Shoeless Joe & Me (5 page)

“
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK
!”

Without thinking, I put my hands over my eyes. My face must have been red as a fire engine. The lady standing in front of me grabbed a bathrobe from the hook on the closet door and quickly wrapped it around herself. I guess I don't look all that frightening, because she seemed to relax almost immediately. She looked at me curiously. It was as if she was wondering how I could have possibly gotten into her closet. And why.

The lady was pretty, with pale blue eyes and brown hair that sort of swirled up around her head. Glancing out the window, I could see that it was dark outside. I had been locked in that closet for a long time.

Suddenly, a guy charged out of the bathroom waving a black wooden baseball bat.

The lady was pretty, with pale blue eyes and brown hair that sort of swirled up around her head.

“You okay, Katie?” he shouted. He had a thick Southern accent. When he saw me cowering in the closet, he waved the bat around menacingly. “Ah'll kill 'im! Just say the word, Katie, and Ah'll split his head like a melon!”

I put my arms up in self-defense and took a step backward. The guy's dark brown eyes were on fire. He was a tall man, over six feet, with short, coal-black hair that was parted in the middle and flattened down. You might call him handsome if you saw him, except for the fact that his ears stuck out a little too far. He was wearing boxer shorts. He was thin but had very long, thick arms.

“He's just a boy, Joe,” the lady named Katie said calmly. “Leave him be.”

“Commy's a crook,” the bird said.

“Shut yer trap!” the guy named Joe yelled at the bird, waving the bat around.

As the bat hovered a few inches from my face, I noticed some letters carved into it. I squinted so I could read them.

BETSY

That's when I realized that the lunatic waving the bat around was no ordinary Joe. And it was no ordinary bat. That bat must be the famous Black Betsy. And if that was Black Betsy, the lunatic waving it around was just the man I wanted to see.

“A-are you…Shoeless Joe Jackson?” I asked, holding my hands over my face in case he was still thinking about splitting my head open.

The guy stiffened, like I'd said the wrong thing.

“Please don't call him that,” Katie advised me.

“Ah hate that name,” Joe said, placing the bat carefully on the bed. He seemed to have calmed down a little, talking slowly in a deep Southern drawl. “Ah ain't some dumb country bumpkin. See for yourself. Ah got plenty of shoes.”

The closet I was still standing in was filled with shoes, many of them men's.

“I'm sorry, sir,” I apologized.

“Just call me Joe.”

“My name is Joe, too,” I said, extending a hand hesitantly and stepping out of the closet. “Joe Stoshack. Most folks call me Stosh.”

“Pleased to meetcha, Stosh,” Joe said, taking my hand in a muscular grip. “This here's my wife, Katie.”

I wasn't sure if Joe knew I'd seen his wife with no clothes on, and I wasn't about to tell him. I shook her hand, too, a little embarrassed.

“What're ya doin' hidin' in my closet for, boy?” Joe asked. “You an autograph seeker? Katie, make this boy Stosh one of my signatures the way you do so nicely, will you please, honey?”

“No,” I said, stopping Katie before she could get a pen. “I didn't come for an autograph. Mr. Jackson, I came here to give you an important message.”

“What might that be?” Joe asked, smiling as if to say no message delivered by a kid could be of much importance to him.

“Don't take the money!” I urged him. “It will ruin your life! You'll be banned from baseball forever. You've got to believe me!”

“Whoa!” Joe said, chuckling. “Slow down, son. What money? Ah don't know what you're talkin' 'bout.”

“The World Series is fixed!” I informed him. “I overheard some gamblers. They're paying some of the players on the White Sox to lose on purpose. Then they're going to bet against the Sox and make a fortune for themselves.”

Joe threw back his head and laughed.

“That's crazy talk,” Katie said.

“Nobody could fix the Series.” Joe chuckled. “They'd have to pay off seven or eight guys, a coupla startin' pitchers—”

“They
did
!” I insisted. “I heard them. Eddie
Cicotte and Lefty Williams are in on the fix. And they plan to get you in on it, too.”

“Well, Ah ain't
gonna be in on it.”

“Cheap cheap,” the bird chirped. “Cheap Commy.”

“Ah don't care how cheap Commy is,” Joe said. “Ah wouldn't do that. That's plain wrong. Ah play to win. That's the only way Ah know how to play.”

“Who's Commy?” I asked.

“Charles Comiskey,” Katie told me, “the guy who owns the Sox.”

The phone rang. It wasn't the kind of ring I was used to back home. Our phone at home rang sort of like
tootle
. This one sounded like a little jangly bell. Joe's wife picked it up. It was one of those black phones I'd seen in old movies, where you pick the whole phone up in one hand and then hold the little receiver to your ear with your other hand.

“It's Eddie Cicotte,” Katie said, glancing at me before handing the phone to Joe.

Joe listened for a few seconds, shaking his head. He looked over at me, too.

“Ah want no part of that,” was all he said before hanging up.

“What did he want?” Katie asked.

Joe sat down on the bed, a dazed look on his face. “Eddie said he'd give me ten thousand bucks to help the boys kick the Series.”

Katie sat down on the bed next to Joe. “
Ten thousand dollars
?” she said, awed. “Joe, that's
more than you earn all
season
.”

Joe turned to me suddenly. “How'd you know that was gonna happen?”

I wasn't sure if I should tell Joe and Katie that I came from the future and knew all about the Black Sox Scandal. They might think I was crazy or something.

“Like I told you,” I said. “I overheard some gamblers talking about it.”

“Ten…thousand…dollars,” Katie repeated. It occurred to me that in 1919, ten thousand dollars might sound like a million. “We could sure use ten thousand dollars.”

“Don't do it, Joe,” I warned.

“
Course Ah'm not gonna do it,” he snapped.

Joe got up off the bed and grabbed Black Betsy with his right hand. He stood in the middle of the room and held the bat outstretched, his arm perfectly straight. The end of the bat nearly reached the wall. He closed his eyes and stood like a statue.

“You want me to send the boy away, Joe?” Katie asked.

“He can stay if he wants.”

“What's he doing?” I whispered to Katie.

“That's how he relaxes and gets ready for a game,” she replied. “It keeps his muscles strong.”

“How long does he hold the bat out like that?”

“A half hour,” she replied. “Then he'll switch to the other hand.”

Once I was in science class and Mr. Kane wanted to show us how our muscles worked. He asked us to
take a book in one hand and hold it out in front of us. He had a stopwatch and he called out the seconds. In fifteen seconds my arm was sore. In thirty seconds it was really hurting. After one minute, I had to drop the book because I couldn't take the pain anymore. Most of the kids in the class didn't even make it to thirty seconds.

Joe just stood there calmly, holding the bat—bigger than any bat I'd ever seen—like it was a feather. His arm wasn't even trembling.

“You hungry?” Katie asked, holding out a brown paper bag. “We have some leftovers from dinner.”

I suddenly realized I was starving. I took the bag thankfully and pulled out a piece of steak.

“How about a drink?”

“Do you have a can of Coke?” I asked.

Katie and Joe looked at me strangely, and I knew I had made a mistake. Maybe Coke hadn't been invented yet.

“You…uh…don't have Coke?” I asked.

“Oh, we have Coke,” Katie replied.

“But it don't come in
cans
.” Joe chuckled.

Katie looked at me suspiciously, but she handed me a bottle of Coke and used a little metal can opener to pry the top off. Then she grabbed a towel from a drawer and went into the bathroom. Joe kept holding the bat up.

“Is it okay if I talk to you while you do that, Mr. Jackson?”

“If it pleases you.”

“Say a player
did
want to lose a game on
purpose,” I asked. “How could he do it without anybody knowing?”

“Easy,” Joe replied. “He could get a late jump runnin' for a fly ball. Then he could dive for the ball and miss it by an inch. He'd look like he was tryin', but all he did was turn an out into a triple. There's other ways. He could make his throws slightly off target. Hittin', he could swing a little late. There's a million ways to lose a ball game if you set your mind to it.”

Beads of sweat were starting to form on Joe's face, but the bat didn't droop or shake. He held it out steadily. I heard Katie brushing her teeth in the bathroom.

“Where are you from, Stosh?” Joe asked me.

“Louisville, Kentucky.”

“You don't say?” Joe replied, smiling with his eyes still closed. “Ah'm a South Carolina boy. Born and raised in Greenville, just a coupla hundred miles from you. You came all the way to Cincinnati from Louisville?”

“I guess you could say that,” I replied.

I wasn't afraid Joe was going to brain me with Black Betsy anymore. We were getting downright chummy. I was relieved that he showed no interest in taking money to throw the World Series.

“Mr. Jackson,” I asked, “how come they call you Shoeless Joe?”

Joe grimaced. The bat was beginning to shake a little.

“Ah was just startin' out in the minors.” He
grunted. “And one day my new spikes was givin' me blisters. They hurt so bad Ah couldn't put 'em on. The manager wouldn't let me sit out the game. So Ah took off my spikes and went to the outfield in my stockin' feet. Some reporter noticed and he called me Shoeless Joe in the paper the next day. That was all it took.”

“You only did it that one time?”

“Sometimes you do just one dumb thing in your life and that's all anybody remembers about you.”

Joe was really struggling now to keep holding the bat up. His face was twisted with pain and wet with sweat. He was breathing heavily. I didn't want to distract him anymore. Katie came out of the bathroom.

“Do you have a TV in here?” I asked her.

“TV?” she asked, puzzled.

“Television.”

“Television?”

Suddenly I realized my stupid mistake. There was no television in 1919. Looking around the room, I didn't even see a radio. That probably hadn't been invented yet either. I had to think fast.

“I meant, can I use the telephone,” I said abruptly.

Joe lowered the bat with a gasp and rubbed his shoulder. He and Katie looked at each other. Joe nodded. He picked up Black Betsy in his other hand and held it out in front of him.

I didn't really need to use the telephone. But it
was the first thing I thought of when I realized television hadn't been invented. I picked up the phone and held the receiver to my ear the way Katie and Joe did.

“How do you dial this thing?” I asked.

“Dial?” Katie asked. “What do you mean, dial?”

Joe and Katie looked at me strangely. Oh no. I'd made another stupid mistake! Telephones must not have had dials or keypads in 1919. Now I was really in trouble. I felt like a jerk.

“Just tell the operator who you want to talk to,” Katie instructed.

“Ain'tcha never used a telephone before?” Joe asked with a snort. “And they say
Ah'm dumb!”

“The, uh…the phones in Louisville are different,” I explained lamely.

I didn't go any further, because a woman's voice came on the line.

“Cincinnati operator,” she announced pleasantly.

“Hello,” I replied.

“What can I do for you?” the operator asked.

“Uh…”

Joe and Katie were staring at me, like they didn't quite know what to make of me.

“Do you wish to speak with someone?” the operator asked.

I searched my brain for a response. I had to make the call look real. If Katie and Joe found out I was a fraud, they'd probably throw me out of the room.

That's when I remembered that I
did
have to make a phone call. There
was
somebody in Cincinnati I wanted to speak to. I struggled to remember the name.

“Kozinsky,” I told the operator. “I would like to speak with Gladys Kozinsky.”