Keeping Score (14 page)

Next to her Joey-Mick bounced a little, then burst out, "Dad, if you and George go, we'd all be safe!" His voice slipped and skidded on the last word.

Maggie's stomach felt like the inside of a baseball— miles and miles of string wound up hard as a rock. But on hearing Joey-Mick, something loosened just a little, and she almost felt like hugging him. She had been right not to let him in on the plan. It was lots better; he was way more eager now than he would have been if he'd known about everything in advance.

Then Mom spoke. "Ought to be able for seats near an exit, if you buy them early enough," she said.

Maggie's mouth fell open. She stared at her mother—first in disbelief, then in speechless gratitude. But Mom was already knitting away again, as if the conversation were about any old ordinary thing.

Maggie was suddenly exhausted. There was nothing more to say. She looked down at her hands without seeing them and waited.

The tiny clicking sound of Mom's needles nibbled at the silence. Joey-Mick fidgeted but didn't say anything. He was probably thinking the same as Maggie: Dad would decide now one way or the other, and that would be that.

Dad stirred the dimes on the table with one finger. "Guess you're not little kids anymore," he said at last. "You're old enough, the both of you, to understand and—and listen and do something the second I say so. In an emergency."

Maggie stopped breathing.

Dad picked up a dime and examined it closely. He turned it over and stared at the other side too, as if he had never seen a dime before in his whole life. At last he raised his eyes and looked at Maggie.

"I'll have to call Carol and see what she thinks."

"
Dad!
" Joey-Mick shouted and jumped to his feet. He banged into the table and almost fell over. The dimes hopped and slid a little.

Unable to speak, Maggie took the biggest breath she had ever taken in her life.

"Now, you be getting that money off the table before you lose any of it," Mom said.

Maggie gathered the dimes back into the sock. She was surprised to find that her fingers were all trembly.

"Catch, Maggie-o."

Dad winked at her and tossed her the last dime. And even though her hands were shaky, she caught it just fine.

The pennant race was still a mad scramble among four teams, with the Giants in first place. Maggie had Dad purchase the tickets for the game
—the
game—a week in advance. With the race so close, she was afraid that all the seats would sell out. And the timing suited Dad, too; he was able to choose seats in the lower deck along the third-base line, in the second-to-last row. Near an exit.

Seven tickets. Maggie and the family, that was four. And Treecie and Jim and Jim's sister, Carol, three more. George had been invited, but he would be on duty that day. Maggie had worried that her dad might change his mind when they found out George couldn't go, but nothing more had been said about it.

Carol had told Dad that she would leave her boys at home with her husband.

"It's gonna be Jim's first real outing," Dad said, "so she figures it'd be better if she could concentrate on helping him. Without the boys there."

"Did he say anything?" Maggie asked. "I mean, did Carol say he said anything, when she told him about the game?"

"I don't know," Dad said. "Well, not that she mentioned to me."

Maybe Jim
had
said something, or at least responded in some way. Or maybe he hadn't, and he didn't really care, and it was Carol making him go. But Maggie couldn't quite believe that. Jim loved baseball and especially the Giants. Of course he would want to go to a game.

At any rate, everyone else was excited. Joey-Mick kept talking about catching a foul ball. Treecie was going to bring her camera and take pictures. "Action shots," she said. "They might not come out very good, but it'll be good practice."

Dad decided on the seating arrangement. "I want kids sitting next to adults," he said. "I'll take the aisle seat. Rose, I want you at the other end. Then Joey-Mick, then Carol and Jim. Maggie-o, you'll sit next to Jim, and Treecie will sit next to me. Everybody got that?"

Perfect. Treecie on one side of her, Jim on the other, without even asking. They would all be together. In Ebbets Field.
At a Dodgers game!

The morning of the game, five of them—the family plus Treecie—went on ahead to Ebbets Field. Carol and Jim had to drive in from New Jersey, so it was decided that they would park near the firehouse to avoid the traffic downtown. They would pick up their tickets, which would be left at the firehouse. Then they would take the bus and meet the rest of the group at the ballpark.

Maggie had been disappointed when she learned that Jim and Carol would be arriving at the game separately. But it turned out to be a good thing, because when she first got to the ballpark, there was so much to see—she couldn't possibly have paid attention to Jim at the same time.

Once off the bus, they joined the streams of fans walking to the park's entrance. Everyone was in a good mood, it seemed. The talk was all about baseball; Maggie felt like even the air she was breathing was full of baseball somehow.

So many people! Maggie thought in pairs: Men / women; young / old; rich / poor; black / white ... She spotted a priest in his collar and, a few moments later, two nuns in their habits. An enormously fat man, a bunch of really skinny boys. Ladies in suits and hats and gloves; men in worn caps and stained dungarees. It seemed as if the whole world loved baseball.

Treecie jabbered away at her side; Maggie listened without really hearing. She couldn't speak herself; she just kept looking and looking....

"Over here," Dad called. He and Joey-Mick led the way, and as they walked side by side in front of her, Maggie noticed how tall her brother had grown lately.
He'll be taller than Dad any day now.

Maggie had expected that Ebbets Field would be special, like magic almost, but she still wasn't prepared for what she saw as they walked into the entrance rotunda.

Where to look first—at the dazzling height of the ceiling that rose several stories above her head? At the enormous chandelier that had baseball bats for arms and big glass globes shaped like baseballs? At the marble floor, so smooth underfoot, a Dodgers baseball logo in the middle, with even the
stitches
made out of tiles—who had thought of
that?
Maggie had never seen a building as wonderful as the rotunda. Only the library came close.

People were swirling every which way; there didn't seem to be any kind of order to where they were going. But Dad had it all worked out. He led them through the rotunda toward one of the entrances to the stands. Maggie hardly noticed that they had to wait their turn for the crowd of fans to funnel their way through the entrance; she was too busy trying to make sure she saw absolutely everything there was to see.

Soon they were in what seemed like a maze—ramps and corridors and stairs that kept leading upward. It was darker here, all steel beams and dull brick and concrete floors. After the majesty of the rotunda, Maggie felt a little pinch of disappointment, but she did her best to ignore it.

"It's like a mystery!" she shouted to Treecie.

"What?" Treecie shouted back.

"Never mind." Maggie's thoughts didn't want to come out in words.

Elbows and shoulders bumped her. Someone stepped on her heel; her shoe almost came off, but she managed to stamp her foot and get it back on. Thank
goodness—it would have been scary to have to bend down in that crowd.

Dad strode up a set of concrete steps, then turned aside to let the rest of them pass. He was grinning, looking right at Maggie. She grinned back, then glanced beyond him.

One more step, and—

After the darkness of the corridors, the sunshine was suddenly, blindingly bright. After the cramped and closed-in ramp, a huge free space opened out before her.

GREEN!

Maggie gasped. Her heart began pounding, her knees trembling. For a brief breathless moment she thought she might faint.

The perfect green diamond of the infield, outlined by white lines and base paths so precise they looked like a painting.... The great expanse of the outfield, trimmed by the warning track and held in by the wall, the grass fresh, smooth, greener-than-emerald, stretching on and on.... And the sky was an enormous bowl of purest blue overhead. Maggie had never seen so much grass and air and space in one place!

Maggie stared at the field every second as Dad herded them into their seats. She could have looked at that vast open greenness for years and years and never gotten tired of it.

"
Look!
" Joey-Mick leaped to his feet. "It's Jackie!
Look, over there!
" He pointed at a door in one corner of the outfield from which the players were beginning to emerge.

It was Jackie, all right. And Pee Wee, and Gil, and Campy, and the Duke.... Maggie had seen their pictures in the paper, and she thought they looked exactly like she had imagined they would look, only more so. Not as...
fancy,
but in a good way. Like ordinary guys who happened to be really good at baseball.

Then part of the crowd began booing, but it sounded almost friendly. Maggie turned her head to see the Giants coming onto the field. Mixed in with the good-natured boos were some cheers from the Giants' fans scattered throughout the stands.

Maggie watched as more Giants came out, their gray visiting-team uniforms trimmed with black.

There.

Loping across the grass to catch a ball that had been tossed to him by a teammate.

Number 24. Thanks to the photo Jim had given her, she'd have known him anywhere.

Willie Mays.

For the first time since they had arrived at the park, Maggie wondered where Jim and Carol were. She wanted to turn to Jim's empty seat and shout, "Jim—d'you see him? It's Willie!"

She looked behind her at the steps to see if they were coming. Why were they so late? The game would be starting soon—they might miss the first pitch....

But in a moment Maggie was distracted again—Russ Meyer, the Dodgers' pitcher, was warming up along the foul line; the umpires came out; the teams began making their way toward their dugouts.

Maggie felt almost like she was dreaming. One after another, the things she had heard so many times before on the radio were happening
right in front of her,
only now with far more than just sounds and words. The green of the field, the confusion of colors in the stands, the smell of popcorn and hot dogs, the feel of the breeze on her skin. The announcer ... the organ ... standing for the national anthem ... clapping and cheering when the Dodgers took the field....

Somewhere along the way, Maggie had been given a scorecard for the game. She didn't remember anyone handing it to her; it must have been during those first few glorious moments of seeing the field. She couldn't decide whether to score the game in the scorecard, where the players were already listed in the batting order, or use her notebook, which of course she had brought with her. She finally chose the notebook.
I don't want a game missing from it. Especially not this one.
And she would keep the scorecard as a souvenir. Maybe she could copy her notations into it later.

Russ Meyer threw the first pitch of the game, and Maggie recorded it with a shiver of pure delight.

It wasn't until Willie came to bat later in the inning that she thought to look for Jim again. She'd had too much to worry about: The Giants had wasted no time, getting three hits in a row and scoring two runs with their first four batters. But when Willie came to the plate, Maggie took her eyes off him long enough to glance toward the steps.

Dad was standing at the corner where the steps met the aisle. He was watching the game, but after each pitch, he would turn and look down the steps. Maggie looked at him until their eyes met, then gave him a little wave of thanks.

Dad had it covered. He wouldn't miss them when they came.

Willie grounded out that first time at bat. The next batter got a hit, another run scored, and the Dodgers brought in Clem Labine to replace Russ Meyer. Maggie felt sorry for Meyer, leaving the game so early, but she was glad for Mom, who would now get to see her favorite pitcher.

The second inning was uneventful, for which Maggie was grateful. She had been almost overwhelmed by all the sights and sounds of the ballpark; it was much harder to concentrate on scoring the game here than at home listening to the radio. She hadn't realized before how helpful it was to have the radio announcer's commentary to focus her attention on each pitch. Twice she had to ask Joey-Mick if the strike call had been for swinging or looking.

In the third inning, the Giants' Alvin Dark singled for the second time. Then Labine threw a wild pitch, which sent Dark to second.

With two out, it was Willie's turn at bat again. Maggie tapped her pencil anxiously against her score-book. She wanted Willie to do well, but the Dodgers were already down by three runs.

Joey-Mick yelled, "C'mon, Clem! Strike him out!"

Maggie refused to look at her brother. She knew why he had yelled that—to jinx any wish she might have had for Willie to get a hit.

A bunt,
she decided.
A bunt for a base hit. That way Willie gets a hit but Dark won't be able to score.

Instead, Willie hit a single to center field and drove in a run. The Giants were now ahead, 4–0.

Two innings later Willie doubled over left fielder Sandy Amoros's head to drive Dark in
again.
That was two runs batted in for him.

Five to nothing, Giants. Joey-Mick pounded at the pocket of his glove in frustration. Maggie knew that if he could have, he'd have been pounding her arm instead. Her fault, for picking Willie as her favorite player...

Meanwhile, the Dodgers were helpless against Giants pitcher Ruben Gomez. They were coming to bat in the bottom of the sixth inning.

And still no Jim.

By now an unhappy restlessness had spread through the crowd. Ebbets Field was packed, as Maggie had guessed it would be, with the pennant race so close. The Dodgers' followers seemed equally divided between those who kept shouting encouragement at the players and those who had begun expressing their disappointment with boos and catcalls.