Jim & Me (9 page)

ME AND BOBBY GRABBED JIM BY HIS SHOULDERS AND
hustled him to the door. We had to hold him up. He was so drunk I was afraid he was going to fall over.

“Come on,” Bobby told Jim once we were out on the street. “We'll help you get home.”

“I didn't know I had a great-grandson,” Jim muttered. “I'm not even married yet.”

“We live in the twenty-first century,” Bobby explained. “My friend Stosh here can travel through time…with baseball cards.”

Jim looked at us funny, like he was trying to focus his eyes.

“Here, I can prove it,” Bobby said, pulling the iPod out of his backpack. “Stick these things in your ears.”

“What are they?” Jim asked.

“Earbuds.”

Jim stuck them in his ears and Bobby turned on the iPod. Jim instantly let out a scream and fell to the sidewalk, ripping the earbuds out.

“Turn it
down
!” I told Bobby.

“It was in my head!” Jim yelled. “The sound was in my head! What
was
that?”

“Heavy metal,” Bobby told him

After Jim had recovered, he got up and examined the iPod carefully. It was like he couldn't believe that such a little thing could make such a big noise.

“Can I hear that again?” he asked.

Bobby gave him the earbuds and turned the iPod on again, lowering the volume this time.

“Pretty cool, huh?” Bobby asked.

Jim didn't hear him. He was bobbing his head up and down with the music.

“This is good,” Jim said when the song ended. “Twenty-first century, huh?”

Jim must have liked the iPod, because he put an arm around each of us, and we all started walking down Eighth Avenue together. I think the blast of music sobered him up a little.

“Hey, what's the deal with John McGraw?” I asked, stepping over some horse manure in the street. “He is one bad guy.”

“There's an old Indian saying,” Jim said. “Bad in good, and good in bad.”

“How come he hates you so much?” asked Bobby.

“I like to win,” Jim said, “but with McGraw, nothing else matters.
Nothing
. Winning is his whole life. I like to compete; if I don't win all the time, that's okay. McGraw can't tolerate failure. Ever. I guess that's why me and him don't get along.”

“So why don't you become a free agent?” Bobby suggested.

“A
what
?” asked Jim.

“A free agent,” Bobby said. “You sign with whichever team offers you the most money.”

Jim leaned back and roared, as if he'd heard a great joke.

I'm sure Bobby had no idea that free agency didn't exist until the 1970s. Before that, the team that signed a player
owned
him until they released him or traded him. Jim was stuck with the Giants until they decided to get rid of him. That's why baseball players used to play their whole career with one team. Now, hardly anybody does.

I looked in the windows as we walked down Eighth Avenue. There were no stores selling electronics, like we have today. Electronics didn't exist yet. There were no video stores. No computer stores. No supermarkets. No fast-food chains. But there were plenty of hat stores and butchers and newsstands. A little gift shop had part of its display devoted to Christy Mathewson. It had Matty sweaters. Matty playing cards. Matty board games. There were plenty of billiard parlors and bars. I was
afraid that Jim was looking for a place to get another drink.

“Hey, Thorpe!” a guy on the street suddenly shouted as he passed. “You're a bum!”

“
All
ballplayers are bums,” said the lady with him. “The Olympics are over. Get a job, you shirker.”

Jim ignored them. We had walked maybe ten blocks from the bar, and I could tell that many of the people on the street recognized Jim. Some would just nod their heads, or look at him a little longer than they would look at a stranger.

“Excuse me?” a woman with a little girl said, stopping right in front of us. “Are you Jim Thorpe?”

“Sure am, ma'am,” Jim said, taking a bow.

“We're hungry,” said the little girl.

“Hush, Olivia!” said her mother.

The girl, I noticed, had dirt on her knees, and her clothes were old and frayed. Her mother was young, but her hair was messy and she looked like she hadn't slept in a long time.

Jim bent down to talk to the little girl.

“Nobody should be hungry,” he said, “least of all a pretty girl like you.”

Jim reached into his pocket and pulled out the money he had made beating up that guy in the bar. Then he pressed a bunch of bills into the mother's hand. Her eyes opened wide, like she had never seen so much money in her life.

“I'll pay you back,” she said. “I promise. What's your address?”

“Forget it,” Jim told her.

“I'll send the money to the Polo Grounds,” the lady said.

Jim didn't seem to care one way or another. I couldn't believe he would just hand 200 dollars to a complete stranger.

“Why'd you do that?” I asked as we walked away.

“She needs it more than I do,” he said.

At the next corner, a couple of guys were sitting forlornly on the curb next to their car, which had a flat tire. There was a spare next to them, but they weren't putting it on the car. Jim went over to them.

“Whatsa matter, boys?” he asked.

“We ain't got no jack,” one of them said, “on account of Jack here lost it.”

“Jack lost the jack?” asked Jim. “You can't very well jack up a car if Jack lost the jack, can you, Jack?”

“Nope,” said Jack.

“How long you think it would take you boys to change that tire if you had a jack?” Jim asked.

“A minute or two,” Jack said.

“Well, I'm no jack,” Jim said, rolling up his sleeves, “but I reckon I can jack up your car for a minute or two.”

“Are you crazy, mister?” Jack said.

“Maybe,” replied Jim as he walked around to the front of the car. “You fellows get ready to work fast.”

Jim leaned over and grabbed the front bumper of the car with both hands. Then he spread his legs
apart and lifted up the car like a weightlifter picking up a set of barbells. The front wheels were about five inches off the ground. Instantly, a crowd gathered around to watch.

The two guys frantically took off the flat tire while Jim held the car up. Me and Bobby rushed to help. The four of us looked like the pit crew at a NASCAR race.

“Hurry it up, boys!” Jim said, sweat beading on his forehead. “I can't hold this thing up all day.”

Finally, we got the spare tire on, and Jim lowered the front of the car. The crowd on the street erupted in cheers. The two guys thanked Jim about a dozen times and tried to give him money, but he wouldn't take it.

“You fellas need it more than I do,” he said.

Jim told us he was staying at a hotel a few blocks away until he could get his own place. He said we didn't need to walk him the rest of the way. But Bobby wanted to, and Jim said he didn't mind the company.

There was a little newsstand on the corner, and Jim went in to buy a paper. Bobby and I looked at the candy. It was cool because they had candy bars we'd never heard of, like Goo Goo Clusters. But there were no Milky Ways. No 3 Musketeers. No Kit Kats. How did these people survive without Kit Kats?

Next to the candy rack was a shelf filled with New York Giants souvenirs. Just about every item was endorsed by Christy Mathewson. There were
Matty razors, Matty pen-and-pencil sets, Matty pipe tobacco, and so on.

Matty's name was on just about everything in the store.

“Look, he even wrote a book,” Bobby said, holding up a book titled
Pitching in a Pinch
.

Jim paid for his newspaper and came over.

“Matty didn't write no book,” he said. “Some
other
guy wrote it and Matty put his name on it. That's the way it works. They can stick Matty's name on any old thing and sell it. He doesn't have to do a thing except count up the loot.”

“Do they ever put
your
name on stuff?” Bobby asked.

“They were going to, right after the Olympics,” Jim said. “Then my medals were taken away.”

“That sucks,” Bobby said. “They slap Matty's name on every piece of crap there is.”

“Matty's the all-American boy,” I said.

“Let me tell you something,” Jim said, leaning close enough so I could smell the alcohol on his breath. “My people settled in this country long before any white men arrived. My ancestors have been here for thousands of years. I'm more American than anybody. And you know what? They won't even give me American citizenship. Talk about not fair.”

As soon as we left the newsstand, I noticed a crowd of people gathered down the block. Jim hustled over. I thought maybe there had been an accident or he was going to help somebody who was hurt.

But it was nothing like that. The crowd was gathered outside the offices of a newspaper,
The New York Evening Journal
. There was a huge board mounted on the side of the building. It looked sort of like a baseball scoreboard. Instead of just showing the score though, it also showed what was going on at the game.

“Strike
two
!” a guy shouted into a megaphone. “That's one ball and two strikes on Max Carey.”

There was a baseball-diamond shape on the board, with cutouts of little runners at first and second base.
Lightbulbs indicated the inning, as well as the number of balls, strikes, outs, hits, runs, and errors.

“Strike him out, Matty!” some guy yelled, as if Matty could hear him. “He's a bum.”

It was the Giants game at the Polo Grounds. They were playing the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Giants had a 2-1 lead in the third inning. About a hundred people were standing around “watching the game.” Or a simulation of it anyway.

“Foul ball!” shouted the guy with the megaphone.

“Oh man, this is lame,” Bobby whispered to me. “These people need high-def TV
bad
.”

Personally, I thought it was cool.

“How does the guy with the megaphone know what's going on at the Polo Grounds?” I asked Jim.

“I thought you boys were from the future,” Jim said. “Don't you know how a telegraph works?”

Of
course
! There must have been a telegraph operator at the Polo Grounds who was watching the game and tapping out the action, pitch by pitch, on a telegraph key. He sent it by wire over to the newspaper office, where it got posted almost instantly on the board. It was almost like watching the game on TV. They didn't have television, but they had this. It was pretty ingenious, in a low-tech way.

“Ball two!” shouted the megaphone man.

People in the crowd were buzzing as if they were watching the real game. One guy said Matty was sure to work his way out of the jam. Another said he wasn't the dominating pitcher he had been in his
younger days.

It was taking a long time for the megaphone man to make an announcement. The crowd seemed to be getting restless. It occurred to me that no news was most likely bad news. It probably meant that something exciting had happened, and the telegraph operator at the Polo Grounds needed more time to describe it.

“It's a base hit!” shouted the megaphone man suddenly. The little batter on the board moved toward first base. The little runners started to move toward the next bases.

“No!” screamed the crowd.

“It's a double!” shouted the megaphone man.

“NO!” screamed the crowd.

“Two runs score!” shouted the megaphone man. Both of the little runners crossed home plate. The score was 3-2, in favor of Pittsburgh.

“Nooooooooo!” screamed the crowd.