Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir (24 page)

On opening day of 1955, the Dodgers, the eternal bridesmaids, stood along the third-base line in the Polo Grounds as the captain of the Giants, Alvin Dark, proudly raised two pennants up the pole at the top of the clubhouse—the 1954 National League flag, and the world championship banner, which had never flown over Brooklyn. “I looked over at the Giants,” Jackie Robinson later said, “and thought of the kick they must be getting out of it. After all, you see people and you have to try to put yourself in their place sometimes. It was like Thomson’s homer. Bad as we felt, after it was all over, you couldn’t help feeling how thrilled he must be, and what a great thing it was in baseball. So today I just tried to realize how they were feeling at that moment.”

If my interest in baseball had seemed dormant, it was awakened with a start when the Dodgers began the ’55 season with ten victories in a row. When the Dodgers’ first winning streak was stopped, they promptly forged a second one, this time winning eleven straight, twenty-two out
of twenty-four, to give them a staggering nine-and-a-half-game lead over the Giants by the middle of May. During the streak, the Dodgers pulled every aspect of their game together: the hitting, the pitching, and the defense. Almost everyone in the starting lineup was hitting .300 or better, and the pitchers—Carl Erskine, Don Newcombe, Billy Loes, RUSS Meyer, and Johnny Podres—combined for an ERA of only two earned runs per game.

While the Dodgers were tearing up the National League, Elaine was in a state of anxiety over the Yankees, locked in a four-way fight with Cleveland, Boston, and Chicago. Casey Stengel had radically changed the team after its failure to win in ’54, acquiring pitchers Bob Turley and Don Larsen from the Orioles to join Whitey Ford in the starting rotation, and adding Elston Howard, their first black player. Billy Martin, who had missed the entire ’54 season, was still in the Army, however, and Elaine was certain the Yankees couldn’t win without him.

Though Elaine’s attraction to the shrill, wiry Martin remained inexplicable to me, in the name of our friendship I resolved not to mention his big nose, hot temper, or foul mouth. She kept Martin’s picture by her bed, and searched the papers each day for news of his impending return. When he was finally released from the service at the end of August, she was the happiest I had seen her in months. For years afterward, even after Elaine got her Ph.D. in English, married, and had children, her father sent her an annual Valentine’s card in the name of Billy Martin, bearing the inscription that always made Elaine laugh: “Aching for you, waiting for you, Billy.”

E
VEN THOUGH
the Dodgers were flourishing, and school was more exciting than ever, new tensions had developed at home, due, in part, to my own petulance concerning the simplest household chores. Though I had once found pleasure in putting away the dishes with my father or helping my mother hang out the clothes, I now found myself resenting each chore I was asked to perform. Embarrassed that our lack of an electric dryer left my underwear hanging out on the line for all to see, I was even more distressed by the possibility I might actually be seen fixing a clothes-pin to my bra or to my mother’s girdle. I rarely refused my mother’s requests directly: I simply claimed I was busy with something important and would get to it later.

Every Saturday my girlfriends and I went to the Fantasy Theatre, flirting with boys with ducktail haircuts and turned-up shirt collars. Elaine and I were enamored of the sulky young actor James Dean with his curled lip and troubled eyes. Later, we retreated to her finished basement to listen to Elvis Presley records and practice dancing.

My resentments were displayed more openly when my parents kept me from going to movies I wanted to see. As Catholics, we were expected to be guided by the assessments of the National Legion of Decency, established to protect Catholics from immoral films. Since 1934, parishioners had been asked to take an annual pledge, asserting that “I condemn indecent and immoral motion pictures and those which glorify crime or criminals… . I acknowledge my obligation to form a right conscience about pictures that are dangerous to my moral life. As a member of the Legion of Decency, I pledge myself to remain away from them.” The Legion classified films in three categories—those suitable for adults only, such as
Marty
and
East of Eden
; those objectionable in part for all ages like
Sabrina, A Star Is Born
, and
Blackboard Jungle
; and those decisively and ominously labeled “Condemned,” like
Game of Love
or
Garden of Eden
. There was a separate category for
Martin Luther
, deemed unacceptable because it offered a “sympathetic and approving” representation of the life and times of the Protestant leader. Seeing a film that the Legion had disapproved was not automatically a sin. But seeing a film that was immoral in the eyes of God was sinful. The purpose of the Legion was to help the faithful make the right
judgment, and its proscriptions, though not decisive, were taken seriously in many Catholic households, including my own.

Despite the warning of the Legion of Decency, I did not see how there could be any harm in seeing
East of Eden
. Its recommendation didn’t say the film was bad, only that I was too young. And every one of my girlfriends had seen it and enthused breathlessly about James Dean, who played Cal Trask, an angry young man vying for his father’s approval. I had already read John Steinbeck’s saga, retelling the biblical story of Cain and Abel through two generations of families in California’s Salinas Valley, and I could see no reason why the movie should be off-limits. After much persuasion, my parents relented. Elaine and I went and were immediately enamored of the sulky young actor with his curled lip and troubled eyes. Every Monday, we haunted Brand’s soda store in the hope that James Dean would be featured in
Photoplay
or
Modern Screen
, the glossy movie magazines that we now perused as eagerly as we had once sought the newest comic books.

I made less headway with my parents when it came to
Blackboard Jungle
, the story of an idealistic teacher in a slum-area high school, a film which introduced “Rock Around the Clock,” the hit song by Bill Haley and the Comets. The Legion of Decency objected to the film, the
Long Island Catholic
reported, because “it glorified crime, condoned immoral actions and contained suggestive dancing.” The Legion found particularly disturbing a scene in which the teacher tries to introduce his students to classical jazz, only to have his precious record collection smashed to bits. “Even when the hero, (played by Glenn Ford), finally breaks through the animosity of his students, you are not encouraged by his prospects,” the Legion advised. “Before that, the hoods are shown raising hell in classrooms and
corridors. Hoodlums are glorified on screen in such a way as to promote delinquency.”

When my parents refused to let me see the movie after I had badgered, cajoled, and pleaded, I blew up. I turned to my mother in a flash of anger and said, “You’ve always told me I should form my own opinions and not let other people do my thinking for me.”

“It’s not about opinions,” my mother said. “It’s about stupid, excessive violence.”

“But how do you know?” I shouted. “How do you know it’s offensive? You haven’t even, seen it.”

Here my father intervened, informing me in a very low voice that he found my tone to my mother offensive. Furious, frustrated, I raced to my room, slammed my door, and turned up the volume on my radio as high as it would go. For hours, I sulked on my bed, hoping the sounds of Alan Freed’s rock and roll music on WINS would filter down into the living room and disturb my mother’s peace as she played the piano.

Every dollar I earned that summer was spent on 45s. “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” “Sh-Boom,” “See You Later, Alligator,” “Blueberry Hill,” “Chantilly Lace,” the Everly Brothers, Little Richard, the Platters, and of course Elvis Presley. When Elaine and I weren’t watching baseball, we retreated to her finished basement to listen to rock-and-roll records and practice dancing. Our parents had sent us to dancing school to learn the waltz, the fox-trot, and the two-step, but our formal lessons had taught us nothing about moving to the beat of rock and roll. Occasionally Mrs. Friedle would appear at the head of the stairs to tell us that our repulsive music was actually shaking the house, but normally we were allowed to practice without trespass so long as we stayed in the basement. More than ever, I wished that we had our own finished basement, a
place where my friends and I could escape the watchful eye of my parents. Everything about my parents had become a source of humiliation, from my mother’s dowdy aprons to my father’s excessive pride in my accomplishments. I yearned for a room of my own larger than my tiny bedroom.

I
F THERE WERE NOW
occasional blowups, the general atmosphere in our household remained relatively undisturbed: we still played Scrabble every Sunday night, worked together on the
Times
crossword puzzle, and, most of all, shared the transcendent play of the Dodgers. By the middle of July, the Dodgers were more than thirty games above .500. Week after week, they continued to win, and the roar of the crowd emanating from our black-and-white television filled our house all that glorious summer.

At the end of the day on Friday, July 22, as I was preparing to go to the movies with my girlfriends, my father called me excitedly to tell me he had managed to get us tickets to the thirty-seventh-birthday celebration of Pee Wee Reese. “A consummate professional,” he would always say when talking about Reese, “a gentleman who lives by a code, a work ethic that delivers the goods day in and day out.” Even though I was mildly disappointed at the thought of missing a movie date with my friends, I didn’t want to dampen his enthusiasm. When he suggested we go an hour or so early to see the pregame ceremony honoring Reese, I decided to take along my autograph book. As it turned out, I was glad I did.

Just before the celebration was to begin, I caught Jackie Robinson’s attention as he headed slowly to the dugout. I didn’t care that Robinson’s hair was now almost totally gray. The aging warrior remained my favorite player. I had
traded for Robinson’s autograph with Eddie Rust, but I had never made direct contact with him myself, never looked him in the eye, and I wanted his name linked to me in a more intimate way.

I leaned over the railing, and with my most beseeching smile waved my autograph book, opened to a page with an empty space surrounded by a wreath of florid messages: “Let’s never forget one another… . Remember me until rubber tires and Niagara falls… . May you have a succession of successive successes… . I will always cherish our relationship.” Before signing, Robinson scanned these silly, affectionate sentiments, and I could feel my face reddening. Then he wrote for a long moment. “Well,” he said, “I can see I’m in good company.” He closed the book, handed it back to me, and, with a laugh, descended into the dugout. I was settled beside my father and the special celebration had already begun before I dared to open the book. My heart beat faster until I felt almost dizzy, for there in the middle of my dearest friends’ messages were the words:

I would not let the book out of my hand as I watched baseball executives and Reese’s teammates gather for the ceremonies. As Reese approached home plate, I thought about the very special relationship which existed between Robinson and Reese—the black pioneer and the Southern captain. When Robinson first came to the Dodgers, it had been Reese who quashed the petition against him by his teammates. And on an overcast day in Cincinnati, with fans yelling racial epithets and hurling containers toward the grim-faced Robinson, the respected Reese—team captain and Southern gentleman—called time, slowly strode across the infield, put his hand on Robinson’s shoulder,
and spoke to him softly, one man to another. The crowd was quieted, as were the members of the Cincinnati team, and the story soon spread through the world of baseball. It was a pivotal moment in Robinson’s struggle, and, in retrospect, one of the finest moments in the history of baseball. Now, as Reese walked forward to receive the tributes of his peers and the loving acclaim of the crowd, Robinson reached out in a swift, barely noticeable gesture and put his hand on Reese’s shoulder. “Reese and Robinson,” my father remarked, “they’re a lot more than great baseball players.”