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.
Maggie stared down at her score sheet. It seemed like years since the excitement of seeing the rotunda and the field; she could hardly believe it was the same day.
The Dodgers were losing badly. And Jim hadn't shown up.
Before the game, Maggie had been torn: Should she hope—silently, of course—that the Giants would win, so Jim would be happy? She had been thinking about it for weeks, really, ever since it looked as though her plan might work.
August, and the end of the season so close.... Every game counted. How could she hope for the Giants to win when one game might mean the title? Finally, she had done her best to stop thinking about it at all. What happened would happen, she had told herself. And kept telling herself.
Now she stuck out her chin and sat up straighter.
Enough was enough. Jim hadn't come; he had ruined her perfect plan.
Maggie glared at the field.
"C'mon, you Bums!" she yelled as loud as she could.
AFTER THE GAME
If Dad had been a mother hen on the way to the game, he was a mother grizzly bear on the way home. Whereas folks had arrived at the park over a period of a few hours, everyone left at the same time, close to thirty thousand people pouring into the streets at once. Which was, as Joey-Mick pointed out, a hundred twenty thousand arms and legs, every ONE of them moving.
Dad spoke to the little group before they left their seats. "Stay together" he growled. "And stay cool, everybody."
Outside the park, as they waited their turn to board the bus, they were surrounded once again by talk about baseball. It was gleeful talk—no, better than that. Everyone was ecstatic.
Brooklyn had come all the way back from five runs down and won the game, 6–5. In the most thrilling way: a grand-slam home run by Carl Furillo in the sixth inning, and then a single by Roy Campanella in the seventh inning that brought home two more runs.
"I just knew he was gonna do it," Treecie kept saying, her voice a little hoarse from all the shrieking she had done when Campy got his hit. "I think I got the shot, too—I clicked right when he hit the ball, I'm pretty sure."
Gil Hodges and Jackie Robinson had scored on Furillo's home run, so both Mom and Joey-Mick were delighted with their favorite players. Willie Mays had gotten two hits and batted in two runs. Really, it couldn't have been more perfect: Willie had had a great game, but the Dodgers had won. They were now only a game and a half behind the Giants in the pennant race.
And Maggie had never in her life felt so unhappy.
The two seats for Jim and Carol had stayed empty until the eighth inning, when Mom and Joey-Mick finally moved over to close the gap. Throughout the last few innings, the shadow of Jim's absence grew darker and heavier in Maggie's mind, dimming the shine of the glorious relief pitching by Dodger Jim Hughes.
Dad had tapped her shoulder in the seventh inning. "Something musta come up," he said. "They prob'ly called the house, but we'd already left."
Maggie had nodded glumly. She knew he was trying to make her feel better, but he couldn't. No one could.
During the game, the lump of disappointment in her throat had gotten big enough to threaten tears a few times. Now, as she stood in line for the bus, the lump was gone, replaced by an ache in her jaw from clenching it. She flipped her notebook open and looked one more time at her scoring notations for the Dodgers' runs, especially the exclamation points for Furillo's grand slam and Campy's game-winning single.
Serves Jim right that we won, she thought. We're gonna catch them now. We'll win the pennant, the World Series too, and that'll show him....
Maggie slapped the notebook closed in grim triumph. But as she followed Mom onto the bus, she wondered: Show him what?
Once they were off the bus in their own neighborhood, they walked in a loose group down the street, everyone except Maggie still chatting about the game. As they neared the firehouse, Maggie saw the guys seated in their folding chairs out front. Except for George, who was standing. But there were still four people sitting there—who was in the fourth chair?
It was a woman.
Carol, Maggie thought, and almost choked on her next breath. Where's Jim?
"Hey there!" Dad had seen her, and hollered a greeting from half a block away.
The woman stood and walked toward them. Dad limped a little faster, his hand stuck out in front of him.
"Glad to meet you," he said as he reached her and shook her hand. "This is my wife, Rose." Mom shook hands, too.
Carol was tall and had brown hair and brown eyes, like Jim. She was wearing a black skirt and a white top. The Giants' team colors.
"I'm so sorry," she was saying. Then she looked right at Maggie. "You must be Maggie." A smile.
Maggie nodded and tried to smile back.
"I'm sorry," Carol said again. "We got here in plenty of time, but then—" She stopped and glanced at Dad.
Maggie saw their eyes meet. Then Dad turned to Mom. "How about some lemonade at the house?" he said. "Son, you go on and help your mother. Treecie, you too. Maggie will be right along."
Mom and Joey-Mick and Treecie walked on toward the house. That left Maggie standing at one side of the bay with Dad and Carol and George.
Whatever was going to be said next, Maggie would hear it too.
"We left our house fine," Carol said. "But when we got here, he wouldn't get out of the car. I tried talking to him for a while, and George tried, too. I ended up—" Her voice dropped. "I yelled at him." Then she looked away from them.
Maggie saw what Carol was looking at: a blue sedan parked farther down the street, with someone in the passenger seat.
Jim. He's sitting right there.
It was far enough away that she couldn't see him clearly, but she could tell that his head was down.
"He wasn't going nowhere," George said quietly.
"I told him, if he wasn't going to the game, we were going to stay right here until you all got back so I could explain," Carol went on.
"That was good of you," Dad said. "Sorry you had to wait so long. We're just glad you're safe. I was hopin' it wasn't car trouble or an accident or something."
Carol stared at the ground. "I've never yelled at him before," she whispered. "But I was so mad—we came all this way, and I know how hard Maggie worked for this, and I thought that just this once he could manage to get himself...." She couldn't go on, and Maggie saw her blink several times.
Maggie's jaw unclenched. All the anger and disappointment inside her seemed to dissolve into a huge puddle of tiredness and sadness. Her plan had not only failed, it had made things worse. It had made Carol yell at Jim, and now everything was terrible.
She felt a touch on her arm. "Maggie, just so you know," Carol said. "I thought it was a terrific idea, to get him to a game. I wish things could have worked out better—maybe it's still too soon. We can try again sometime, okay? And the tickets will be my treat."
Maggie didn't look up, but she nodded politely.
"Well." Dad put his arm around Maggie's shoulders. "How about some lemonade before you go back, Carol? You're welcome to stay for dinner, too."
"Thanks," Carol said, "but we should get on the road. We have a long drive ahead of us."
Dad and George began discussing the best route out of Brooklyn. Maggie looked at the blue sedan again.
She had been thinking about it for days, what she would say to Jim when she first saw him. She had rehearsed dozens of conversations in her head until finally she had it all planned out. Maggie just had to talk to him now.
She started walking down the street toward the car.
"Maggie..."
Dad was calling, but she didn't turn back.
The car's windows were rolled down. She stopped by the front passenger door and took a breath to brace herself.
Jim was staring at the dashboard.
Maggie had imagined that he might look really, really sad. But that wasn't it, not at all. In some ways he looked the same. The flattop haircut, and even seated hunched over inside the car, he still looked tall.
But he looked different, too.
The shadows under his eyes were so dark, they looked like bruises. And his face...
Maggie had never seen anyone who looked the way Jim did now. His face was empty, his eyes blank. When I look at someone's face, what I'm really seeing is them. I'm looking right at him—but he's not there.
Maggie felt shaky all over. She put one arm over her stomach and pressed hard, to steady herself. She cleared her throat.
"Hi, Jim," she said, her voice small.
He didn't move, didn't look at her. She didn't even know if he had heard her.
Maggie fumbled with her notebook, which gave her a moment to swallow. "I had an idea...." She turned the pages until she reached the spread with that day's game. Then she held it up so he would be able to see it.
If only he would look at it. Or at her.
She almost gave up then. This isn't working. It's stupid. I'm stupid for thinking I could help him get better when nobody else could, not the doctors, not his family....
But she was standing there with the scorebook open and her plan for what she would say in her head, so she kept going.
"Gil Hodges walked here, in the sixth," she said, pointing to the right spot on the page. "And Sandy Amoros did, too. And then there was an error, and after that Carl Furillo hit a home run. So those two walks, they were just as good as hits, right?"
She didn't look up from the score sheet because she didn't want to see what she could feel: that he still hadn't moved, not one single inch.
"They keep track of a guy's batting average, but if he walks, it doesn't count," she said. "And I think there should be some way ... I mean, if he's patient at the plate, and has a good eye, and gets a lotta walks"—she was speaking faster now—"that should count for something, don't you think? Because, like I just said, a walk can be as good as a hit sometimes."
Her last words had come out in a high-pitched rush, and the silence that followed was so heavy, she could hardly breathe. She stood trembling for a moment longer, then closed the scorebook slowly.
Nothing.
She held the book against her chest, as if it could shield her from that dreadful silence.
Just then she felt a nudge against her leg. Charky looked up at her and then at Jim, and whined softly.
Maggie could have thrown her arms around the dog, she was so relieved not to be alone anymore. Instead, she petted his head, then curled her fingers into the warmth and softness of the fur around his neck. And now here was Dad coming along the sidewalk.
"Hey, Maggie-o," he said and patted her on the back. "Ready for some lemonade?" Then he leaned over a little and looked in the car window. "Hey, Jim. Good to see you again."
Maggie could hardly believe how normal he sounded. But still no response from Jim.
"Listen, I'm around if you ever wanna talk," Dad said. "Like we used to. Gimme a call when you feel like it."
He straightened up and held out his hand. "Come on, Maggie-o. Charky, let's get you back to the guys."
She took his hand. Charky gave one more soft little whine in Jim's direction, then followed Maggie and Dad back up the street.
THE NEW PLAN
That night as she lay in bed, Maggie tried to think of all the good things that had happened. The smooth arc of the ball against the sky when Furillo hit the grand slam. The four Dodgers crossing the plate ONE by one, each waiting to congratulate the others, with Giants catcher Wes Westrum standing off to the side like someone left out of a party. Treecie's shrieks when Campy had singled home the last two runs.
It was no use. No matter what she tried to think of, she ended up in the same place: standing at the car, with Jim staring straight ahead, that dreadful emptiness in his eyes. I should have talked about something different. Not about the walks. Not something that reminded him of the game.
There must have been a reason why her plan to take Jim to a game hadn'T worked. Maggie didn't like thinking about it, but that didn't make it go away.
Of course she wanted Jim to g
et better, and she really had thought that going to a game would help. But the truth was, she had wanted to go to a game. Helping Jim—that had given her a good excuse. She never would have asked Dad otherwise, knowing how he felt about crowds.
She squirmed, burying her face in her pillow. It was almost as if she had used Jim to get to a game herself. Was that why her plan hadn't worked?
It had to be enough just for Jim to get better. Maybe Maggie should even give something up in exchange. People made sacrifices when they wanted something badly, didn't they? Those saints she had studied in confirmation class—they were always giving up the ways of the world, and then miracles happened.
There were sacrifices in baseball too—sacrifice flies and sacrifice bunts, where a runner was on base and the batter made an out on purpose to help the runner advance to the next base. In fact, the sacrifice bunt was one of Maggie's favorite plays. The bunt had to be just right. Four fielders would be ready to charge the ball—the pitcher, the catcher, the first and third base-men—and the batter had to push it far enough so none of them could get it easily, but at the same time gently enough so it would roll slowly and give the runner on base more time to advance. All that trouble, and the batter knew he was giving up any chance for a hit himself.
Well, she had made sacrifices for her plan to go to the game. She had given up lots of things she liked to do, like buying egg creams and candy. It hadn't been easy, saving her money all those months.
But it seemed like that didn't count, because in the end, she had gotten something out of it. She had been able to go to the game.
Now maybe there was only one way left for her to try to help Jim. To chase that awful look out of his eyes and get him to talk again.
That would be worth a really big sacrifice.
Maggie could go almost anywhere in the neighborhood on her own now, but the rule was that she always had to tell Mom where she was going.