Willie & Me (15 page)

“No game?”

He looked up at me. His eyes were clear. I shook my head.

“No game,” I said.

Flip nodded slightly and took a deep breath. Then he closed his eyes.

A second later, beeping noises came out of the monitors that were hooked up to Flip. The doctor and nurse started frantically pressing on Flip's chest, blowing air into his mouth, and giving him shots. A few more doctors came running in and started working on him.

“What's happening?” I asked.

“You folks need to leave,” one of the doctors said. But we weren't going anywhere.

Flip wasn't responding. His chest wasn't moving up and down. He wasn't breathing. The monitors were still beeping. Laverne and my mom started crying.

After a few intense minutes, the first doctor stepped away from the bed and pulled off his rubber gloves.

“That's it,” he said, looking at his watch and then at Laverne. “I'm sorry, ma'am. We did what we could.”

I never really appreciated how famous Flip was until he died. His name was all over the news that night, and there were stories about him in the papers and online, too. Our phone rang off the hook.

Flip's funeral was held a few days later. I wore my nice jacket and tie and we went to this fancy funeral parlor on Taylorsville Road in Louisville. The place
was filled with flowers. Hundreds of people had come from all over the country. Some of them were famous baseball players. Some of them were just fans. All the players on my team were there, of course. Some of their parents came, too. My dad showed up. Flip was so loved by so many people.

It was a really nice ceremony. Everybody was sniffling and sobbing and handing out tissues while they swapped stories about Flip. A bunch of people got up to talk. Before the funeral, Laverne had asked me if I wanted to say a few words. After all, I had played a pretty big part in Flip's life.

But what was I going to do—get up there and tell everybody that Flip and I traveled back in time together? I couldn't say that I left him in 1942, and that's when he met Laverne and learned how to throw the hesitation pitch from Satchel Paige. Nobody would believe it. They would think I was being disrespectful, or just plain crazy. I probably would have been thrown out of the funeral parlor.

It didn't matter. I wouldn't have been able to make it past the first sentence anyway. I'm not all that emotional, myself. But every time somebody said something about Flip, I would get this lump in my throat and I had to fight back tears.

When the funeral was over and people started to say their good-byes and head for their cars, Laverne put her arm around me and told me she wanted to speak with me privately. There were some dark, streaky lines on her face from the tears that had
mixed with her makeup. I went with her to a little room behind the chapel.

“I wanted to thank you again, Stosh,” she told me, holding my hand. “If it hadn't been for you, I never would have met Flip in the first place. I shudder to think what my life would have been like if he hadn't come into it. We had so many wonderful years together.”

“You're welcome,” I said awkwardly.

I didn't know what else to say. When somebody says “thank you,” it seems like you should say “you're welcome.” But it just sounded a little bit strange in this situation.

“Oh, one more thing,” Laverne said, as she opened a closet door and pulled out a long, thin box that was wrapped in red paper. “This is for you. Think of it as another birthday present.”

What could she possibly be giving me? The box was about the size of a skateboard. But why would Flip's wife be giving me a skateboard? I'd never expressed any interest in skateboarding.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Flip had been talking about liquidating the inventory of the store for a long time,” Laverne told me. “So before he went into the hospital, he had this made. He told me he wanted you to have it.”

I tore off the wrapping paper and opened the box. I was relieved that it wasn't a skateboard. It was a wooden plaque, very much like the one my father had given me for my birthday, but longer. Instead of two
baseball cards mounted on it, there were ten.

Honus Wagner. Jackie Robinson. Babe Ruth. Shoeless Joe Jackson. Satchel Paige. Ray Chapman. Jim Thorpe. Roberto Clemente. Ted Williams. They were all in a line. And the last card on the right was Flip, in his Brooklyn Dodgers uniform.

That's when I lost it. During the funeral, I had come close to crying a few times, but I managed to hold it in. There was no stopping it now. I was blubbering like a baby. Laverne held me and we cried together.

T
HE PLAQUE WITH ALL THOSE BASEBALL CARDS ON IT WAS
the nicest gift anyone had ever given to me. It was definitely worth a lot of money, and the smart thing to do would be to lock it up in a safe somewhere.

But that didn't seem right. I decided that I was going to put it up on the wall of my bedroom, right above my desk so I could look at it for inspiration while I was doing my homework and stuff. Maybe we could get an alarm system or something to prevent anyone from breaking into the house and stealing it.

The day after Flip's funeral, I decided for sure that it was time to announce my “retirement.” I wasn't going to travel through time anymore.

It had been fun, and I'd had some amazing experiences. But I decided that going back in time was
simply too dangerous. I had been kidnapped, shot at, attacked, and nearly killed on numerous occasions. If anything ever happened to me and I didn't make it back to the present day, I don't know if my mom could handle it.

And after what happened with Willie Mays, I finally realized how powerful the butterfly effect could be. It was way too easy for me to change some little thing in the past that would have a dramatic impact on the future.

At least now, I had this beautiful plaque so I could think back about the trips I had been on, and to remind me of Flip.

I remembered the time I had dinner with Babe Ruth in New York City. Man, that guy could
eat
. He got sick and threw up all over the place.

I remembered going fishing with Ted Williams, hunting with Satchel Paige, and meeting Lou Gehrig on a train to Chicago.

I remembered the batting lesson I got from the great Honus Wagner.

I remembered the time I went to bed wishing I could experience what Jackie Robinson experienced when he broke the color barrier. And when I woke up, I was an African-American kid in 1947.

Those were the good old days, for me. How lucky I was to have lived through them and met all those great players.

It would be cool to go back in time and visit those guys again. But no, I just couldn't risk it anymore.
The gift from Flip would have to do. That night, I fell asleep cradling the plaque in my arms.

It must have been around midnight when I heard something. We have an old house, and it creaks with the wind and cold. But this was a different sound. I opened my eyes.

Then I bolted upright. There wasn't a man in my room this time. No, this time there was a
crowd
of people standing around my bed.

I tried to scream, but no sound came out of my mouth. I hugged the plaque to my chest, as if it would protect me. They had me way outnumbered, and some of them were holding bats. What were they going to do to me?

“Shhhh,” somebody whispered. “It's okay, Stosh.”

It was dark, so I couldn't make them out at first. But after my eyes adjusted to the little night-light, I could see they were all wearing baseball uniforms. And then I was able to make out their faces.

Honus Wagner. Jackie Robinson. Babe Ruth. Shoeless Joe Jackson. Satchel Paige. Ray Chapman. Jim Thorpe. Roberto Clemente. Ted Williams.

All the guys on the plaque were there, including Flip. It was young Flip, and he was wearing his Brooklyn Dodgers uniform.

“W-what's going on?” I asked. “What are you all doing here?”

“You must have wished for it, Stosh,” Flip told me, “and you made it happen. Just like all the other times.”

“We came back,” said Honus Wagner, coming over to shake my hand. “It's good to see you again, Stosh.”

The others came over one by one to shake hands with me, too.

I couldn't
believe
it. I knew that I could take people back in time with me, because I'd done it with my dad, my mom, and Flip. And I knew that I could
pull
people from their time into my time, because I'd done it with Honus, Bobby Thomson, and Ralph Branca. But pulling
ten
people through time, simultaneously? Now,
that
was impressive.

I looked around the room at their faces. Ray Chapman and Roberto Clemente, two players from completely different eras, were standing next to each other. I remembered that both of them would die tragically, Clemente in a plane crash and Chapman getting his skull fractured by a pitched ball. That's why I had traveled back in time to meet them. I was trying to prevent Roberto from getting on that plane in 1972, and to prevent Ray from stepping into that batter's box in 1920. I had failed both times.

On the other side of my bed was Shoeless Joe Jackson. He had been kicked out of baseball for life because of a gambling scandal he hadn't even participated in. I had traveled back to 1919 trying to prevent it from happening. That hadn't worked out, either.

Now that I was looking at their faces, it occurred to me that I had
always
failed when I went back in time. I wasn't able to see whether or not Babe Ruth
called his famous “called shot” home run in 1932. Ted Williams and I hadn't been able to warn President Roosevelt about the attack on Pearl Harbor. I hadn't been able to prevent the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865.

I was a failure. Maybe that's why they were all in my bedroom now, I figured—to get back at me.

“I'm so sorry,” I said to the group. “Every time I went back in the past with you guys, I had some mission I wanted to accomplish. And I failed every time. I was only trying to help.”

“Fuhgetaboutit,” Flip said. “You didn't fail, Stosh. Life is what it is. You coulda made things a lot worse.”

“We lived our lives,” Jackie told me. “Everything is going to work out.”

Honus Wagner came over to the head of the bed.

“Do you remember what I told you, Stosh?” Honus asked me. “Remember what I said about being a great ballplayer?”

I did. I remembered it like it was yesterday.

“Yeah,” I whispered. “I told you that I wasn't any good at baseball. You told me that the secret to being a great ballplayer is to trick yourself into thinking you already are one.”

“That's right, Stosh.”

“After that,” I said, “I convinced myself that I was good, and it made me better.”

Honus nodded his head and stepped back so Jackie Robinson could get closer to me.

“Stosh,” he said, “do you remember what I taught
you that day at Ebbets Field?”

“Sure,” I told him. “Those bigots on the other teams were screaming horrible things at you, and pitchers were knocking you down left and right. I tried to get you to go charge the mound and beat them up, but you told me that you fight back in your own way. Instead of fighting with your fists, you fought back by showing them how good you were. And a lot of those people who hated you came to respect you in the end.”

“You got it, Stosh,” Jackie said.

I looked over at Roberto Clemente, who was standing quietly in the corner.

“Before I met you, Roberto,” I said, “I was really selfish. I didn't care about anybody else. But seeing what you did made me care about other people, and not just about myself. I'll never forget what you told me—If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you and you don't do that, you're wasting your time on this earth.”

“That's exactly what I said,” Roberto told me.

“Hey, what am I, !@#$% chopped liver?” asked Ted Williams.

Oh yeah. Ted might have hit as many homers as Babe Ruth if he hadn't spent four years in the prime of his career fighting in World War II and the Korean War.

“I tried to talk you out of joining the military,” I said. “But you told me that some things are more
important than hitting home runs.”

“You're !@#$%^ right!” Ted said, which made everyone laugh.

Babe Ruth came over next. He threw an arm around me and put me in a friendly headlock.

“You remember what
I
taught you, don'tcha, kid?” he said. “Swing for the fences. Swing big, with everything you've got. Hit big or miss big. Live as big as you can.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And Shoeless Joe taught me that sometimes life isn't fair, but we've gotta deal with that. And Satch, you taught me there are no second chances. If you want something, you've got to go get it. Because nine times out of ten, if you let something slip away, it's gone forever.”

“I guess if ya go where learnin' is flying round,” Satch whispered, “some of it's bound to light on you.”