Mickey & Me (3 page)

WHEN I OPENED MY EYES
,
I WAS SITTING IN A DUGOUT
.

Perfect
, I thought to myself. I had landed exactly where I wanted to be. It should be a simple matter to find Mickey Mantle, warn him about the silly drain, and get out of there.

But almost immediately, I sensed something had gone wrong.

This wasn't Yankee Stadium, it was obvious. I had seen “the House That Ruth Built” a million times on TV. It had those curved façades over the upper deck across the outfield. The ballpark I was in had no upper deck at all. The lower deck didn't even go all the way around. Somebody could hop right over the outfield fence from the street. No way was this a major-league ballpark.

I had been blown off course. Where was I?

Looking around, I saw that the field wasn't what
I expected either. There was a regulation-sized baseball diamond, but the place was deserted.

Clearly, I had traveled through time. Everything was made of wood. The outfield scoreboard was one of those old-fashioned kinds in which somebody had to put up boards with numbers on them whenever a team scored a run. All the cars parked beyond the centerfield fence looked like PT Cruisers. There was even a horse tied up to a pole outside the left field stands.

This was all very weird.

There was a newspaper on the ground near my feet. The
Milwaukee Bulletin
. What was I doing in Milwaukee? I picked it up. The headline on the front page was about as large as I had ever seen.

The date on the paper was June 7, 1944, the day after D day. I guessed that it was yesterday's paper, which meant I had traveled to Milwaukee on June 8, 1944.

I knew a little bit about D day. The first R-rated movie my parents ever let me see was
Saving
Private Ryan, which was all about D day. That was
the day the Allies launched a huge invasion to take Europe back from Nazi Germany. It was one of the bloodiest battles of World War II.

I was seven years early and in the wrong town! Something must have gone wrong. Something always seemed to go wrong!

A small sign on the outfield fence said

 

BORCHERT FIELD

Home of the Milwaukee Brewers and Chicks

 

Brewers and Chicks?

The sun was sinking beyond the right field stands. The clock near the scoreboard said it was almost six o'clock, which was about the time I left, I estimated. I glanced around the dugout. There was a lineup card taped to the wall.

• 1. Petras, ss
  
• 2. Keagle, cf
  
• 3. Eisen, lf
  
• 4. Tetzlaff, 3b
  
• 5. Maguire, c
  
• 6. Klosowski, 1b
  
• 7. Whiting, rf
  
• 8. Ziegler, 2b
  
• 9. Wisniewski, p
  

None of the names sounded familiar to me until I got to that last one.

Wisniewski.

Where had I heard that name before? Then I remembered. Connie Wisniewski was the name of that lady pitcher my dopey cousin idolized! And that meant…

I looked at the baseball card in my hand.

She must have taken the Mickey Mantle card out of my fingers while I had my eyes closed and slipped one of her girly-girl baseball player cards in its place.

She tricked me, the little rat! She must have taken the Mickey Mantle card out of my fingers while I had my eyes closed and slipped one of her girly-girl baseball player cards in its place. That would account for that jolt I had felt while I was in the process of traveling back in time.

I turned the card over. This is what it said on the back:

Oh, I'll kill her! When I get home, I'm going to destroy that little weasel! She slipped me a Mickey!

Okay, calm down,
I kept telling myself. This is not so terrible. I've been in a lot worse situations. Like the time that crazy batboy tried to brain me with a bat when I went to meet Jackie Robinson in 1947. Or the time that gangster shot at me when I went to meet Shoeless Joe Jackson in 1919.

Samantha pulled a little prank on me, that's all. No harm done. It was pretty clever of her, actually, substituting a Mickey Maguire card for a Mickey Mantle card. I didn't know the little squirt had it in her.

There was a simple solution. I would just find a nice, quiet spot and travel back to my own time.

A door in the back of the dugout looked promising. The knob turned. I opened it and went inside to find an empty locker room. Perfect.

It was pretty dark in there, but I could read a handwritten sign on the wall.

 

All Games Canceled June 7 Because of D Day

 

I pulled my pack of new baseball cards out of my pocket and sat on the floor by an empty locker. Ripping open the pack, I knew I didn't have to be picky. Any card—superstar or benchwarmer—
would take me back to my own time.

I picked a card at random and closed my eyes. Soon the tingling sensation started to come.

That's when I heard a voice. Many voices, actually. Female voices. I opened my eyes.

And, brother, I want to tell you, I saw something that I will not forget for the rest of my life—a line of teenage girls coming out of a shower room, naked as the day they were born.

I dropped the baseball card.
Maybe I shouldn't be so hasty in getting back to my own time, I decided. I mean, what's the rush?

There were tall ones, short ones, blondes, and brunettes. There must have been about ten or more. I didn't want to stop to count. How come you never have a camera with you when you need one?

Silently, I slipped the cards back in my pocket. I didn't breathe. A sneeze or cough at this moment would be disastrous. I refused to blink or I would miss a millisecond. I was drinking it all in, like I had stumbled upon an oasis in the desert.

When I was little, my parents took me to the Grand Canyon, and it was beautiful. Yosemite National Park was beautiful. People talk about the Eiffel Tower, the pyramids, the
Mona Lisa
. But I'm going to be honest with you. None of them could possibly compare with this.

Don't get me wrong. I had seen naked women before. Well, I had seen one naked woman before, twice. Her name was Katie Jackson, and she was
Shoeless Joe Jackson's wife. But that's another story, and it was only for about a half a second each time. This was different. This was my all-time fantasy. This had been my dream ever since I was, well, eleven.

This, I concluded, must be what heaven is like.

Then, of course, somebody had to go and flip on the lights.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek! A man!”

“
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK
!”

You would have thought a swarm of killer bees or a pack of man-eating bears had invaded the locker room. But it was just me, sitting on the floor and minding my own business. I put my hands over my ears to prevent my eardrums from exploding.

“There's a man in the locker room!” one of the girls shrieked.

Towels appeared out of nowhere. A magician could not have conjured up so many towels out of thin air so quickly. As I struggled to hold the afterimage on my retinas of what I had seen, I cursed Thomas Edison for inventing the lightbulb and whoever it was who invented the towel.

The curtains were drawn. The show was over.

“It's just a boy,” a very tall blond girl said. “Relax.”

“Who are you?” a girl wearing glasses demanded as she wrapped a towel around herself. “What are you doing here? How long have you been hiding?”

“M-my name is Joe Stoshack,” I stuttered, getting to my feet. I put my hands in the air so they would know I was harmless. “I was only hiding…I mean I've only been here for a few minutes. It was an accident. I just wanted a nice, quiet place where I could, uh, relax and—”

“I think he's cute,” a very short blond girl said, stepping forward to pinch my cheek. I thought she was pretty cute too, and she was only about five foot two. “Let's keep him. Snookums, my name is Merle Keagle, but the fans call me the Blond Bombshell.”

“Stop flirting with the boy, Merle,” the tall blonde said.

“Everybody calls me Stosh,” I said. My face must have been tomato red.

“Hi, Stosh!” Merle giggled.

They had gathered around me like I was a newborn panda at the zoo. One of the girls pushed her way through the crowd. She appeared to be a little older than the others, twenty-five or so. I felt as though I had seen her before somewhere, but I couldn't place her. She had dark eyes and brown hair, and she was a few inches taller than me.

“I'm Mickey Maguire,” she said. “Are you the new mascot?”

I most certainly was not the new mascot. But I made the instant decision that being a mascot for
this team might be a pretty good job to have.

“Yeah, I'm the new mascot,” I lied.

“Terrific,” Mickey said, pulling a box out of the locker next to hers. “Put this on.”

I opened the box. Inside was a giant yellow chicken suit with a separate head.

“I have to wear this?”

“We're the Chicks.” Mickey said the word slowly, like I might be dumb. “Our mascot is a chicken. What did you think you'd be wearing, an elephant costume?”

The girls got a good laugh over that. Mickey moved me over to her locker and turned me around so I couldn't see the girls putting on their uniforms. I slipped my legs into the chicken suit.

Somebody turned on a radio. The singer sounded like Frank Sinatra or one of those other old-time crooners my mom listens to from time to time just to annoy me.

“What happened to the last chicken?” I asked Mickey as I struggled to pull the zipper on the chicken suit past the feathers, which kept getting in the way.

“We ate him,” Mickey cracked, letting out a laugh. “No, he quit actually. We scared him off.”

Mickey's locker was filled with catcher's equipment, bandages, medicine, ice packs, and other medical supplies.

“Tape and guts keep me going,” she said when she noticed me looking at her stuff.

There were two photographs taped up in her locker: one of a horse and the other of a guy wearing a military uniform.

“Is that your boyfriend?” I asked.

“My husband,” she replied. “He's a corporal in the army. Overseas for two years now.”

“Is he a part of the D day invasion?”

“No, thank goodness. Tom is stationed in Italy. At the end of every letter, he always writes, ‘When the Allies take Rome, I'm coming home.'”

“Is that your horse?” I asked.

“Yup. That's Chico's Flame. I raised him myself. Got him hitched up beyond the left field fence. Do a good job and I'll give you a ride later.”

I finally got the chicken costume on. The head attached to the body with a series of hooks. It was too tall for me to see out the eyes, but I could look and talk out of the mouth.

“You look like a real chicken,” Mickey said, turning me around.

The girls were dressed in their uniforms now. I turned my chicken head until I found Merle, the girl who had said I was cute. To my eyes, she was the prettiest girl on the team. I thought I saw her flip me a wink.

Most of the girls were about my size—five foot five—with the exception of the really tall blonde. She was skinny, with long arms and legs. The girls were hanging around, doing crossword puzzles, putting on lipstick, and fixing their hair in the mirrors
hanging from each locker.

Their uniform looked like it had been designed for dancing, not for playing baseball. It was a gray dress, with short sleeves, red trim, and a belt. On their feet were regular baseball spikes, and black socks that came up almost to the knees. Their caps had a red bill and a big
M
inside a yellow circle. On the front of the uniform was a large circle with the words “City of Milwaukee” on the top and “Wisconsin” on the bottom.

“How do you slide wearing that uniform?” I asked Mickey.

“It isn't easy, kid,” she replied, lifting her dress to reveal a six-inch-long patch of reddened, scraped, and scabbed-over skin on her right thigh. “But if you want to play, you've got to pay.”

Mickey wrapped some tape around the wounded leg and also around two of her fingers, which she said she had sprained in a collision at home plate during the last game. Then she strapped on her shin guards and chest protector. There was a knock at the door leading to the dugout.

“May I come in?” a man asked.

“It's Max,” the tall blonde announced. The door was opened and a thin, older man came in. He was carrying a clipboard and wearing a regular baseball uniform, but with the Milwaukee Chicks logo on it.

“Good evening, Mr. Carey,” the girls chanted respectfully.

“Who's he?” I whispered to Mickey.

“Max Carey,” she replied. “Our manager.”

“
The
Max Carey?” I asked in awe. “The Max Carey who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates?”

“Yup.”

I knew all about Max Carey from my baseball books. He played twenty years in the majors and led the National League in steals ten times. And I was in the same room with him!

“Mr. Carey doesn't like mascots,” Mickey whispered. “So keep your beak shut.”

“Gather around, girls,” Carey said, pulling up a chair to put his foot up on. Merle—who I couldn't stop staring at—turned off the radio, and all the players obediently clustered around Carey. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be part of the discussion, so I hung back.

“We had the day off yesterday, thanks to President Roosevelt and General Eisenhower,” Carey told the group. “We needed it. Girls, we're not hitting. Our bats are about as quiet as a busted clock. We've only won five games so far, against seven losses. That's not good. But it's still early. We can do better, and we will do better. Wisniewski?”

It was the very tall blonde who raised her hand. Now I knew her name. Connie Wisniewski. She was the one my little cousin idolized.

“Can you go nine innings tonight, Connie?” Carey asked.

“I think so, sir.”

“I hope so,” Carey continued. “A few of the girls
are sick today, and we're shorthanded. Everybody needs to pitch in and pull up the slack.”

“I can pitch an inning if you need me,” the serious girl with the glasses volunteered.

“Good, Doris. We're playing the Rockford Peaches again. We went over their lineup the other day, so I won't repeat myself now. You know what to expect. They're fast, they play hard, and they play aggressively.”

“So do we, Coach!” another girl said. Except for Merle, she was the shortest one on the team.

“That's what I like to hear, Ziggy,” Carey said. “This is a team sport. It's never
I
, it's always
we
. So let us all clasp hands.”

The players formed a big circle around Max Carey.

“May this chain,” he said, his head bowed, “with its golden links, its ideals and principles, carry us through to victory in the test just ahead and also through the years that are to come. Okay, let's get 'em!”

The players let out a whoop, grabbed their gloves, and charged out of the locker room in single file.

I realized this would be a good time for me to bail out of this situation. Clearly, I wasn't going to meet Mickey Mantle here. I had told my cousin I would be right back. It would be simple to take one of my new baseball cards, go sit in a quiet corner of the locker room, and send myself away from 1944
and back to my own time. Nobody was around. It would be easy. They'd never miss me.

On the other hand, not more than ten minutes before, I had seen the entire roster of the Milwaukee Chicks totally naked! Maybe I should stick around awhile.

I was mulling over this crucial decision when the voice of Max Carey echoed off the walls.

“Hey, you! Chicken!”

Being the only one dressed up as a chicken, I figured he had to be talking to me.

“Yes sir?”

“Take off that chicken head while I'm speaking to you.”

Carefully, I removed my head.

“What's your name, sonny?”

“Joe Stoshack, sir.”

“Oh yeah?” Carey sneered. “Any man who dresses up like a chicken is no man in my book. From now on, your name is Josephine. Is that clear?”

“Yes sir.”

“What's your name?”

“Josephine, sir.”

“Good,” Carey said, staring me down. “I want you to know some things right from the start. I don't like mascots. Mascots are pathetic. This isn't Halloween. This is baseball. If people want to see puppets, they can go to a puppet show. If we have to have a giant chicken to bring in the fans, so be it.
But I don't have to like it…or you.”

“Yes sir!”

“And another thing,” Carey continued, “these girls are not here for your enjoyment, if you know what I mean. If I catch you fooling around with any of my players, you're out of here, buster. They are professional baseball players, and damn good ones. If they weren't, I wouldn't have come out of retirement to manage this team. Is that clear?”

“Yes sir!” I said, fighting to hide the smile that was threatening to appear on my face.

“Okay. Now go out there and do…whatever it is you do. Just stay out of my way and mind your p's and q's.”

“Yes sir!”

I charged toward the door, but Carey wasn't quite done with me yet.

“Josephine!” he shouted. “Put your head on! Wear your full costume at all times on the field. That's league rules.”

I attached the head and charged for the door again. Unfortunately, there was a pipe hanging down from the ceiling that, though higher than my head, was lower than the chicken's head. The pipe knocked the chicken head off mine and sent me sprawling to the locker room floor.

“Pathetic…,” Carey muttered, shaking his head and walking out the door.