Jim & Me (5 page)

FLIP VALENTINI KNOWS
EVERYBODY
IN THE WORLD OF
card collecting. These guys are all buddies and they're constantly swapping and buying each other's stuff. They even go to conventions so they can sit around and tell stories about cards they bought, cards they almost bought, cards they
should
have bought, and cards they never should have sold. Collecting cards is their lives. I'm telling you, they're obsessed. Who would think that little pieces of cardboard could be so interesting to somebody?

But I will say one thing: they sure know baseball cards.

“This is gonna be tough,” Flip said as he opened a big book listing thousands of cards. “Maybe impossible. We gotta find a Thorpe card from before he
was in the Olympics.”

Flip told me to put the
CLOSED
sign on the door so we could work on the problem without being interrupted. When he didn't find anything in the book, he fired up his computer and started cruising baseball card websites.

He poked his stubby fingers around the keyboard, hunt-and-peck style. Flip was pretty computer literate for an old guy. But I guess he never learned how to type.

The first thing we discovered was that Jim Thorpe played for a team called the Rocky Mount Railroaders in the Eastern Carolina League during the summers of 1909 and 1910. That's why his Olympic medals were taken away. If there was a Jim Thorpe card from that league, it would be perfect. I could go back to 1909 and convince him to stop playing baseball, or at least to play under a different name so he wouldn't get caught after the 1912 Olympics.

But Flip checked all his usual web sources, and there was no such card. Semi-pro teams hardly ever printed cards of their players.

The first card we found with Thorpe on it was from 1913, the year after the Olympics. It was his rookie year in the big leagues. Right after his medals were taken away, Jim was signed by the New York Giants. That was long before they moved to San Francisco and became the San Francisco Giants.

Jim was in the front row, first guy on the left.

The 1913 card had a group photo of the Giants team on it. It was put out by Fatima, a cigarette company. There was Jim, sitting in the front row, first guy on the left.

“These go from a couple hundred bucks up to a thousand, depending on the condition,” Flip told me as he printed out a copy of the card.

“That's too late,” I told Flip. “The Olympics were in 1912.”

“Hang on a sec,” Flip said. “There's one more possibility…AHA! Here's another Thorpe card!”

We read off the screen together:

Bingo! Maybe a Colgan's card would take me back to
before
the summer Olympics. That would be too late to tell Jim not to play ball for the Rocky Mount Railroaders, but at least I could warn him not to enter the Olympics. If he didn't participate in the Olympics, then his life would never be ruined. After all, if you don't win any medals, they can't take them away from you, right?

“That card could work!” I told Flip.

“There's only one problem,” he said.

“What?”

“There are only two of 'em.”

“Two of them for sale?” I asked.

“No. Two of 'em in the
world
.”

So much for
that
idea. It didn't look like I was going to visit Jim Thorpe again anytime soon.

 

The next day I went for my weekly visit with my dad, who lives in an assisted-living development in Louisville. A few years after my parents split up, Dad got into a bad car crash and he's been in a wheelchair ever since. He can't work and doesn't get around very well.

My dad used to be a
huge
baseball fan. He's the one who taught me how to play and got me interested in collecting cards. But when the news came out that a lot of players were taking steroids, my dad lost interest in the game. He said if guys took drugs to build up their muscles and then they hit 70 home runs in a season, it made all the statistics of base
ball history meaningless. You can't compare the stats of a guy who was juiced with those of a guy who wasn't.

Since baseball was pretty much my dad's life, he sort of lost interest in life at the same time. He was depressed. It wasn't much fun to go visit him. But I had to because, well, he's my dad.

Usually, we'd talk about the old days. That seemed to cheer him up.

“Do you know anything about Jim Thorpe?” I asked him.

“The guy from the Olympics?” Dad replied. “Sure. You thinkin' of going to visit him?”

“I already did,” I said, “but I was too late. I'm thinking of going back and talking to him before the Olympics.”

“Not a bad idea,” Dad said. “Jim Thorpe totally blew it.”

“Huh?”

“After he won the Olympics, Thorpe was sitting on a gold mine,” my dad told me. “He could've made millions, even without any medals. You know what they say: Everybody is famous for 15 minutes. Well, Thorpe was the most famous man in the world. He could have cashed in big-time—movies, ads, exhibitions. He could have toured the world and raked it in.”

“So why didn't he?”

“Because he was stupid,” Dad said. “You know what he did instead of cashing in on his Olympic
fame? He went back to college and played football. For
free
. How dumb was that? A few months later, nobody cared about him anymore. I'm telling you, money makes the world go 'round. Some people know how to make it, and some people don't.”

I looked around my dad's tiny apartment. Everything was old or faded or broken. This was a man who didn't know how to make money.

I pulled out the picture of the New York Giants card that Flip had printed for me and showed it to my dad.

“That's
right
!” he said. “Thorpe played for the New York Giants. With Christy Mathewson! With John McGraw! What a team! They
owned
New York back then. They owned baseball! Oh, you gotta go just to meet those guys!”

For the first time in a long while, I saw a little spark in Dad's eyes. He was excited.

“Remember the time we saw Babe Ruth in the 1932 World Series?” I asked.

That was one of the best times Dad and I ever had. Ruth hit his famous “called shot” home run in that Series. He pointed to the centerfield wall and then hit the next pitch over it. Or that's the legend, anyway. Nobody knew for sure whether or not Ruth
really
called his shot. But we knew exactly when and where he was going to hit it, so Dad and I decided to go back and see with our own eyes. It's a long story.

“That was before I got hurt,” Dad said, shifting his weight in his wheelchair.

I felt bad. There wasn't a whole lot my dad could do anymore.

“I probably won't see any baseball players,” I told Dad. “If I'm lucky, I'll get to Jim Thorpe before he gets into the majors.”

“Well, do me a favor, will you?” Dad asked. “If you happen to meet John McGraw, get him to sign something for me. I know a guy who collects nothing but McGraw memorabilia. This guy is nuts. He'll pay
anything
for signed McGraw stuff.”

That old fire flickered in my dad's eyes again. It made him look younger.

“I'll try, Dad,” I said.

 

A couple of days later, when I got home from school, Flip Valentini was knocking on the front door.

“I got somethin' for you,” he said.

“Don't tell me,” I said. “You tracked down one of the two guys in the world who owns the Colgan's Jim Thorpe card?”

“How'd you know?” Flip asked.

“I was joking!” I said. “You mean, you really got it?”

Flip took an envelope out of his jacket pocket and pulled out the Colgan's card, which was in a plastic sleeve.

“The owner is
very
protective,” Flip said. “He's
never even tried to sell this card at an auction.”

“Wow.” I marveled, looking at it. “How much is it worth?”

“Lemme put it this way,” Flip said as he handed me the card. “You lose this, and you owe me 50,000 bucks.”

BOBBY FULLER
'
S LOCKER IS MILES AWAY FROM MY LOCKER
. But I kept going there all morning between classes, hoping to see him. After my third or fourth try, I figured that Bobby probably never even goes to his locker. If you don't do your schoolwork and you fail all your classes, what do you need a locker for anyway?

But finally, toward the end of lunch period, I spotted Bobby at his locker. He was laughing with a few of his pre-juvenile-delinquent friends.

Some kids, like me, are into sports. Some kids are into music or art. Bobby and his friends, I'm guessing, are into setting off homemade fireworks and pulling the wings off insects.

As soon as I got within ten feet, Bobby and his friends stopped laughing. I'm sure they were planning something that was illegal, or should be.

“What are you lookin' at, choirboy?” this guy wearing a Metallica T-shirt asked.

I can't sing and I've never been in a choir. I guess he was trying to suggest that I was one of those kids who follow the rules and don't get into trouble all the time. As if that was a
bad
thing.

The first words that popped into my mind were,
Just looking at some garbage
. But I decided to keep my mouth shut.

“I asked you, What are you lookin' at?” the kid repeated.

“Nothing,” I replied.

Metallica Boy stepped right up in my face.

“You tryin' to say I'm nothin'?”

I took a quick look around. I could probably take the kid, but my school has a zero-tolerance policy about fighting. It wasn't worth getting suspended just to see this guy with a bloody nose.

“Knock it off, Duane,” Bobby said. “He ain't bothering nobody.”

“What are
you
?” Duane asked Bobby. “One of
them
?”

“Let's leave these two alone,” one of the other guys said. “They probably want to do their homework together.”

Bobby's idiot friends laughed as if that was funny and walked away.

“So long, Bobby,” Duane said as they left. “I hope you two get straight As.”

What a bunch of jerks.

“Okay, Stoshack,” Bobby said when his friends were gone. “What do you want?”

“I have something to show you,” I told him.

I swung off my backpack and took out the Colgan's Jim Thorpe card. I kept it in the plastic sleeve, partly to protect it and partly to prevent me from sending myself back in time by accident.

“What's this?” Bobby asked as he slipped the card out of its sleeve. “This ain't no baseball card.”

“It'll work,” I said. “Be
careful
with it!”

Bobby looked at me with his evil grin. Then he pinched the card and held it like he was going to rip it in half.

“No,
don't
!” I screamed.

Suddenly the hall was silent. Everybody was looking at me.

Bobby laughed. “Relax. I wasn't gonna rip it,” he said. “I was just goofing on you.”

“It's worth 50,000 bucks!” I whispered. “There are only two of them in the
world
!”

“Look, Stoshack,” Bobby said as he slipped the card back into its sleeve. “I already met Jim Thorpe. The guy turned out to be a loser. Give it a rest.”

“But he's your great-grandfather!” I said.

“So what?” said Bobby. “He was a jerk. He dissed me. Nobody treats me like that. I hate him.”

The bell was about to ring. Lunch period was almost over. But I wasn't ready to give up.

“Think about it,” I said to Bobby. “This card was printed sometime between 1909 and 1912. I read it
on the Internet. The Olympics were in 1912. If we can get to Jim
before
the Olympics, we can convince him not to compete. If he's not in the Olympics, he won't win the medals. And if he doesn't win the medals, they can't take them away from him.”

Bobby thought it over. I have to give him credit for that.

“But if he doesn't win the medals,” he said, “Jim Thorpe will be a nobody.”

I couldn't argue with that, and I had to admit he had a point. You can't be infamous if you're not famous. Which is worse—to be famous for doing something wrong, or to be a nobody your whole life?

I wasn't sure. But my gut told me that, at least in this case, doing something was better than doing nothing.

“Don't you ever feel like something is just the right thing to do?” I asked Bobby. “I mean, this is your chance to right a serious wrong. Not many people ever have the chance to do that in their whole lives.”

The bell rang. I had to get to math.

“You can't change me, Stoshack,” Bobby said. “You're not gonna turn me into a Goody Two-shoes do-gooder like you. I'm gonna do my own thing.”

“Fine,” I said, turning on my heel. “Do your own thing.”

I don't need Bobby Fuller
, I thought to myself as I walked down the hall to class. Bringing him along only makes things more complicated anyway. I'll
just do it on my own. He can do his thing and I'll do mine.

 

Every time I go back in time, Mom and Uncle Wilbur act like they're sending me off to sleepaway camp. Mom was running around putting snacks, Band-Aids, an umbrella, and other stuff in a suitcase for me to take. No
way
was I taking a suitcase with me to 1912.

Uncle Wilbur dug up some of his old clothes, which he saved from back when he was my age. He grew up
after
1912, but he insisted that his clothes would still look current because men's fashions don't change that much from year to year. He pulled out a white button-down shirt, suspenders, a brown hat with a tiny little brim, and a pair of gray pants that stopped at knee level. Then he gave me a pair of socks that went all the way up to the bottom of the pants. They looked ridiculous, but I put the stuff on anyway.

“You look like a million bucks,” Uncle Wilbur told me.

Besides the baseball card, there was only one thing I wanted to bring along with me—the newspaper article I had copied at the library about Jim losing his medals. If I could prove to him that competing in the Olympics would ruin his life, it might help him to make up his mind.

Everything was ready. I patted my pocket to make sure I had the Colgan's card and a new pack
of cards to bring me back home. Uncle Wilbur wished me good luck and went upstairs to bed. Mom gave me a hug and told me to be careful (for the hundredth time). I sat on the couch and got myself ready.

That's when the doorbell rang. Mom went to get it so I wouldn't have to explain why I was dressed so oddly. I was more than a little surprised when she came back into the living room with Bobby Fuller.

“What are
you
doing here?” I asked.

“Joey, is that any way to talk to your friend?” Mom said.

“Mom!” I shouted, shooing her upstairs.

“I changed my mind,” Bobby told me. “I want to go too.”

Maybe it would be
good
if Bobby came along, I tried to convince myself. If I got into a jam, he might be able to bail me out. After all, he
did
save my life when that wrecking ball almost creamed me the first time.

“Okay, put these duds on,” I told Bobby.

“Are you kidding me?” Bobby said. “Suspenders are for clowns. You look like you should be in the circus, Stoshack.”

“You want to blend in when we get there, don't you?” I told him. “You don't want to look like some freak.”

“All right, all right,” Bobby agreed. “But I gotta bring my backpack with me.”

“What do you have in there, anyway?” I asked.

“I
told
you, my meds,” he replied. “That, and my iPod.”

“You're bringing an iPod?!”

I couldn't believe it. If the people in 1912 saw an iPod, they'd probably spaz out, call the cops, and have us thrown in jail.

“A man's gotta have his tunes,” Bobby explained.

I could have argued. You can argue about anything. But then you find yourself arguing all the time. If he wanted to bring an iPod with him, that was his business.

Bobby went into the bathroom and came out wearing Uncle Wilbur's clothes. They were a little small on him, but he didn't look that bad. He actually looked more like a regular kid.

We sat on the couch. I took a few deep breaths to relax, and held out my right hand. This time, Bobby took it without complaining.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Let's blow this pop stand,” he said.

I dipped my other hand in my pocket and took out the Colgan's card. I needed to tap the plastic sleeve against the coffee table to make the card slip out.

The tingling sensation didn't come immediately. Sometimes it takes a while. I have to get in the mood, relax, and think about where I'm going. Early 1912, I hoped. Someplace, I wasn't sure where. Somewhere in the general vicinity of Jim Thorpe. I knew that much. We could end up on an Indian
reservation—or in Stockholm, Sweden, where the Olympics took place. Or anywhere. That was part of the mystery. I just hoped Bobby Fuller wouldn't mess things up for me. It was a big risk, taking him along. I'd have to be very careful.

“It's happening,” Bobby whispered. “I can feel it.”

He was right. I had been thinking so much that I didn't even notice my fingers were starting to tingle.

“Is everything gonna be in black-and-white?” Bobby whispered.

“Shhhhhh!”
I said. “No.”

The buzzy feeling moved up my arm quickly. Soon it washed across me like a crowd doing the wave at a game and my whole body was vibrating. I wished I could bottle that feeling, because there's nothing like it in the world.

Then I started to feel the atoms that make up my very existence disappear one by one, like when you pop bubble wrap until there are no pops left. My body was vanishing from the present and moving through space and time to another era.

We were gone.