Babe & Me (9 page)

But those innings went by in a blur to me. I couldn't concentrate. For one thing, I kept looking around to see if my dad had returned. For another, I knew Babe was going to hit the called shot in the fifth inning, and I kept thinking about it. Also, Tony Lazzeri asked me to get him two more hot dogs, so I spent half the time running around the stands.

When the Yankees got the third Cub out in the fourth inning and trotted into the dugout, my heart began beating faster. Babe would be the second Yankee to bat in the fifth.

It was the moment I had been waiting for.

I STUDIED THE SCOREBOARD CAREFULLY. I WANTED TO
make sure I had everything right. It was the top of the fifth inning. Game Three. The score was 4–4. Charlie Root was still on the mound for the Cubs. Joe Sewell was up for the Yankees. Babe went out to the on-deck circle.

Yes, everything was exactly the way Dad told me it would be. Babe was about to hit the most famous home run in baseball history.

The crowd settled down and Root prepared to pitch to Joe Sewell. They played cat and mouse for a few pitches, then Sewell rapped a sharp grounder to short. He was out by a step.

The noise of the crowd increased as Babe approached home plate. It always did. He had booted a ball out in leftfield in the fourth inning and the fans were letting him have it. A single lemon flew
out of the stands and bounced near home plate. The boos got louder when the umpire picked up the lemon and tossed it aside.

In the Cub dugout, most of the players were up on the steps, yelling and taunting Babe.

“Drop dead, you big baboon!” one of them hollered.

“Hey, fatso!” yelled another. “When's the last time you saw your feet, you dumb sap?”

“Ah, go soak your heads!” Babe replied. He wasn't angry. He was smiling, even laughing. It looked like he enjoyed being heckled and heckling back.

As Babe stepped into the batter's box, Lou Gehrig climbed out of the dugout and went to kneel in the on-deck circle.

Charlie Root peered in for his sign. He didn't look scared of Babe; he looked determined. Babe had already hit one homer and nearly hit a second one. I almost expected Root to knock Babe down, but instead he burned in a pitch right over the plate. It looked like a fastball. Babe let it go by. When the ump called strike one, the crowd erupted into cheers.

“Fog it in, Charlie!” one of the Cubs yelled. “That big lummox ain't worth a bucket of warm spit.”

“Hey, buffalo butt! Is that your mug, Ruth, or were you hit with a really ugly stick?”

The Cubs were having a good time. They were putting their thumbs in their ears and wiggling
their fingers at Babe as they shouted at him. They fell all over each other, laughing with each remark.

“Go suck an egg, you bums!” Babe shouted back.

Babe held his bat loosely in his left hand as he stepped out of the batter's box. Still grinning, he looked over at the Cub bench and raised one finger of his right hand in the air. That's one, he was telling them.

When Babe stepped back in, Root threw another pitch, a little slower. It was inside, for ball one.

The next pitch was outside for ball two.

“
Booooooo!
” screamed the crowd.

Root went into his windup and Babe watched him intently. It looked like he thought about swinging, then changed his mind and let the pitch go by. The umpire called it strike two.

The crowd exploded in cheers. It was deafening. One more strike and they'd have him.

“Time to retire, beer belly! You're finished.”

The Cubs were all the way out of their dugout now, trying to scream at Babe over the crowd noise.

Babe stepped out of the box again. He wiped his hands on his pants. Then he held up two fingers on his right hand.

“It only takes one to hit it,” he announced, pointing his bat toward the Cub dugout.

“Shut up, you fat blimp!”

This was it. Two balls, two strikes. Two and two. That was the count Dad told me Babe would
hit the called shot on. I opened my eyes wide. I didn't want to blink for fear of missing it.

“Hey, kid,” Tony Lazzeri said to me, “how about getting me another hot dog?”

“Not
now!
” I barked, not even looking at him.

“Get back in the box, you big galoot,” hollered Charlie Root from the mound.

“I'm gonna knock the next pitch down your throat!” Babe replied.

And then he pointed.

It was quick, and you could have missed it if you weren't watching carefully. But he pointed. I was sure of it. Right over Root's head. Straight to centerfield. Babe was holding his bat in his left hand, resting it on his left shoulder. He took his right hand off the bat for an instant and pointed with two fingers of his right hand to centerfield. It was like he was aiming a gun.

“He pointed!” I said to Lazzeri. “Did you see him point?”

“Sit down, kid. You're lucky we let you stay here.”

I don't think Root noticed that Babe pointed. He was looking in his glove as he was gripping the ball. Then he looked in for the sign and went into his windup.

Babe didn't choke up on the bat, the way my Little League coaches always told me to when there were two strikes. He held the bat right down at the end as usual.

It was a curve, low and away. Babe lifted his
right leg and took such a big swing that he almost fell down. The crack of the bat could be heard throughout Wrigley Field.

This time, it was a line drive. Babe hit it so low that for an instant I thought the second baseman had a chance to catch it. Then the ball took off, like a golf ball. It started sailing. On the Yankee bench, we all stood up to follow the flight of the ball.

The centerfielder raced back a few steps, but he could tell right away he had no chance. He just stood there watching as the ball sailed far over his head. It disappeared deep into the bleachers, near the flagpole and just below the scoreboard.

The Yankees were screaming with joy. Tony Lazzeri looked at me suspiciously.

Boooooo!
screamed the fans.

Almost instantly, stuff started to fly out of the stands and onto the field. Lemons. Tomatoes. Apples. Bananas. People were flinging eggs and cabbages. Somebody tossed an umbrella.

I turned to look at Babe, and he was laughing all the way to first base. He made a remark to the first baseman as he rounded the bag, and he said something to the second baseman, too.

Babe pumped his fist with delight. He pointed to the Cub dugout and thumbed his nose. He was still laughing as he rounded third, laughing so hard he slapped his knee. He held up four fingers and waved them at the Cubs, for four bases, I suppose.

The Chicago dugout looked like a tomb. All the
guys who had been having so much fun heckling Babe sat back on the bench like they had been shot.

I looked over at Franklin Roosevelt's box to see his reaction, but Roosevelt was already gone. He must have caught the first couple of innings and left.

“Did you see that?” I said to the guys on the Yankee bench. “He called his shot! He pointed to centerfield, and then he hit the ball right there!”

“I seen it,” Joe Sewell said.

“He did not,” insisted Bill Dickey, the Yankee catcher. “He was pointing at Root.”

After circling the bases, Babe stepped on home plate ceremoniously and shook hands with Lou Gehrig. Then he bowed to the left, and again to the right. Before he could get into the dugout, the Yankees came out and mauled him.

“You do the same thing,” I heard him say to Lou Gehrig.

The umpire had to stop the game for a few minutes so the groundskeepers could pick up all the junk people had thrown onto the field.

People were still buzzing about Babe's homer when Lou Gehrig finally stepped up to the plate. Some of them didn't even notice that Gehrig swung at Charlie Root's first pitch and drove it over the rightfield wall. The back-to-back Yankee homers made the score 6–4.

The Cubs were beaten. You could see it in their eyes. They didn't have anything else to say. Ruth and Gehrig had each slammed two home runs, and
Chicago simply couldn't match that kind of firepower. The game might as well have been over.

Babe shook hands with Lou Gehrig after crossing the plate and told him, “You do the same thing.”

So I had seen it. To my eyes, at least, Babe had called his shot. I had accomplished what I'd set out to do. But now I had to do something else—find my dad.

I DIDN'T STICK AROUND TO SEE THE END OF THE GAME
. After the sixth inning, I left the Yankee dugout and hopped over the wall into the stands. The Cub fans were sitting there in their seats stunned, like a boxer who had just been pummeled.

I asked myself this question—
How am I going to find my father in a crowd of fifty thousand people…and a city of millions?

I had to do some serious thinking. The last time I saw Dad, the game was about to begin and some guys were dragging him away because they thought he was threatening the life of Franklin Roosevelt. He could be anywhere.

Maybe he was in jail. Maybe they were questioning him as if he was John Wilkes Booth or something. Maybe he had escaped on the way to jail. Maybe there was a manhunt. Maybe they shot him. Maybe—

I was being ridiculous.

There was no point in trying to find Dad in the stands. If he was in Wrigley Field, I reasoned, he would simply go to our seats and find
me
. Our seats were empty, so Dad had to be outside the ballpark.

I could go to one of the Yankee officials and see if someone could help track Dad down
, I thought as I made my way toward the exit. Maybe they could make an announcement over the public-address system—“We have a lost child in section fifty-four.”

Nah. When I reached Addison Street in front of Wrigley Field, the thought crossed my mind that maybe I should do nothing. I mean, until a few days ago, what had my dad ever done for
me?
Not much. I could just go find a quiet grassy spot by myself and use my new baseball cards to take me back home. I could just leave Dad in 1932 and let him fend for himself.

But that would be wrong, I decided. And besides, being together for the last couple of days had brought us closer together. I wanted him to be part of my life when I got back home.

If I was my dad, where would I be?
I wondered.

At that moment, everything went black. Somebody had slapped two big hands over my eyes from behind and gripped my head tight. I struggled to turn my head around but the hands held me firm.

“Guess who?” the voice asked.

“Dad!”

I whirled around, and we grabbed each other in a big bear hug.

“So,” Dad said. “Did he point? Did Babe call his shot or not?”

“I think so.”

“You
think
so?”

“Well, it looked to me like he called his shot,” I explained, “but some of the guys on the bench said he was just pointing and yelling at the pitcher.”

“The guys on the bench?” Dad asked, amused.

“Yeah,” I said, “I was watching from the Yankee dugout.”

Dad shook his head and laughed. “I think our luck is changing, Butch,” he said.

I noticed he had a slightly blackened eye and his jacket was torn.

“Are you okay, Dad?”

“They roughed me up a little dragging me out of the ballpark,” he replied, “but I'll be all right.”

“So you never delivered the message to Roosevelt?”

“No,” Dad said. “But I tried. At least I made the effort. And somehow, I feel good about that.”

“Did they put you in jail or anything?”

“Nah. They took me to a police station and questioned me for a few minutes. When they saw that I wasn't nuts and that all I had in the sack was a bunch of baseballs, they let me go.”

The sack! I had forgotten about it! Dad wasn't holding the sack filled with baseballs autographed by Babe Ruth!

“Where is it?” I asked, concerned.

“They confiscated it,” Dad said simply. He had a little smile on his face, like he had a secret to share with me.

“You don't look very upset,” I pointed out.

“I'm not,” Dad said, as he reached into his jacket pocket. “I've got something better.”

He gently pulled out a baseball with two fingers and held it up for me to see, like he was holding a rare coin. The ball was clean and white, with one smudge mark on it. It wasn't autographed or anything.

“A baseball?” I asked, puzzled. “I don't get it.”

“Not just any baseball,” Dad teased, continuing to smile slyly at me.

Slowly, gradually, I came to appreciate the significance of what Dad was holding before my eyes.

“You
caught
it?” I shouted, my mouth and eyes open as wide as they could possibly be. “You caught Babe Ruth's called shot?”

“Well, not exactly,” Dad said modestly. “You see, after the cops let me go, I went back to the ballpark. Roosevelt was gone, so I went to the centerfield stands, where I knew the ball was going to land. I was a couple of rows away when it came down. It bounced off some lady's head and rolled under some seats. Me and a few other guys dove for it, but I got there first. They tried to beat it out of me. That's how I got the black eye, actually. But I wouldn't let 'em have the ball.”

I took the ball in my hand and examined it. It
looked like any other baseball I'd seen, but holding this one made me tremble. Not only had I seen Babe Ruth hit the most famous home run in baseball history, but now the ball he hit was in my hand.

It doesn't get much better than this
, I thought to myself.

“I want you to have it,” Dad said, smiling at me.

“To keep?” I asked, astonished.

“To keep,” he said. “Being with you these last few days was good enough for me. Just having the chance to do something about the Holocaust gives me a peace of mind I've never felt. This is my present to you.”

He took the ball in his hand again and looked at it for a moment. Then he nodded his head and gave it to me.

“What about the money?” I asked. “It could be worth three million bucks.”

“What am I gonna do with three million bucks?” Dad asked. “I'd just give it to you as an inheritance someday anyway.”

Dad and I hugged each other again.

 

After we finished pretending that neither one of us was crying, we both realized something—the called shot ball wasn't worth a dime unless we had Babe Ruth sign it, date it, and write on it exactly what inning he hit it.

We had promised Babe that we wouldn't ask him to sign anything else, but I figured he wouldn't
mind writing his name on just one more baseball. Especially a baseball that he'd hit for a game-winning home run in the World Series.

Dad and I rushed back inside Wrigley Field. The stands were mostly empty now, except for a few depressed Cub fans still sitting there like they were at a funeral. We hopped over the rail and into the Yankee dugout. The door in the back of the dugout led to the locker room.

Most of the players were still there, changing into their street clothes and happily discussing the game. I didn't see Babe anywhere.

An equipment manager was shoving bats and gloves and catcher's gear into a big canvas bag.

“Where's Ruth?” Dad asked him. “My son wants him to sign a ball.”

“The big ape already left.” The equipment manager laughed. “Off to some party at Al Capone's house, I heard.”

“But we've got the home-run ball!” Dad said urgently. “I caught the ball that Babe hit in the fifth inning.”

“You and everybody else.” The equipment manager chuckled. “Just throw it in that bucket with the others.”

In front of Babe's locker was a metal bucket filled to the brim with baseballs.

“But our ball is the real one!” I protested.

“Sure, sonny,” the guy said. “Just toss it in the bucket and come back tomorrow around dinner time. I'll ask Babe if he'll sign 'em all.”

“We can't come back tomorrow!”

The guy shrugged. Dad put his arm around my shoulder.

“Let's go home now, Butch.”