See, there was a lot of good whites in baseball. Pee Wee was one of ’em. Now, when the Dodgers come to Cincinnati, coloreds would pile into a train in Norfolk, Virginia, six hundred miles away, just to see Jackie play. They called that train the Jackie Robinson special, and they say colored folk never had so much fun as on that train. Jackie made us all proud.”

The sparkling eyes glistened with moisture. Obadiah stopped walking to wipe his brow. Clarence put his arm around his daddy’s waist.

“Mr. Rickey told Jackie he had to agree for two years not to talk back at all the namecallin’. He kept his word. But after two years he started demandin’ to stay in the same hotel as the white players, and it worked. Jackie and Roy Campanella, Ernie Banks, Aaron and Mays and Curt Flood. It wasn’t easy for any of them. Campy had a hard time ’cause the catcher calls the pitches and that meant white pitchers was takin’ directions from a black man. That didn’t sit well with some of ’em. Curt Flood once said, ‘I’m glad God made my skin black, but I wish he’d made it thicker.’”

“You know,” Ollie said, “I was in high school rooting for Hank Aaron to break Babe Ruth’s home run record. He ended the season with 713, one short of Ruth. Everybody knew he’d break it easy next season. I thought, he must be feelin’ great. Then years later I saw an interview with Aaron. He talked about how horrible it was. About the hate mail, people calling him names and threatening to kill him. I never knew. I never understood.”

Obadiah’s eyes looked like a hound dog’s. “I phoned Henry once a year in them days. He told me all about it. Letters would start, ‘Dear Nigger Scum.’ They’d say, ‘You’re an animal, not a human being,’ and ‘The only good nigger is a dead nigger.’ All of us who’d been called every name in the book, we knowed a lot of white folk wouldn’t tolerate Babe Ruth being toppled by a colored. It was so bad the FBI started reading his mail before Henry did. I remember sayin’ to my Ruby, ‘I don’t think Henry will live through the summer.’ I really didn’t think he would. Sure glad he did. Sure glad he did.”

They showed their tickets to the gatekeeper and slowly walked in, Obadiah’s pace restraining the rest. “But Henry came through. Ended up all-time leader in homers, RBIs,
and
total bases. One of the greatest ball players that ever lived. Still say ol’ Satchel was the best, though.”

They made their way to their seats, Obadiah huffing and puffing. Clarence started to sit by his dad, but Manny and Ollie both positioned themselves to sit by the old man. They were about an hour early.

“Look at this stadium, will you now?” Obadiah said. “Never seen nothin’ so big. But baseball’s still baseball, I reckon. We used to joke playin’ baseball was the only time a black man could wave a stick at a white man and get away with it.” He laughed. “I almost made the big leagues. Born fifteen or twenty years too soon, that’s all. But that’s all right. Shadow ball suited me fine.”

“Why’d they call it shadow ball?” Manny asked.

“Well, let me set it up for you, Mr. Detective,” Obadiah said, tilting his baseball cap to the side and putting on his announcer’s voice. “The Indianapolis Clowns take the field for warm-ups. The hard throw from first snaps back the second baseman’s glove. He hurls the ball to third, for a quick peg back to the first baseman who dives to catch it, rolls a somersault, and heaves it to the catcher. He tosses it back gently to the pitcher, Satchel Paige, who watches for the catcher’s signal, then winds up and throws the curveball.” Obadiah flailed his arms. “The batter swings and hits. The second baseman leaps to his left, throws to first. The low throw kicks up dirt just before the first baseman catches it. The umpire calls him out. The crowd roars.”

They all laughed at Obadiah’s antics.

“But only those sittin’ real close understand what’s goin’ on,” Obadiah whispered. “See, there’s no ball on the field. It’s all an act. It’s shadow ball.”

“No kidding?” Ollie asked.

“Sometimes we’d play a couple innings that way,” Obadiah said. “The fans way up in the stands could never tell. The ones close enough to see there was no ball were just smilin’ and laughin’ along with us. That was shadow ball. The name stuck, I guess, maybe ’cause we was all dark as shadows.”

The warm-ups finished, and someone sang the national anthem. Obadiah stood straight and tall, gazing at the flag with his hand and his baseball cap on his heart. The umpire called “Play ball,” and Clarence saw the moisture in the old man’s eyes.

Why didn’t I ever carve out the time to take him to Cooperstown?

Clarence finally asked Ollie and Manny to stop asking his father questions so they could all watch the game. It went quickly, punctuated with Obadiah’s stories. The Mariners were up 4-3 at the seventh-inning stretch. Ollie escorted Obadiah to a bathroom, leaving Clarence and Manny in the seats. After two minutes of silence and pretending to read the program, Manny said to Clarence, “You’re lucky to have a father like that. I wish I did.”

If you’d had a father like mine, it would’ve made you a nigger.

Clarence caught himself, feeling guilty “Thanks, Manny.”

The Mariners won 6-5 in the tenth inning. Obadiah’s entourage went out into the parking lot. This time Clarence asked Ollie and Manny to let Daddy get to the car before extracting any more stories from him.

As Clarence pulled out into the darkness for the three hour drive home, it brought back cozy memories of long drives after dark with his daddy—only in those days it was Daddy doing the driving. He’d always felt secure with his father there. As long as Daddy was close by, everything in the universe would be all right. In a strange sort of way, he felt that tonight.

Before Ollie and Manny could start quizzing him again, the old man turned to the backseat and said, “Tell me about yo’self, Detective Manny.”

“Well, I grew up in Santa Fe. Most of the town was Mexican. Everybody belonged to a gang.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah. Those were the days of switchblades, bicycle chains, and zip guns, mostly.”

“Who’d you fight?”

“Black gangs and white gangs.”