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.