Willie & Me (13 page)

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world.

The next entry was about the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. That was the spark that started World War I, and it was
also
called “The Shot Heard Round the World.” I had never heard of that one.

I scrolled down. Apparently,
whenever
something really amazing happens, somebody calls it “The Shot Heard Round the World.” When Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot his friend on a hunting trip, it was called “The Shot Heard Round the World.” There were golf
shots heard round the world. Basketball shots heard round the world. Hockey shots heard round the world.

But nothing about baseball. I kept scrolling down the list. There was nothing about Bobby Thomson. Nothing about Ralph Branca.

A smile crept across my face. It was like it had never happened! The history books were wiped clean!

“It never happened!” I heard myself shouting gleefully.

“What never happened?” my mom called from downstairs. “Is everything okay, Joey?”

I couldn't believe it! It never happened!

I wasn't going to start crowing about my success until I was sure. Maybe I had made a mistake.

I clicked away from Google and checked to see the final standings for the National League in 1951. . . .

Brooklyn Dodgers:     98–59

New York Giants:       97–60

St. Louis Cardinals:   81–73

Boston Braves:            76–78

That was the
proof
! The Dodgers won the pennant! History had been changed, and it was all because of
me
.

“I
did
it!” I shouted.

“Did
what
?” my mother called from downstairs. “Come down and tell us what's going on, Joey.”

For once in my life, I had done exactly what I set out to do. I had traveled back in time and changed the historical record, just as I had intended.

I pulled
The Baseball Encyclopedia
off my bookshelf and flipped to the section where it says who won the pennant every year. It said the same thing that I read online. The Dodgers won the 1951 pennant.

Even
paperbound
books had been changed! How could that be? It didn't matter. I didn't care. It happened. That's all that counted. And it was because of
me
.

What a rush! I felt such a feeling of euphoria, a feeling of power. I ran downstairs to tell my mom and Uncle Wilbur the good news.

“I did it!” I shouted even before I got to the first floor. “I changed history! I am all-powerful! Bow down before me!”

“Calm down,” my mother said. “How did you change history, Joey?”

“I wiped Bobby Thomson's Shot Heard Round the World right out of the record books!” I boasted. “Now it's like it never happened.”

“Bobby who?” Mom asked. “What are you talking about?”

“See!” I said. “That proves it! You don't even know about it anymore. But you knew about it yesterday, before I left.”

“You're talking crazy, Joey,” my mother said.

“The boy is loco,” said Uncle Wilbur.

“You need something to eat,” my mom told me. “Come on, wash your hands. I'm about to put food on the table.”

I stopped.
Wait a minute.
A thought had crossed
my mind. If Thomson didn't hit the Shot Heard Round the World, and Branca didn't throw the pitch that became the Shot Heard Round the World . . .

“How did the game end?” I asked.

“Beats me,” said my mother. “I don't even know what game you're talking about. Come eat.”

I looked to Uncle Wilbur. He wasn't a diehard baseball fanatic, but he followed the game. Surely he would know what happened. He'd been a young man back then.

“Do you know what happened in the last game of 1951?” I asked him.

“How should I know?” Uncle Wilbur told me. “That was over sixty years ago. It was just another game.”

“But you've heard of Ralph Branca and Bobby Thomson, haven't you?” I asked.

“Nope,” he replied.

“What about Willie Mays?” I asked.

“Willie who?” said my mother.

“Wait. What?” I asked. “You mean to say you've never heard of Willie Mays?”

“Wasn't he that guy who used to make infomercials for OxiClean or something?” asked my mom.

“That was
Billy
Mays!” I shouted. “Willie Mays is one of the most famous baseball players in history! How could you not know that name? Even people who don't follow baseball know about Willie Mays.”

“Never heard of the guy,” said Uncle Wilbur.

I couldn't believe it.

“Wait a minute, are you putting me on?” I asked, looking back and forth between the two of them. My mother has been known to play pranks on me from time to time, but my uncle does not joke.

“Are you feeling all right, Joey?” my mother asked. “Maybe you have a temperature.”

Maybe I did. I felt myself sweating. She put her hand on my forehead.

“I'll be right back,” I said. Then I dashed back upstairs.

“What happened to Willie Mays?” I mumbled to myself as I typed his name on my keyboard.

Willie Robertson. Willie Nelson. Willie Geist. Willie McBrides
. . .

There was no Wikipedia entry for Willie Mays! How could that be?

I checked the website for the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

No Willie Mays! He wasn't in the Hall of Fame anymore!

Frantically, I looked up Willie Mays in
The Baseball Encyclopedia
. Ah, there he was. . . .

What? Willie Mays only played that one season! Just 1951. That was
it
. Nothing after that. It was like he vanished off the face of the earth.

Oh no! What happened to Willie Mays?

Something was horribly wrong. I knew that Mays played all through the fifties, sixties, and even into the seventies, when he was over forty years old.

What did I do?

I was frantic now. I searched around online until I found the play-by-play for that final playoff game of 1951 to see what happened. It was all the same into the ninth inning. . . .

Dark singles. Mueller singles. Dark to third. Irvin fouls out. One out. Lockman doubles. 4–2. Runners on second and third. Thomson up. Branca comes in. Ball one.

And that's when history changed.

Instead of hitting the Shot Heard Round the World on the second pitch, Thomson took it for ball two. Then he took ball three. Then he took ball four.

It said Thomson walked on four pitches! That loaded the bases and brought Willie Mays to the plate.

Oh man! I told Willie he was going to be in the on-deck circle when the game ended. He must have freaked out when Thomson drew a walk. Willie had told me that he didn't want to come to the plate with the game on the line. And because I told the Dodgers that the Giants were stealing their signs, that's exactly what happened.

A single by Willie would have tied up the game. An extra base hit would have won it. Even if Willie had struck out or popped up, it wouldn't have been a disaster because there was only one out when he came to the plate. The next batter would have had a shot to win the game.

Then I read what happened. . . .

The 21-year-old rookie Willie Howard Mays, playing in the game of his life and clearly under tremendous pressure, hit into a weak double play to end the game, and the season.

Oh no!

If Willie didn't play in the major leagues after 1951, that meant the season-ending double play was his last major league at bat. His final swing.

But why didn't he play the next year?

I did a little more digging online. I found a 1951 article in a newspaper from Westfield, Alabama, where Willie Mays was born in 1931. It said that he came home at the end of the season and decided to take a break from baseball. There were a few other articles in the same newspaper. They said that Willie Mays, “formerly a player on the New York Giants,” had taken a job working “in a laundry.”

Oh no. Willie must have been devastated about what happened at the end of the 1951 season. He never returned to baseball. He never became a star. He was a nobody.

And it was my fault.

It got worse.

Local man William Howard Mays passed away on Wednesday at his home in Westfield. A laundry worker for nineteen years, Mays played one season for the New York Giants as a young man.

The obituary was dated 1970. He never even made it to his fortieth birthday.

I started crying and cursing.

This was a
disaster
! Willie Mays had rescued me when I was tied up in the equipment closet, and how had I repaid him? I had ruined his life!

“Are you okay, Joey?” my mother asked. She had come upstairs and was standing at my bedroom door.

“I did a terrible thing, Mom. I made a big mistake.”

She came in and put her arm around me.

“Oh, whatever it is, I'm sure it couldn't be that bad,” she told me.

“It's bad, Mom!” I insisted. “I ruined Willie Mays's life.”

“Shhh, it's okay, Joey,” my mother said, stroking my forehead. “Nobody ever heard of that guy.”

“Nobody ever heard of him because I ruined his life!” I told her. “I gotta fix it. I have to make it right.”

A
S
I
RAN UPSTAIRS TO MY ROOM, MY MIND WAS RACING
again. By telling the Dodgers that the Giants were stealing their signs, I had dramatically altered the lives of at least three players: Ralph Branca, Bobby Thomson, and Willie Mays. I had taken away their fame. I had robbed them of the money they would have earned from that fame. I had turned all three of them into nobodies. And who knew what
other
problems I might have caused?

I needed to fix things. But how? If only life had an undo button we could press and erase the latest dumb mistake we made.

One thing was for sure—I had to go back to 1951 again.

I grabbed the plaque my dad had given me for my birthday. The Branca card was gone, of course. That jerk Leo Durocher had ripped it up right in front
of my face. I grabbed a razor blade and carefully separated the Bobby Thomson card from the wood. Things had to go right this time. This was the only 1951 card I had left.

I climbed onto my bed and got ready for the trip. Before I had even picked up the card, there was a knock on the door. It was my mom and Uncle Wilbur.

“Here, I made you a sandwich,” my mother said, handing me a paper bag.

“I don't want a sandwich!” I barked at her. “That's not important! I gotta go save Willie Mays!”

“What are you wasting your time on
that
guy for?” Uncle Wilbur asked. “He was a nobody.”

“Can you close the door,
please
?”

“You be careful, Joey,” my mother said, almost pleading.

“I will. I
will
,” I said. “Just close the door. I'll be back as soon as I can. I promise.”

They closed the door. I knew my mother was still standing there, listening, but I didn't care. There were more important things to worry about.

I took a deep breath. I
would
need to be careful, I thought before picking up the Bobby Thomson card. This was no time to do something rash. It would just get me into trouble again later. I didn't want to ruin anybody
else's
life.

Think.
Think
.
What am I going to do when I get to 1951? What can I do to change things back to the way they were?

I looked around my bedroom. My eyes fell upon
the small box at the edge of my desk. The little video camera that my grandmother had given me for my birthday was in there.

Of course!

I opened the box and slipped the little camera in my pocket. Then I picked up the Bobby Thomson card. It was my ticket to 1951. I closed my eyes and tried to get in the mood. It wasn't easy. I had a lot on my mind. This was going to be a mission that I
had
to complete. I couldn't mess up this time. If I failed, Willie Mays would be a failure. And I would never be able to forgive myself.