09 - July 1974

Andy sat out the next two weeks in a Mr. Johnson-imposed suspension. Fortunately, we were in the soft spot of our schedule, facing two of the weakest teams on two consecutive Thursdays. Unfortunately, I would be Andy’s substitute for those two games.

Fitz had threatened to quit the Bombers, but Mr. Johnson talked him out of it.

“This is what builds character.

“I don’t think I’m being treated fairly. That guy spiked Jake intentionally.”

“Andy, you can’t go picking fights every time things don’t go your way. You should let the adults handle things.”

“No adults are handling it. The Titans always play dirty.”

“That’s no reason to stoop to their level.”

“You just don’t understand. It’s unfair.”

Mr. Johnson pulled the ball cap off his head and leaned both hands on his hips. He looked over Andy’s shoulder, staring off into the distance. He reached back into his long and storied past to recall one of his own father’s favorite stories about fairness during the Golden Age of the Negro League.

“When you say ‘unfair’, that doesn’t make a lick of sense to me. I was raised in the cotton pickin’ south in the days when nothing was fair. There were separate restrooms for whites and coloreds. And that word….coloreds. It don’t sit well with me, either.”

Mr. Johnson took Andy’s throwing hand in his own. Mr. Johnson’s hand seemed to swallow Andy’s hand.

“Look at your little pink fingers. Now that’s colored. But it makes no mind to anyone what I think. Back then, white was white and colored was colored and they were like oil and water. They just didn’t mix.”

“I know,” replied Andy.

“Do you?”

Andy didn’t know a thing. Mr. Johnson, however, decided it was time to give the boy a history lesson.

“Have you ever heard of the Homestead Grays?”

Andy shook his head.

“That’s because they played in the Negro Leagues. You see, Major League Baseball wasn’t the only game in town. During the World Word II years, I rooted for the Homestead Grays The Grays were to the Negro League what the Yankees were to white baseball.

When I was a boy, there was no Major League Baseball in the south, only farm teams. In my hometown, it was the Atlanta Crackers. There was also a farm league for the blacks called the Black Crackers.”

Andy cocked his head as he looked at Mr. Johnson.

“Oh yeah, Black Crackers…You see, for every white team, there was a black team. There were the Black Yankees and the Black Giants and even the Brown Dodgers. Still, it was never the same. Professional Baseball at its highest level only existed in cities like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and St. Louis. So, we’d wait for the barnstormers to visit Atlanta and when they did, my friends and I would always find a way to go, even if that meant going to the bridge and jumping onto a cargo train late at night and riding it into town.”

“What were barnstormers?”

“You see, Negro League teams barely made enough money to survive, so these teams would set up exhibitions, playing whoever they could. Sometimes, they’d play against the Major Leaguers. Other times, they’d just play farm teams or town ball clubs.”

Andy shrugged.

“Back when I was in college, I played in the Negro Southern League with the Black Crackers. I always wanted to play in the East-West League, but never made it. You know why? The screwball. You see, it’s a complicated pitch. First off, you throw it side-armed. Secondly, you twist your arm, like a curve. If it doesn’t ruin the ligaments in your forearm, sooner or later it’ll just tear your rotator cuff apart, like it did me.”

Mr. Johnson rolled up his sleeve.

“See that scar? That’s what rotator cuff surgery looks like. If you keep throwing that junk, you’ll have a scar just like me.”

As Andy gazed at the scar, Mr. Johnson came out of his recollection of days past and returned to the present tense.

“Just because you’re sitting out a few games, that doesn’t mean I want you to stop practicing. In fact, I’ve been thinking about it and I want to show you how throw the ball with your hand instead of with your whole arm.”

Mr. Johnson snatched a baseball off the grass and rolled it in his hands.

“If you spread your fingers over the seams, you can throw a forkball like Andy St. Pierre. It could become the best weapon in your arsenal.”

Andy stretched his pointer and middle fingers across the surface of the baseball, tightly gripping the seams. It was funny, he thought, that he’d mastered the vents of a Wiffle Ball but never took advantage of the seams on a baseball. He’d always just relied on his arm to make the ball corkscrew, spin, or drop.

Mr. Johnson continued working with Fitz even though he’d been benched. Mr. Johnson included him in every pitching drill and worked on Fitzie’s forkball. Still, Fitz felt excluded from the team, especially on game days, when he would skip games altogether. He handled the rest of it by slowly pulling away from our circle of friends. It only became obvious a few days before Independence Day when Lee and I biked to his house. We stood on the front porch and peered through the screen door, the house looked empty.

“Hello?” Lee called out.

“Why hello, boys,” replied Mrs. Fitzpatrick.

“Is Andy here?”

“He’s still in bed. Let me see if I can wake him.”

Mrs. Fitzpatrick disappeared for several moments.

“Boys, he’s not in the mood for visitors.”

“Tell him it’s important,” said Lee.

“Can’t it wait?”

Lee shook his head.

She disappeared again. We heard her call down to his room in the basement from the top of the stairs. When she returned, she motioned for us to come inside.

“He should be out of bed anyway,” she said, “it’s almost noon.”

Andy got out of bed just as we rumbled downstairs.

“Give me a few minutes,” he said. He grabbed a pair of jeans from the bedroom floor and pulled them on before fishing his tennis shoes out of the closet and putting them on, too.

“What’s up?”

“We wondered if you wanted to play Wiffle Ball.”

Andy scratched his head.

“I don’t know.”

“C’mon.”

“Dad wants me to finish the yard work before the fourth.”

“We’ll help you,” offered Lee, “just play Wiffle Ball with us for a couple of hours.”

Lee would always make promises like that, but somehow he’d manage to break each and every one. Still, it always worked. Fitzie grabbed his bike and glove and followed us down to my house.

 Throughout the spring, the constant and repetitive sound of ‘WOHnk-pop, WOHnk-pop, WOHnk-pop’ came from the Johnson’s backyard. We’d heard it, but never tried finding out its origin.

Today, however, that was all about to change.

Arthur James, the old man who lived across the street from the Johnsons, couldn’t help his curiosity. My father had seen him watching all the neighborhood activities through his large picture window in the living room.

“There goes the ‘Sidewalk Superintendent’ again.”

“Craig, will you just leave him be?”

“I’m not doing anything to him. I’m just observing.”

Mr. James crossed the street, wearing nothing but an old pair of plaid golf shorts with a dark brown belt and dress shoes, and dress socks, both in basic black.

As we arrived on our bikes, Mr. James was standing at the Johnson’s front door talking to Mrs. Johnson. Meanwhile, my father was sitting on our porch watching the whole thing transpire.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure, but whatever it is, there’s no doubt in my mind that old Arthur James has got an opinion and he’s more than happy to share it with Mrs. Johnson.”

“Craig!” scolded my mother.

However, her tone was only half-hearted. She, too, couldn’t help but be just as curious as dad who was just as curious as Arthur James.

“I bet Mrs. Johnson didn’t count on this when she chose to come to Mount Adams.”

Mrs. Johnson leaned against the doorframe as she listened to Mr. James.

“You know, there’s been this loud sound coming from your backyard, and as a concerned neighbor, I was wondering if it was anything I could help with.”

Mrs. Johnson raised an eyebrow as she looked Mr. James up and down.

“No, I don’t think we’re having any problems, but thanks so much for all your concern.”

“Are you sure?”

Mrs. Johnson slowly nodded.

Meanwhile, we all stood in the front lawn watching them.

“Jake,” said my father, “why don’t you and the guys head on over to Byron’s for a game of Wiffle Ball?”

“We were going to play here.”

‘Wouldn’t a new field be a good change of pace?”

My mother cleared her throat.

“What?”

“You know exactly what.”

The three of us went into my backyard. We’d played there so many times over the years that the old pie plates and Frisbees that had been makeshift bases were no longer necessary. Four large patches of dirt, decreasing in size from home plate, first, second, and the rarely touched spot at third base had replaced them. Meanwhile, my father decided to pick up right where Arthur James left off.

“Hey Carolyn, is Robert here?”

“He’s in the backyard with Byron.”

My father nodded.

“You can cut through the living room.”

My father accepted her offer and headed directly to the backyard. As he opened the screen door at the back of the house, the sound grew much louder. Byron and his father were in the far back corner, on the low end of a slope. Mr. Johnson stood behind a large pitching machine, feeding baseballs into the hopper.

“WOHnk-pop, WOHnk-pop, WOHnk-pop”

Byron crouched at the other end of the yard, just in front of the tall evergreen hedge that had been hiding him and this machine from everyone’s view up until now.

It was nearly ninety degrees outside during Summer vacation and Byron was in full catcher’s gear catching high speed pitches from a Jugs machine.

After each pitch, he’d drop the caught baseball in a small green plastic pickle bucket sitting on his left hand side.

“Robert, dear!” Mrs. Johnson interrupted them from the porch.

Mr. Johnson and Byron turned to see what she wanted. My father waved and trotted through the backyard toward them.

“This thing’s great. Where’d you get it?”

“I bought it off of Emory University a long time ago when I thought I was going pro.”

“Can I try?”

Mr. Johnson motioned towards Byron with two fingers, prompting his son to get into a crouch. Then, he toggled the switch and started the rotor wheel.

“Just drop the ball into this tube.”

My father hesitated for a moment. The tube delivered the ball into the rotor, which sucked it over the wheel and spat it towards Byron.

“WOHnk-pop!”

My father giggled like a schoolgirl.

“I’ve never seen anything so fantastic.”

“It’s really not that fantastic. It’s over twenty years old.”

 Can I do it again.”

Mr. Johnson chuckled as my father fed another pitch into the hopper. The ball popped as Byron framed it in his mitt. Then, it plunked as Byron dropped it into the plastic bucket. My father dropped a few more baseballs into the hopper and Byron caught each one effortlessly.

“Can I bring the boys over?”

“I suppose so.”

“Jake!” shouted my father.

“Yeah?”

“Can you boys come on over to the Johnson’s?”

I looked to Fitzie. He gave a slight nod.

“Sure.”

We went out the front gate and cut across Mr. Cook’s front lawn. Mrs. Johnson was waiting for us, holding the screen door wide open. We marched through the house to the back. Just like my father, when I opened the door, the first thing I heard was the sounds coming from the pitching machine.

“Check this out!”

“WOHnk-pop!”

“Cool!”

We rushed into the backyard.

“Come on. Let’s set this us for some batting practice.”

“Craig, we don’t have enough room.”

“We’ll just use tennis balls and the boys can hit the ball lightly.”

Against Mr. Johnson’s better judgment, they moved the Jugs machine to the top of the slope. Mr. Johnson turned it to the lowest setting and my father stood in front of it. Byron squatted into catcher’s stance right behind him.

“You ready?”

Mr. Johnson held the ball at the edge of the hopper, showing it to my dad. As soon as he let go, the machine spit it out. My father squared up for a bunt.

“Crack!”

The bunt flew over the hedgerow and into Mr. Cook’s backyard. We all gasped.

“Let me try!” said Lee.

Alright, but be careful.”

“I will.”

The pitches were much faster than anything we’d seen in Tall Oaks. Still, we did manage to get a few hits off without doing any real damage. We were almost always behind the pitches. The worst of it came when Lee caught the ball with the end of his bat. It looped over the hedgerow and bounced on Mr. Cook’s roof.

As was always the case, Mr. Cook had a peculiar habit when it came to our Wiffle Ball games. We’d play for a bit, whooping and hollering in my backyard.

He owned a trio of dogs. They were a Samoyed-Husky mix he’d picked up off a Russian dog breeder. They were thick and stocky. They had long salt and pepper fur and a terrible bark.

Whenever we hit Wiffle Balls into Mr. Cook’s yard, it was always hard telling if we’d get them back. Sometimes, he’d come out and toss them all back. More often than not, they’d just remain in his lawn until we knocked on his door and asked him or his wife to retrieve them. As the years went by, my mother insisted we not knock on his door at all.

“He knows the balls are out there,” she’d say, “He’ll return them in good time.”

There were about thirty Wiffle Balls stored in a trash cylinder next to the back door at my house. When we ran out, we’d just turn to something else for the remainder of the day.

The dogs were out in the backyard now. It looked like today would be no different.

“Don’t worry,” said my father, “Mr. Cook’s a good guy. He’ll bring them over soon enough.”

“Let’s just go knock on his door,” suggested Fitz.

“Andy, you know better than that.”

Fitz shrugged.

“What’s wrong with us going over?”

“Mr. Cook’s an old man with arthritis. You don’t want to make him run after your balls all the time. Just get them later, when the dogs are inside.”

Andy sighed.

“Hey Robert,” said my father, “What are you doing for the fourth?”

“I was thinking of having a small picnic with just my family.”

“A bunch of us are going to watch the fireworks from the Newport Floodwall.”

“Won’t it be crowded?”

“Yeah, but there’s plenty of space. We go down in the early afternoon and have a picnic, play cards, and just people watch.”

“And they’ll be a game at Riverfront that night,” I added.

“Aren’t they playing the Dodgers?”

I nodded. My smile must’ve been ear-to-ear. My father cleared his throat.

“You’re not wearing that ratty old Steve Garvey jersey your mom bought you.”

I frowned. Dad simply shook his head.

“You’ll wear something red if you want to travel in my car.”

“Alright,” laughed Mr. Johnson, “we’ll go.”

“Is everyone else in?”

“You bet!” said Lee.

“How about you, Fitzie?”

Andy shrugged.

“C’mon. You always go.”

“We’ll see. I gotta go home.”

There wasn’t the slightest bit of conversation after that. Instead, we just went our separate ways. When the fourth came around, Lee called our house early in the morning.

“When are we going?”

“Mom said we’d head down after dad gets off work, around 4 o’clock.”

“That’s so late…”

“I know, but that’s the way.”

We went to Byron’s house and played a few games of ‘hot box’. Byron and I guarded two bases while Lee ran back and forth, trying to steal as many bases as possible without getting caught. After a short while, Byron’s sister, Erica, joined us.

We played until we’d worn ourselves out. Mrs. Johnson brought out a tray of macaroni and cheese and orange punch. All four of us sat at the table to eat and Mr. Johnson arrived soon afterward.

“Are we going or not?” he asked.

“We’re going!” I said.

I went home to change into the Reds shirt my father had given me for Christmas. I also grabbed my transistor radio and an extra 9-volt battery.

We piled into two cars. Lee’s parents went with my dad and mom in one car. Our gang went in the other car with Byron and his family.

Traffic was bumper-to-bumper the entire way through downtown. It cleared as soon as we turned onto the access street to Roebling Bridge.

“I love this part,” said Lee.

“Me, too.”

Lee quickly rolled down his window and leaned his head outside. The low hum of tires on the perforated steel deck sent chills down my spine.

“Waaaahhhhhhh!” Lee called down to the street. He could see the muddy Ohio River passing by below.

“Now we’re in Kentucky!” announced Mrs. Johnson. We all cheered.

My father found a parking place in a nearby lot and we made the long walk to the Flood Wall and found a place to lay our blanket. We could sit right on top of the Flood Wall and dangle our feet over the edge. When we did that, however, my mother politely asked us to scoot away from the edge.

“This is awesome!” said Byron.

“I wish Andy was here,” I said.

“Me, too.”

Byron glared at his father. Mr. Johnson simply looked away. It was the only moment I’d ever seen Byron defy him. In fact, we all expected Mr. Johnson to scold him right then and there. When he didn’t, we sat in silence for a split second. The bustle of people around us quickly snapped us back into motion.

“Let’s go to the Riverboat and see if we can find something to eat,” my father said.

“It smells like roast pig,” replied Mr. Johnson, “who all wants some?”

Everyone raised a hand.

“Alright, we’ll be back in a little while.”

While we played cards, all three fathers headed for the Riverboat.

“What do you think is going on with Fitz?” asked my father.

“He’s a thirteen year old boy. There’s no need to worry about him. He’ll snap out of it.”

“I’m not sure. His parents just separated.”

“Aw, man. That’s rough. We’ll just have to keep an eye out for him.”

My father nodded in agreement. They purchased two arms full of pulled pork sandwiches and brought them back to the top of the Flood Wall. We devoured them before the parents sprung us loose on the riverfront.

“Hasn’t the game started?” asked Lee.

I looked across the Ohio at Riverfront Stadium. It was hard to tell from there, so I took my little black transistor radio out of my pocket and tuned it in to WLW. It was the ‘Marty and Joe Show’ with Marty Breneman and Joe Nuxhall.

“It’s already the third inning.”

We strolled back and forth until the sun hit the horizon. By that time, it was the middle of the eighth at the Reds-Dodgers game. The Reds were winning 2-1. My father had gotten the score from someone else listening to the game. He was quick to let me know.

“The Dodgers still have the top of the ninth,” I said.

That they did. Garvey began the inning with a long shot over Geronimo’s head, which resulted in a stand-up double. To add insult to injury, Willie Crawford was next up.

“Crawford’s been slumping,” said my father, “He’ll never get a hit off of Borbon.”

We could hear the roar of the crowd from across the river. My father’s smile was short-lived.

“Crawford pulled the ball into leftfield,” I announced, “Garvey just crossed home.”

“Gawd-dammit!”

My father threw his ball cap to the ground. Several of the people around us stared at my father as he sweeped it off the ground. However, he did not (and would not) apologize. After all, this was the Reds vs. the Dodgers.

Ron Cey received an intentional walk and Many Motal grounded to second. Morgan got Cey while Crawford slid into third. Now, he was only 90 feet from scoring the go ahead run.

“It’s only Bill Russell,” said my father.

I was quiet for a few moments more. Other Reds fans, however, let out groans.

“What happened?”

“Crawford scored,” said one guy, “Russell hit it over Tony Perez’s head.”

Dad and I never missed a Dodgers-Reds game, whether it was broadcast on television or radio. Grandma was there, too, but the real drama occurred between my dad and me. One of us would brag to the other whenever our team had the lead. Every game concluded in one of us gloating while the other got overheated.

  I had stuffed my Dodgers cap into mom’s purse before we went. When I looked to her, she simply shook her head.

Still, we quickly forgot about the game as the fireworks got underway. For my dad, the only thing keeping it from being a perfect day would’ve been a Reds win. For me, it would’ve been seeing Andy Fitzpatrick’s family there, too.

.