Shoeless Joe & Me (2 page)

I MIGHT HAVE GONE COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTROL
when the umpire called me out, but a strong arm wrapped around my shoulder and steered me away from the infield. I could tell without looking that it was the strong arm of Flip Valentini.

“Fuhgetuhboutit, Stosh.”

Flip grew up in Brooklyn, where “fuhgetuhboutit” apparently is how they say “forget about it.” He's the owner of Flip's Fan Club, a little sports card shop in downtown Louisville that sponsors our team. He's an old gray-haired guy but cooler than most grown-ups I've met.

“I
won't
forget about it!” I complained. “It's not fair! I was safe! If the ump hadn't blown the call, we would have won the championship.”

“It's over,” Flip said. “Nothin' you can do. So he blew the call. In the long run, it all evens out.”

Flip walked me around the outfield while I
cooled down. Usually you never meet the people who sponsor your teams. But Flip comes out to all our games and even to some of our practices. He's sort of like a dad to some of the kids on the team like me, whose parents are divorced. Flip usually brings along packs of baseball cards to pass out to the kids on the team, but the last few games he didn't bring any.

At our first practice back in March, Flip told us that all his life he wanted to own his own baseball team. It costs something like a million dollars to buy even a minor league team, and he didn't have anywhere near that kind of money. So he invested five hundred dollars to sponsor our team. It must give him a special thrill to see the words “Flip's Fan Club” on the front of our uniforms.

“It's just not fair,” I continued to whine. “I was safe.”

“You
were
safe, Stosh.” Flip sighed. “And it's not fair. But life isn't always fair. You're gonna realize that someday.”

That's when Flip started telling me the story of Shoeless Joe Jackson.

“He was one of the great ones,” Flip told me as we walked the grass in left field. “He batted .356 from 1908 to 1920. That's the third-highest average of all time. He hit over .370 in four seasons. He was maybe the greatest natural hitter who ever lived. Babe Ruth even said he patterned his swing after Shoeless Joe's.”

“No kidding?”

“No kiddin', Stosh. Jackson had this dark bat. Black Betsy, he called it. It was like his baby. He took it with him everywhere. They say he used to sleep with it. He was a great outfielder, too. Ty Cobb said Joe was the best he ever saw.”

“So how come I never heard of him?” I asked. “Why isn't he in the Baseball Hall of Fame?”

“Because life isn't always fair, Stosh.”

Flip told me the story of the Black Sox Scandal. The 1919 Chicago White Sox were one of the greatest teams ever. They cruised to the American League pennant. They were heavy favorites to win the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. But they played poorly and lost. Later, it came out that eight members of the White Sox had lost the World Series on purpose.

“Why'd they do that?”

“They were paid off by gamblers to lose,” Flip explained, “and they got caught. People called 'em the Black Sox, and all eight of 'em—including Shoeless Joe Jackson—were banned from baseball for the rest of their lives. That's after they were declared innocent when they were put on trial.”

“That's not fair.”

“No, it wasn't. Like I said, Stosh, life isn't always fair. The Black Sox Scandal is one of the saddest stories in the history of sport.”

I was still upset about the blown call at first base, but I no longer wanted to do physical harm to Mr. Kane. Flip walked me back to our bench, where
the other kids were packing their bats and gloves and stuff.

“Listen up!” Flip hollered. “I have an announcement to make.”

I found a spot on the bench next to Chase Hathaway.

“Boys, I wanted to tell you something before rumors start spreading around school,” Flip announced. “Flip's Fan Club is closing.”

“What?” we all yelled.

“My rent was doubled,” Flip explained. “I can't afford to keep the store open anymore.”

“That's not fair!” a few of us complained, and Flip shot me a look.

“What about the team?” Chase asked.

“Don't worry. Next season there will be a different sponsor.”

“What are you gonna do, Flip?” I asked.

“Retire,” Flip replied. “Finally I'll have the time to do all the things I couldn't do the last sixty years. But I wanted to let you guys know the store will be open for another week, so stop in because everything will be on sale. I gotta clean the place out.”

Flip walked to the parking lot slowly. I didn't believe for a minute that he was looking forward to retirement. He seemed to enjoy the store so much. We all sat on the bench for a minute, stunned.

“So
that's why he hasn't been giving out any base
-ball cards lately,” Chase said. “He can't afford to.”

“Man, we should hold a fund-raiser or something,”
Greg Horwitz suggested. “I bet if we did a car wash we could make a lot of money. Maybe we could save Flip's store.”

“Forget it,” our centerfielder, Max Harley, said. “My mom's beauty shop is on the same block as Flip's. Her rent is over a thousand bucks—each month!”

Everybody whistled. I had no idea it cost so much to run a store. You'd have to sell a lot of baseball cards to make a thousand bucks.

“So what can we do?” I asked.

“Nothin',” Chase said. He slung his bat bag over his shoulder, kicked up the kickstand on his bike, and rode off toward home.

MY MOM USED TO DRIVE ME HOME FROM MY GAMES
when I was in the minors, but once I reached the majors most of the other guys walked home, rollerbladed, or rode their bikes. They started to kid me about riding home with “mommy,” so I gently told her that I wanted to ride my bike home. She was a little hurt by it, but she said she remembered what it was like trying not to be uncool as a kid.

As I pedaled home from the field, I started thinking about Shoeless Joe Jackson and some of the things Flip had told me. There were a lot of questions going through my mind.

Mom was already in the kitchen preparing dinner when I got home.

“You were safe, honey,” she said, “by a mile.”

“I know.”

“How are you feeling?” she asked as I threw my
bat bag in the closet. “I saw you wiping your nose quite a bit out there.”

“I'm getting better.”

Mom's a nurse, and she finds sickness and health a lot more interesting than I do.

“Did you take your medicine this morning?”

“Yeah. Hey, Mom, is gambling wrong?”

“Have you been talking with your father?” she asked, a stern look crossing her face. One of the reasons my parents split up a few years ago was because my dad spent a lot of money betting on horse races, football pools, card games, and things like that. He usually lost. He lives in Louisville, too, but he has his own apartment.

“No,” I explained. “Flip Valentini told me about some players on the White Sox a long time ago who got paid off by gamblers to lose the World Series. They got thrown out of baseball for the rest of their lives.”

“Oh, yeah,” Mom said, filling a pot with water. “I remember seeing some movie about that.
Eight Men Out or something like that.”

“Why would anybody lose on purpose, Mom?”

“I don't know that much about baseball,” my mother explained, “but I know that professional athletes didn't always earn millions of dollars the way they do today. Years ago, they were hardly paid any money at all. The gamblers probably offered those players a little money and they couldn't resist. Then the gamblers made fortunes betting on them
to lose. It's a shame. I buy lottery tickets every once in a while. But gambling is like cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs. It can be addictive. Some people—like your father—start doing it and they can't stop.”

 

Every Saturday night Mom and I have “movie night,” when we rent a movie and make popcorn. I suggested
Eight Men Out
, and they had a copy of it at our local video store.

As we watched the movie, I realized that those players on the White Sox were taken advantage of by a group of sleazy gamblers. Some of the players didn't even get paid a
penny
for throwing the World Series. And the worst part of all was that Shoeless Joe Jackson—this simple country boy who didn't know any better—would be in the Hall of Fame today if he had simply refused an envelope stuffed with money that somebody left in his hotel room. The movie didn't have a happy ending.

As I was rewinding the tape, an idea started to form in my head. I didn't tell Mom at first, because I wasn't sure if she would go for it. But I couldn't get it out of my mind.

I had successfully used baseball cards to travel back to 1909, 1947, and 1932 to meet Honus Wagner, Jackie Robinson, and Babe Ruth. If I could get a 1919 baseball card, I could go back to that year. And if I could go back to 1919, maybe I could prevent the Black Sox Scandal from ever taking place…and help Shoeless Joe Jackson!

AS SOON AS MR. KANE SAW ME WALK INTO HIS SCIENCE
lab before school on Monday morning, his lips curled up into a smirk. He had been pouring some chemicals into test tubes and getting ready for first period when I came in.

“I suppose you have come to apologize for your unsportsmanlike behavior on Saturday,” he said.

Actually, I hadn't come to apologize at all. If anybody should be apologizing, it was Mr. Kane. After all,
he
was the one who blew the call on the play that would have given us the championship. I could have made an issue of it, but I'm no fool.

“I'm sorry,” I said as humbly as possible. “I got carried away.”

“Apology accepted,” Mr. Kane replied. “Such is the folly of youth.”

“Mr. Kane, can I ask you a science question?”

“Fire away, young man. Curiosity is the stepping-stone to genius.”

“If somebody were to travel back in time—”

Mr. Kane snorted derisively before I could finish and waved his hand at me like a traffic cop telling me to hit the brakes.

“Nobody can travel through time!” he said, raising his voice almost in anger. “The laws of physics simply do not permit it. It is idiocy. Why is it that your generation is so fascinated by the idea of time travel? Maybe you're simply not happy in your own time and think you can escape your problems by living in the future or the past. Is that it, hmm?”

“I know time travel is impossible,” I lied. “I'm just curious.”

I said Mr. Kane's favorite word on purpose.

“Curious about what?” he asked, a little more gently.

“Well, if somebody
could
travel back in time, would they be able to change history?”

Mr. Kane sighed and shook his head sadly, as if he'd had this discussion before and was sick and tired of it.

“Okay, Joe, let's ignore the fact that time travel is out of the question. Even if it
were
possible, it would still be impossible to change history.”

“Why?”

“Take the assassination of Abraham Lincoln as an example,” Mr. Kane said. “We all know it happened that terrible evening in 1865. It was in all the
newspapers of the time. It is in all our history books. It is in our collective memory. These books and newspapers and memories exist
today
. Nothing can change that. If someone were able to travel back to that night in 1865, they could
not
push the gun away and prevent the bullet from entering Lincoln's head and killing him. If they could, all those books and newspapers and memories would not exist today, don't you see?”

“But if somebody
could
travel back in time and push the gun away,” I suggested, “wouldn't the newspapers of 1865 have simply printed that there was an attempt on President Lincoln's life? Wouldn't the time traveler return to the present day to find there were all
new
history books with no mention of Lincoln being assassinated back in 1865?”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Because it defies logic!” Mr. Kane thundered. “What if somebody went back in time and killed his own great-grandmother before she had children? Would the time traveler then return to the present and find out that he himself did not exist, because his mother had never been born?”

I had no answer for that. But I did know one thing—
I can travel through time.
I can use a baseball card as my time machine. And I could see no reason why I couldn't go back to 1919 and warn Shoeless Joe Jackson that if he accepted money to
throw the World Series, he would regret it for the rest of his life.

Now all I had to do was get my hands on a Shoeless Joe Jackson baseball card.

“You're giving me a headache, Mr. Stoshack,” Mr. Kane said wearily. “Will you please go to your first period class now?”

THERE WAS A LITTLE TIME LEFT OVER AT THE END OF
computer class, so I asked the computer teacher, Mrs. Ducharme, if I could log on to eBay, the on-line auction site. She gave me the okay, as long as I didn't buy or sell anything on school time.

I typed in www.ebay.com and did a search for “Shoeless Joe.” A long list of items popped up. Shoeless Joe photos. Shoeless Joe books. Shoeless Joe this. Shoeless Joe that. Somebody was even selling an old sign showing Shoeless Joe endorsing
shoes
! But nobody was selling a Shoeless Joe Jackson baseball card.

“Did you find what you wanted?” Mrs. Ducharme asked me when the bell rang.

“No, but I'll keep looking.”

When school was over, I rode my bike over to Flip's Fan Club, which is about a mile from school.
There was a hand-lettered sign in the window:
RETIREMENT SALE
! 10%
OFF EVERYTHING INSIDE
.

Somebody was even selling an old sign showing Shoeless Joe Jackson endorsing shoes!

Flip's is probably my favorite store in the world. I don't have a zillion baseball cards or anything, but I like to go there anyway. It's a tiny little hole in the wall, just big enough for Flip's chair, a long glass display case, and four walls jam-packed with sports cards and cool collectibles. Kids are always hanging around, swapping cards, making deals, talking sports.

On Friday nights, Flip keeps the store open late so kids can come in and flip cards. It's a game that Flip says he used to play when he was a kid growing up in Brooklyn. In fact, that's how he got the nickname “Flip.”

Here's how you play. Two kids each toss a card against the wall. Whoever's card lands closest to the wall gets to keep both cards. Flip doesn't even make
any money from it. He just does it so kids in town have a safe place to go on Friday night. Of course, Friday Night at Flip's would be coming to an end when the store closes for good.

Flip was behind the counter reading the newspaper when I came in. The walls were not completely covered by merchandise, as they usually were. I guess Flip was starting to sell off his inventory in preparation for shutting down the shop. For a change, there weren't any kids hanging around.

“Stosh!” he said cheerfully, looking up from his paper.

“I'm glad the store is still open.”

“I gotta clear my stuff outta here a week from today.”

“What are you gonna do after that?”

“Putter around, I s'pose.”

“It's not fair that they doubled your rent, Flip.”

“Again with the not fair.” He chuckled. “Remember what I told you on Saturday?”

“Life isn't always fair,” I recalled. “And you told me about Shoeless Joe Jackson.”

“That's right,” Flip said. “Whenever I think somethin' isn't fair, I think about what happened to Shoeless Joe. It makes me appreciate that whatever happened to me wasn't so terrible after all.”

“I want to ask you a question about Shoeless Joe,” I said. “If he accepted money from gamblers to lose the World Series, didn't he
deserve
to be thrown out of baseball? I mean, he did a really
bad thing, didn't he? Didn't he deserve to be punished?”

“There's one thing I didn't tell you about Shoeless Joe,” Flip said. “He was illiterate.”

“You mean he didn't know how to read?”

“Or write,” Flip explained, turning around to pull out a thick book from the shelf behind him. “It wasn't any secret. A lot of people were illiterate back then. Shoeless Joe Jackson never went to school. By the time he was your age, Stosh, he was already working twelve hours a day in a cotton mill in South Carolina.”

The book Flip pulled off the shelf was titled
Famous Autographs
. Flip flipped through the pages until he got to the letter
J
.

“Look at this,” he said, pointing his stubby finger at the page when he found the name “
Jackson
.” There were a bunch of autographs of famous Jacksons—Stonewall, Reggie, Michael, Andrew, Jesse. But one of them stood out from all the rest—Joseph Jefferson (“Shoeless Joe”) Jackson. The signature looked like it had been written by a first grader.

Flip pulled out a magnifying glass and held it over the signature.

“Notice the block letters,” Flip pointed out. “All caps. Look at the way he made the letter
A
. See the loop in the
J
?”

“How could he write the words ‘best regards' if he was illiterate?”

“Shoeless Joe was embarrassed that he couldn't read or write. He used to carry around a scrap of paper in his pocket wherever he went. The paper said, ‘Best Regards, Joe Jackson' on it. His wife had written it out for him. When somebody asked him for an autograph, he would pull out the paper and carefully copy the letters. It would take him about fifteen minutes to write ‘best regards.' Usually he would just have his wife sign autographs for him. That's why almost all the Shoeless Joe Jackson autographs floating around among collectors are actually his wife's autograph.”

“So his autograph must be really valuable, huh?”

“More than valuable, Stosh.” Flip smiled. “It's the
most
valuable autograph of the last two hundred years. There are only
three known samples
of Shoeless Joe's writing that exist. The last time one was sold, the seller got five hundred thousand dollars for it.”

“A half a million bucks!” I said, letting out a whistle. Flip closed the book and put it back on the shelf.

“See, the poor guy was a genius at playin' ball,” Flip explained, “but he was a dummy at everything else. He didn't know what he was doin' when he
took that money from those gamblers. He didn't throw the World Series. He had the best Series of anybody on the field. Poor Shoeless Joe got thrown out of baseball and died in disgrace. He didn't have a dime to his name.”

I had been waiting for the right moment to pop my question to Flip. It seemed like the right time.

“Do you have a Shoeless Joe Jackson baseball card from 1919?” I asked.

“Nah,” he replied. “They go for somethin' like twenty-three thousand dollars.”

My heart sank.

“Whaddaya want a Shoeless Joe card for?” Flip asked.

“I can't tell you.”

“Why not?”

“You wouldn't believe me.”

“Try me.”

“You'll just laugh.”

“I won't. I promise.”

Up until now, only my mom and dad knew about the power I had with baseball cards. I hadn't told anybody at school or anyone on my baseball team. I figured they would think I was crazy or something.

“Okay.” I sighed, looking Flip in the eye and trying to sound as grown-up as I possibly could. “You've got to promise not to tell anybody.”

“Scout's honor,” he said, making the sign with his fingers.

“Flip, I can use a baseball card to travel through time.”

He just stared at me for a moment, as if he hadn't heard what I'd said.

“Like a time machine,” I continued. “I can go back to the year on the card.”

Suddenly, Flip burst out laughing, like the air exploding out of a balloon. “Oh, that's a good one, Stosh!” he moaned, holding his sides.

“You said you wouldn't laugh!”

“I can't help it!” Flip chortled, gaining control of himself.

“But I can
do
it, Flip!” I insisted. “I did it with Honus Wagner, Jackie Robinson, and Babe Ruth. If I had a Shoeless Joe Jackson card, I could go back and prevent the Black Sox Scandal from ever taking place!”

Flip burst out laughing all over again, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. “That's what I'm gonna miss the most when the store closes,” he said, shaking his head. “You kids. You kids crack me up.”

“Flip, I'm serious.”

“So you think you can take a Joe Jackson baseball card and it will take you back to 1919?”

“Yes!”

“Well, let me ask you this, genius. If you could really do that, why would it have to be an expensive Shoeless Joe card? Wouldn't
any 1919 card take you
back to 1919?”

I thought about that for a moment. He had a point. If all I needed was to get back to 1919, I should be able to do it with
any
card from that year.
Why hadn't I thought of that sooner?

“You're right!” I told Flip.

Flip reached into the display case and rooted around for a few seconds until he pulled out a card that was in a clear plastic sleeve. This is what it looked like:

“Who's that?”

“Heinie Groh. He played for the Cincinnati Reds. That's who the White Sox played in the 1919 Series.”

“His name was
Heinie
?”

“It's a German name. Take the card, Stosh.”

“How much?”

“Think of it as a present from me,” he said, “for being such a good customer.”

“Thanks, Flip!” I said, slipping the card into my back pocket. “Someday I'm gonna do you a favor.”

“Fuhgetuhboutit,” Flip said before I reached the door. “Oh, one more thing, Stosh.”

“Yes?”

“Have a nice trip!” And then Flip burst out laughing again.