D.W. Davis is a native of rural Illinois, USA. His work has appeared in various online and print journals. You can find him on Facebook and on @dan_davis86.
Lennie knew almost immediately this wasn’t going to be his night.
It shouldn’t have mattered, of course. Exhibition games were meaningless, and he was getting paid regardless. Plus, it wasn’t like he had a star status to defend, like Satch did during his token first inning appearance. Lennie was just a kid, sixteen passing for eighteen because Satch knew better than to ask stupid questions. Probably no one here—most of the crowd being white, except for one small section of Negroes near the Negro dugout—had seen him pitch before. It was miraculous, to someone so young, that Satch had seen him, called him up one night and asked hey kid, wanna make some money and have some fun? And Lennie had only thrown in four games, all down the final stretch of the season.
So it didn’t matter, not in terms of keeping his place with the team; Satch wasn’t going to cut him on this tour, no reason to. Lennie could throw hard and fast, and most of the time he found the strike zone. Problem was, he often found too much of it. He managed to strike out the first batter, but the second took him deep. So did the third. He got out of the inning without his head hanging too low. Down 2-0 wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
The hell of it was, solo home runs weren’t supposed to beat you. And it’s not like his team didn’t score in their half. The white team rarely brought their best, though there were faces that night Lennie recognized from the papers, whose exploits were documented on the radio he listened to when he was back home or, this season, wasn’t playing. Like the guy funding the whole expenditure, Bob Feller, who’d pitched his first professional game not much older than Lennie was now. Feller, the starting pitcher, took Lennie deep for the fourth white home run of the game. At this, the white dugout started chanting “go fer home, go fer home!” and eventually the audience took it up too. That was by the sixth home run. Even the Negro audience joined in, though Lennie didn’t blame them. He would’ve done the same.
After two home runs in the fourth inning, all solo shots, Lennie stood on the mound and stared back at home plate. He knew he wasn’t pitching that bad—he’d lost count of his strikeouts, maybe six or seven—but he didn’t like the way his luck had turned. He stared at some faceless white man holding a bat on his shoulder, maybe someone he should’ve recognized, maybe just some kid looking for an easy dollar like Lennie himself. A guy who was probably having a luckier night than Lennie.
Lennie knew a thing or two about all kinds of luck. His father had been horribly injured in a factory accident earlier that year, forcing his mother to take three separate jobs. No comp pay for a Black man; they hadn’t even bothered to ask. Lennie had been considering taking on a second job himself—he’d been long out of school—when a scout-slash-outfielder for the Baltimore Elite Giants saw him throwing in a local game hosted by the grocery where he worked. They were playing the team for a grocery on the other side of the neighborhood, and Lennie had an excellent game, seven shutout innings and ten strikeouts, with just two hits and three walks. The scout had come up to him after the game and asked his age. Lennie had been too dumb to lie, and the scout got angry and told him to shut the hell up with that, he looked eighteen, didn’t he think? Lennie said he did and the scout said it wouldn’t hurt to talk to his old man anyways, just to make sure. The contract was signed the next day.
His income, such as it was, helped keep his family—mother, father, and four kids—going. When Satch came by with the barnstorming offer at the end of the season, Lennie hadn’t thought twice. There was good money to be made in barnstorming. Not so much by kids such as himself; Satch would make out great, Satch always made out great, and that was just understood. Lennie and most of the others would take what they got and do so gratefully. Satch was the star and stars got paid. Everyone else basked in the light and collected the nickels that got left behind. Welcome to baseball.
Lennie was no Satchel Paige. But he needed the money. Every penny helped. So he agreed before asking his father, who had doubts because they’d be touring the South, where Lennie’s father was from. Lennard Holden, Sr., had grown up in Mississippi, the grandchild of a man freed by Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation. Or, rather, two years after the Emancipation, when the Confederacy got its teeth kicked in. But, as Lennie’s father liked to tell him, while the Confederacy had lost, the South had not. He’d moved to the North at eighteen and had never considered returning to his homeland. It’s bad down there, he would say. After a few drinks, he might add, Worse than up here, even.
As Lennie stared at the batter, he weighed all the luck he’d been handed that year, good and bad. Tonight fell into the realm of the bad, he decided. Maybe not life-altering bad, like his father’s accident, but there was definitely something hinky going on. Despite the strikeouts, his grip didn’t feel right. All those strikes were the result of his speed; they were all swinging strikeouts, every one of them, most due to the hitter being late on the swing, a couple because Lennie did have a curveball he could pull out of his back pocket when the batter wasn’t expecting it. But those solo home runs, adding up like lesser sins, didn’t sit right with him.
He turned the ball over in his fingers, acting like he was reading the catcher’s signs, but his full concentration on the ball. The seams felt tighter, the ball lighter. He wiped sweat from his forehead, trying to find a new grip that felt like his old grip. Nothing worked. Nothing felt comfortable, normal.
The ump was glaring at him, so Lennie took a deep breath and threw the ball, an off-speed pitch that the batter swung on and missed. The next was a real meatball; Lennie knew it as soon as it left his hand. Long gone into the late afternoon sky.
Go ‘fer home, go ‘fer home.
The next batter swung on the first pitch. It went even further than the last.
Lennie’s shoulders slumped as he saw Satch trudge out of the dugout. Satch didn’t look upset; he was smiling, as he did during these games, knowing he’d walk away from this off-season a rich man. Satch could smile; he had it better than some of the white players. He was business-savvy like that, and also thoroughly ruthless when it came to self-promotion.
But Satch loved his boys, and when he took the ball from Lennie’s hand, he looked the young pitcher in the eye and said, “Good lord, son, you can strike ‘em out like ain’t nobody’s bizness. I’ll get Goldy in here to hold it for ya.”
Lennie smiled, even though they were losing. Satch always made him smile.
The Black team ended up coming back to win, because the best of the white players didn’t play very long, and other than Lennie and a couple of other kids, the Negro Leagues were well-represented. Black men in their prime beat white men who had yet to reach or had already left theirs. Lennie sat in the dugout, staring at his right hand, moving his fingers around, trying different grips. The ball felt better now that he wasn’t holding it.
After the game, Lennie was one of the first to head to the bus that Satch had gotten for them. An actual bus. Not a fancy one, it leaked exhaust that was only filtered by windows that didn’t lower all the way and a few old bullet holes, but at least they weren’t all crammed in a few cars, sitting on each other’s laps like Lennie had done during the season. The bus was a downright luxury.
Lennie clenched and unclenched his right fingers as he walked. Imagined a ball there, imagined himself squeezing it until it burst. That’s how he liked to grip a baseball. Like he owned the damn thing. It was his until it was taken from him. Tonight, he hadn’t owned the ball, it had owned him.
A voice interrupted his anger: “Hey, kid.”
He froze. A white man’s voice—casual, unafraid. A man in control at all times.
Lennie turned slowly, his eyes slowly latching onto the tall, lanky figure that approached him. He moved with a confident swagger, and it was only because of Lennie’s memories of his father’s stories that he didn’t see the uniform at first, or recognize the face that constantly graced the newspapers.
“You throw a mean fastball, kid.”
Lennie stuttered. “Mr. Feller, sir.”
Bob Feller smiled that winning country smile he was known for. “Between you me, kid, you threw better than Satchel tonight. A heck of a lot better.”
Lennie dipped his head slightly, still feeling an imaginary ball in his hand. “Ball didn’t feel right, sir. Eight home runs. Never thrown like that in my life, sir.”
Feller watched him for a second, the smile fading slightly but not in an unfriendly manner. His eyes, in the afterglow of the stadium lights, were inquisitive. “Where are you from?”
“Baltimore, sir.”
“Ever play down here before? Against a white team?”
“No, sir.”
Feller nodded. “I’m from Iowa, myself. We do it a bit differently up there, kid. We do it fairly, if you get my meaning.”
Lennie looked at him. Turned the not-there ball over in his hand. Remembered every ball he’d ever thrown before that. In doing so, he felt some of his confidence come back. Along with an upswell of anger.
Feller noticed and shrugged. “This is Alabama. For what it’s worth, weren’t my idea. Didn’t even know until I saw how good you threw and how good they hit the ball.”
“We still won, sir.”
Feller nodded again. “Yes, you darn well did, son. You still won.” He tipped his cap. “Keep on throwing. You’ve got a heck of an arm. You remind me of myself when I came up.” He winked. “I might’ve been a bit more wild, though.”
The white man walked away. Lennie stood still for a minute, thinking it over. We still won. Well, yes they did. And got paid. Lennie let the imaginary ball drop from his hand. He’d soon fill that hand with cold hard cash. He didn’t need that damn ball any more, not tonight.