Willie & Me (2 page)

I was crossing the third-base line when I saw it happen, almost in slow motion. I ran forward to try and grab him, but it was too late. The next thing anybody knew, Flip had fallen backward and landed hard on the concrete floor of the dugout. It all happened so fast that nobody had the chance to catch him. I just hoped he hadn't hit his head.

Everybody came rushing over, from our team and the other team too. Nobody cared about the final score or the outcome of the game anymore. Flip was hurt. He was on his back on the floor of the dugout.

“You okay, Mr. V?” asked the ump.

“I'm fine,” Flip grunted, but it was obvious that he wasn't fine. “My man was safe at second and you know it. You just wanted to get the game over with so you could get out of the rain.”

“Don't move, Mr. V,” the ump told him, reaching for her cell phone. “We're going to get you a doctor.”

“No doctors!” Flip shouted. “The last time I went to one of those quacks, it cost me four thousand bucks and Medicare wouldn't cover it.”

“Can you get up?” one of the dads asked.

“I'll be okay,” Flip grumbled. “Just gimme a minute.”

He lay there for a bit, and then he tried to roll over on his side. But he couldn't do it. He groaned. You could see the pain on his face. He wasn't going anywhere.

Somebody must have called 911 because a couple of minutes later, an ambulance pulled up in the parking lot, its siren blaring. The paramedics got out, wheeling a stretcher.

I
WANTED TO VISIT
F
LIP IN THE HOSPITAL THE NEXT DAY
, which was Sunday. I figured I'd ride my bike over after church. But my mom told me Flip had had surgery in the middle of the night and would probably be drugged up on painkillers, so I should wait a day or two. She's a nurse at a hospital herself, so she knows about stuff like that.

It didn't matter anyway, because I spend Sunday afternoon with my dad. He moved into an apartment on the other side of town after he and my mom split up a few years ago. We get together most weeks. My mom sort of hides upstairs when Dad comes to pick me up, so she won't have to make chitchat with him.

“Where are we going?” I asked when Dad pulled up in his van.

“It's a surprise,” was all he would tell me.

My dad's van is custom-made so it can be driven
without foot pedals. In fact, it doesn't even
have
foot pedals. The brake and the accelerator are levers on the right side of the steering wheel. They make vans like that for handicapped people. My dad was in a car accident a while back that left him paralyzed from the waist down. That's another story for another day. Anyway, he gets around pretty well for a guy whose legs are useless. But I help him, too. His wheelchair is in the back of the van.

We pulled up to the Louisville Marriott Hotel on West Jefferson Street, parked the van, and went inside. Dad still wouldn't tell me what was going on, but then I saw a sign in the lobby that said
BASEBALL MEMORABILIA SHOW TODAY
.

I've been collecting cards since I was little, and my dad is the one who got me started. He's been collecting since he was a kid, so he's got a lot of good stuff from the sixties, seventies, and eighties—Nolan Ryan, Hank Aaron, Tom Seaver, you know. That era. I don't usually go in for card shows myself. I'd rather add to my collection the old-fashioned way—you buy a pack of cards, peel off the wrapper, and then you get to see what goodies are inside. Is there any other product people buy where you don't know what you're buying? I can't think of one. It's just more exciting and mysterious to buy packs of cards than it is to buy cards that some dealer has on display. Cheaper, too. That's just my opinion.

My dad has been talking a lot lately about starting a little business buying and selling sports
memorabilia online, so I guess he wanted to check out the show.

“Maybe you can help me,” he said as we got on the elevator. “Hey, if this works out, you could be my partner and take over the business someday.”

I'm not really interested in becoming a memorabilia dealer, but I didn't tell him because I didn't want to hurt his feelings. He hasn't had a lot of luck with jobs. Maybe this could be the break he needs.

The show was in a big ballroom at the hotel, with hundreds of tables lined up and dealers from all over the country. They were selling lots of stuff—bobblehead dolls, signed bats, balls, photos, game-worn jerseys, but mostly cards. There must have been a million baseball cards in that room. If the hotel were to catch on fire, well, a lot of people's life savings would be wiped out pretty quickly.

We went up and down the aisles looking at stuff, and Dad stopped to chat with a few of the dealers, but he didn't buy anything. I don't think he was looking for anything in particular. He was just trying to get the lay of the land and see how much people were charging.

Then he rolled his wheelchair to a table with a big sign over it that said
BLASTS FROM THE PAST
. A guy with a scraggly beard and a Dodgers T-shirt was standing behind the table. He stuck out his hand and introduced himself as Kenny.

“What can I do you for?” Kenny asked.

“I want to get a present for my son's birthday,”
Dad said. “He just turned fourteen two days ago.”

“You don't have to buy me anything, Dad,” I told him.

I know my father doesn't have a lot of money. He has a tough enough time paying his rent without worrying about buying me stuff that I don't need.

Kenny told us he specializes in home runs—baseballs that were hit for home runs, photos of players hitting homers, stuff like that. He showed us what he had, but it was all either really expensive or not all that interesting. We were about to move on to the next booth, but Kenny saw he was losing a possible customer and he reached under the table. He rooted around in a box down there for a moment.

“Maybe you'd be interested in
this
,” he said. “I just got it in yesterday.”

He pulled out a rectangular wooden plaque with two baseball cards mounted on it, one on either side. It was dusty. The cards looked like this. . . .

Between them, inscribed on a gold plate, were the words
THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD
.

Ralph Branca and Bobby Thomson. I had heard of those guys. There was a documentary on TV about them. I saw it years ago. One of them was the batter and the other was the pitcher. I didn't remember the details.

“It was the most famous home run in baseball history,” my dad said. “Nineteen fifty-two, am I right?”

“Fifty-one,” Kenny said, wiping off the plaque with his sleeve. “Before my time.”

“Mine too,” said my dad. “The Dodgers against the Giants, right? That was the
New York
Giants. It was before both teams moved to California, Joey.”

“I
know
, Dad,” I said, rolling my eyes.

I'm not stupid. I know my baseball history. In 1958, the New York Giants became the San Francisco Giants, and the Brooklyn Dodgers became the Los Angeles Dodgers.

“The Giants won the first game of the 1951 season,” Kenny told us, “and then they lost eleven in a row. They were terrible. By August eleventh, they were thirteen and a half games behind the Dodgers. It was hopeless.”

“Then they turned it around,” Dad said, picking up the story. “They won something like sixteen in a row.”

“Thirty-seven of their last forty-four,” Kenny said. “Twelve of their last thirteen. And on the last day of the season, they tied the Dodgers and forced a
three-game playoff for the pennant.”

“And in the final game . . . the final inning,” Dad said, “Thomson hit the Shot Heard Round the World. Branca threw the pitch, that poor bum.”

“The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!
” both of them started chanting.

I had heard that famous radio call of the home run myself. And I'd seen the video on YouTube.

“How much do you want for the plaque?” my dad asked.

Kenny looked it over, even pulling out a magnifying glass to examine both cards carefully.

“I can let it go for a hundred and fifty,” he said.

My dad whistled.

“That's
way
too much,” I whispered in his ear. “I don't want you to spend—”

“It's your birthday,” he whispered back. “You only turn fourteen once. And besides, it's a
steal
. Thomson and Branca cards from 1951 have
got
to be worth more than a hundred and fifty bucks.”

Dad turned back to Kenny.

“Mind if I ask why you're selling this so cheap?”

“The cards would be worth about a hundred each in mint condition,” Kenny told us. “But they're creased and messed up a little at the edges. Also, they're glued to the wood. The guy who did that was a real dope. That always hurts the value. Too bad he didn't use photo corners. So anyway, they're not worth much.”

“We'll think it over,” my dad said, preparing to roll away.

“Tell you what,” Kenny said before we could get very far. “You seem like good guys, and it's the kid's birthday. For you, I'll knock off ten percent. Make it a hundred and thirty-five. I shouldn't be doing this, but you caught me in a good mood.”

My dad didn't think it over very long.

“We'll take it,” he said.

“Dad! That's too much money!”

“Hey,” Kenny said, “tell you what I'm gonna do. I'll give the plaque to ya for
free
if you can answer this question. Ya ready? When Thomson hit the Shot Heard Round the World, who was the on-deck batter? I'll give you one guess.”

My dad looked at me blankly. He didn't know. I tried to think back and remember that documentary I saw on TV. But for the life of me, I couldn't come up with the name.

“I give up,” I finally said.

“Willie Mays!” said Kenny. “Mays was in the on-deck circle when Thomson hit that homer.”

“Yes!” I shouted, hitting my forehead. “I
knew
that!”

“Well,
here's
something you probably don't know,” Kenny said as he handed me the plaque. “The Giants cheated. There's no way a team could come back from thirteen games behind that late in the season. They won the pennant by cheating.”

“Ah, that's just sour grapes,” my dad said as he
fished out his wallet and pulled out a bunch of bills. “You're a Dodger fan. It's been more than sixty years. Get over it.”

“It's true, man,” Kenny said. “They cheated. They won the pennant that year under false pretenses.”

He was still calling the Giants cheaters as I rolled Dad away. I put the plaque in the big pocket in the back of his wheelchair. I tried to think of a place I could hang it on my wall, alongside some of the other baseball memorabilia I had been accumulating.

We looked at a few more booths at the show, but my dad seemed like he was dragging, so I suggested we hit the road. He gets tired easily.

“How much did that Kenny guy say the Thomson and Branca cards would be worth if they were autographed?” Dad asked me in the car as he drove me home.

“He didn't say.”

“I bet it would be a lot,” Dad told me. “A couple of thousand, at least. If only there was a way. . . .”

His voice trailed off. I looked at him. He was watching the road. But I knew what he was thinking.

“No!” I told him. “I am
not
going to go back to 1951 just to get Bobby Thomson and Ralph Branca to sign their baseball cards.”

“I didn't say a word!” Dad protested.

“But you were thinking it!”

“Well, yeah, I
was
thinking it,” Dad admitted. “It would be an easy score. You just go back, get the autographs, and split. Boom. Done. A thousand bucks easy.”

But it
wouldn't
be easy. I knew that from experience. It was never easy. Something always happened.

“I won't do it, Dad,” I said. And that was the end of it.