Snow in August (27 page)

When the season had started, Michael read all the stories about Robinson in the
Brooklyn Eagle
and the
Daily News
and the
Journal-American
. He listened to Red Barber on WHN.
Days passed. And he knew that Robinson was in terrible trouble. He was drawing sellout crowds to Ebbets Field. But he was
0-for-20 against major league pitching and there were some writers who thought he might go 0-for-the-season. Michael dutifully
cut out all the stories and pasted them with mucilage into a large coarse-papered scrapbook he’d bought in Germain’s department
store for twenty cents; this was history while it was happening, he thought, and he wanted to keep it for the rest of his
life. But each story about Robinson’s failure made him feel worse, and he wondered if he would ever fill the book. In some
way he felt that if Robinson failed, he would fail too.

“Maybe the guy can’t hit up here,” Sonny said one gray afternoon, in Michael’s kitchen. “Maybe it’s like too much pressure,
Michael. Maybe he’ll be like a pinch runner or something.”

“He’s gonna hit,” Michael said. “I tell you, he’s gonna hit.”

He believed this the way Mrs. Griffin believed in Madame Zadora. But the truth was that, except for a glimpse in the newsreel
at the Grandview, Michael had never actually seen Robinson play. In fact, he had never even been inside Ebbets Field. With
Sonny and Jimmy, he had walked around the ballpark during the last days of the 1946 season. But they never got inside; even
if they’d had the money, the park was sold out. Michael believed that it didn’t really matter; after all, he had never been
in the Vatican either and was still a Catholic. But going to Ebbets Field cost money. Even the cheap seats in the bleachers
cost fifty cents. Anyway, he had school during the week, when the bleachers were half empty, and on weekends the whole ballpark
was always sold out. He could have used the five dollars from Mrs. Griffin to guy a reserved seat, but he couldn’t just buy
a ticket for himself. He’d have to buy one for
Sonny and Jimmy, one for all, all for one, and three tickets would cost more than most people made in an hour. He was glad
he’d given the five bucks to his mother but sometimes worried that he’d been selfish toward his friends. He wished that Mrs.
Griffin would find a horse named Red Snow and win a fortune. Then they’d all go to Ebbets Field. He could even bring Rabbi
Hirsch.

Meanwhile, all the Dodgers, including Robinson, were more vivid in his imagination than in life. He looked at the photographs
in the newspapers, and listened to Red Barber, and imagined them into action. In his mind, he could see Robinson playing first
base and Stanky at second, Reese at short and Spider Jorgensen at third. But he couldn’t really
see
them, in the flesh, until the school term was over. Sonny said that’s when the Police Athletic League, the PAL, started giving
out free tickets. Sonny knew all about things like that. But June was a long way off. If Jackie didn’t start hitting, they
could send him back to Montreal. Michael wondered if he’d ever get to see Robinson, to be there in the crowd to defend him
with his voice, to make him know he wasn’t alone.

The need to be there for Robinson increased by the day. The Phillies came to Ebbets Field for three games, and they started
yelling insults at Robinson. Sonny’s cousin Nunzio was an usher at Ebbets Field and told him all about it. The Phillies manager
was a southerner named Ben Chapman, who had been traded away from the Yankees before the war for calling the New York fans
Kikes. Now that he was a manager, he could get the whole Phillies team to yell these things at Robinson. Kike didn’t work
for Robinson. He wasn’t a Jew. So they called him a nigger. They called him snowflake. They said he should go back to picking
cotton. Robinson did nothing. He had
promised Mr. Rickey he wouldn’t fight back. At least not that first year. And so he put up with it.

“That’s the deal he made with Rickey,” Sonny said. “He can’t do nothing about nothing, for a year. They spit on him, he can’t
spit back.”

Listening to Sonny, and reading the stories, Michael tried to imagine how Robinson felt. After all, he graduated from college
out in California. He was smarter than any of the idiots on the Phillies. And he had to take this crap from them? They could
say things in a ballpark, in
Ebbets Field
, that they wouldn’t say to him out on the street? Thinking like Robinson, Michael grew enraged. He saw himself walking into
the Phillies dugout with a bat in his hand and breaking heads. He saw himself sliding into second with his spikes high. If
you hurt me, I’ll hurt you back.

And he thought: Jackie Robinson needs the Kabbalah.

Jackie Robinson needs the secret name of God.

Jackie Robinson needs the Golem.

Everybody else said that all the Dodgers really needed in the series with the Phillies was Leo Durocher. Leo the Lip was the
Dodger manager since before the war, and he didn’t take any crap. He was a tough guy. He’d go right over to the Phillies dugout
and, as Sonny said, knock Ben Chapman on his dumb fucking ass. If Robinson couldn’t do it, Durocher would, and that would
be the end of that. But Durocher had been suspended before the season started by some fat southern bozo named Happy Chandler,
who was the commissioner of baseball. Chandler said the reason was “conduct detrimental to baseball.” Everybody in the parish
learned the word
detrimental
on the same day, including Michael. And everybody knew it was a bum rap.

Michael tried to explain this to Rabbi Hirsch one afternoon, as Red Barber described a game on the old Admiral.

“First, a bum rap, what is this?” the rabbi said.

“It means, well, that the guy is convicted of something he didn’t do.”

In Durocher’s case, the detrimental conduct took place in Havana. The Dodgers were playing the Yankees. Everybody in Brooklyn
hated the Yankees. They wanted to beat the Giants, but they flat out hated the Yankees. Anyway, Durocher had been warned to
stay away from certain people. Gamblers. Guys he knew in nightclubs or something.

“This he didn’t do?”

“No, no, he stayed away from them,” Michael said. “But at this Yankee game he noticed that two of the gamblers he was supposed
to stay away from were sitting in Larry MacPhail’s box. Larry MacPhail is the president of the Yankees.”

“This is—the word is hype… heep-oh-crazy?”

“Hypocrisy. And Leo told the sportswriters about it—and they put it in the papers. But Happy Chandler didn’t suspend MacPhail
for having the gamblers in his box. He suspended
Durocher
for
talking
about it!”

“Hyp
o
crisy!”

“And here’s the worst part, Rabbi. The reason behind it? I read it in the
Daily News
. The reason was that Larry MacPhail got Happy Chandler his job!”

“Corrupt!”

“A straight payoff!”

Oh, there were some other things too. Leo had married a divorced woman named Laraine Day. Last year, he was supposed to have
beaten up a fan. But basically his detrimental conduct was in pointing out the truth. The result was that an old guy named
Burt Shotton was managing the Dodgers in
1947. And Burt Shotton didn’t wear a uniform. He wore a suit and tie. When he left his last team, he swore he would never
wear a baseball uniform again, and he didn’t. But he couldn’t go out on the field. And he was too old to kick the crap out
of Ben Chapman.

“
Crap
, what is this word?”

Michael was embarrassed but he explained what the word meant. The rabbi laughed.

“That would be good to see!”

Rabbi Hirsch was working hard at understanding baseball. On the table, there were sports pages marked with a red pen, and
sheets of blank paper covered with names and numbers and Hebrew letters. He seemed to have chosen baseball as his key to understanding
America. He had been listening to the games since the beginning of spring training, and even his language started to change.
On some days, he almost sounded like Red Barber.

“Ho, boychik, you just missed some rhubarb,” he said one afternoon, slurring the word in a southern way. “But don’t worry.
Higbe’s sitting in the catbird seat!”

The games, and Barber’s voice, made Rabbi Hirsch happy. But he also was disturbed by Robinson’s slump. He shook his head one
afternoon, as they listened to the game and Robinson grounded out to the shortstop. He said that soon they would have to
will
Robinson into hitting. He and Michael, if nobody else. They must pray. They must chant. They must light candles. They must
believe.

“Why can’t we use the Kabbalah?” Michael said. “There must be words there we can use.”

The rabbi gave Michael a cautious look.

“We only go to the Kabbalah,” he said, “if all else fails. That is not yet.”

But Rabbi Hirsch did understand how important it was for Robinson to succeed.

“For the colored people, is very important,” he said. “And for poor people, all kinds. And for us too, for the Jews.”

Michael waited for an explanation, and it came.

“A man like this, he is a, a… I don’t know the word. But he is there for others. Catholics, when they are hated, Jackie Robinson
is a Catholic. Jews, when they are hated, Jackie Robinson is a Jew. You see?”

“Sort of.”

“So Jackie Robinson we have to help,” Rabbi Hirsch said. “We help him, we help ourselves.”

“I see.”

“You must talk to Father Heaney too.”

“I will.”

And he did. Father Heaney was very grave as Michael explained what Rabbi Hirsch had told him. He nodded his head and said
he would offer up the seven o’clock mass the following morning for Jackie Robinson. That afternoon, Robinson went 0-for-3,
with a base on balls. In bed that night, Michael whispered in Yiddish.

A gefalenem helft Got
.

God helps the defeated. God helps the defeated. God helps the defeated.

And ended his prayers with ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys. He hoped the bad dreams would not come. He hoped he would dream
of Robinson hitting a triple. And then stealing home. Against the Phillies.

Please God, help the defeated, he whispered. Let Jackie Robinson hit.

I
n the midst of Robinson’s awful slump, a rumor swept through the parish: Frankie McCarthy had copped a plea. The detectives
had traced the cans of red Sapolin number 3 straight to Frankie and found a stiff paintbrush in the lot on Collins Street,
six doors from Frankie’s house. The rumors said that a clerk from Pintchik’s paint store on Flatbush Avenue picked Frankie
out of a lineup. “They even had fingerprints on the brush,” Sonny explained. “And on the can. This guy is
dumb
as a cucumber.” Frankie’s lawyer told him it was better to plead guilty to the charge of vandalism than face trial for assaulting
Mister G.

“And get this,” Sonny said. “The lawyer was a Jew and the
judge
was a Jew!”

“They should’ve thrown him in the goddamned river,” Michael said.

“We’ll, he’da gone
up
the river on the assault charge,”
Sonny said. “For a couple of years. Copping to the paint thing, he’s out in a couple a months.”

It didn’t seem right to Michael. Poor Mister G was in a bed somewhere with a broken head. His mind was gone. His store was
gone. His wife must cry herself to sleep. His kids were trying to get him to read an old prayer book so they could talk to
him before he died. Frankie was going to be all right, with a nice warm cell and all his meals. “Three hots and a cot,” Sonny
called it. And because of other things Frankie had done, Rabbi Hirsch had trembled with bitterness and Michael’s mother had
been driven to fury. In a few months, Frankie McCarthy would be back on the street. He’d sneer. He’d laugh. He’d hurt someone
else. It wasn’t right.

The rumors turned out to be true. But when Michael brought the news to Rabbi Hirsch, the rabbi said nothing. He made a sound.
Humf
. That was all.
Humf
. The sound of a man who knew that for some crimes, nobody ever truly pays.

Rabbi Hirsch did not brood, at least not in front of Michael. He was too busy mastering the theory and practice of baseball.
Alone in the synagogue, he wrote pages of notes and consulted them while firing questions at Michael.

A bunt is what?

How is explained a southpaw?

This Red Barber, he’s a socialist?

What means picked off?

Harold Reese, why is called Pee Wee?

A double play, this is two runs?

Mr. Shotton, his name is Boit or Burt?

Who is an Old Goldie?

None of this was easy. Michael had tried to teach baseball to his mother and had failed. After fifteen years in America, she
still didn’t know first base from third. But Rabbi Hirsch went
at the task with Talmudic intensity. After hearing Michael’s explanations, he copied the language of baseball from loose sheets
of paper into a kid’s composition book. He made diagrams. He insisted on knowing the rules. Much of this was abstract. The
daily newspapers never showed photographs of the whole ballpark, but Michael had a drawing of Ebbets Field that he’d cut out
of an old copy of the
Sporting News
and he used it to explain the positions and the bases. When they talked baseball, the sadness left the rabbi’s eyes. They
never talked about Frankie McCarthy. And for a few days they stopped talking about Jackie Robinson too. What needed to be
said had been said. The prayers had been offered. God knew what He should do. But it was too soon to use the Kabbalah.

And then Robinson began to hit.

And then Robinson began to dance off second base, driving pitchers crazy, drawing throws from angry catchers, coming in a
rush around third, with Red Barber’s voice rising, saying,
And here comes Robinson
.

Robinson began to hit, and the Dodgers began to win. And in the synagogue on Kelly Street, Rabbi Hirsch was clipping stories
too, from the
Brooklyn Eagle
and from the
Forvertz
. Michael brought his scrapbook to show Rabbi Hirsch, and the rabbi got one for himself.