The Given Day (Coughlin 1)

Now some colored guys came over, asking what the holdup was. Aeneus said, "Man says he was safe."

"What?" Cameron Morgan ambled over from second. "You've got to be funning."

"Watch your tone, boy."

"I watch whatever I want."

"That so?"

"I do believe."

"Man was safe. With change."

"That man was out," Sticky Joe said softly. "No disrespect to you, Mr. Flack, but you were out, sir."

Flack placed his hands behind his back and approached Sticky Joe. He cocked his head at the smaller man. He took a sniff of the air for some reason.

"You think I'm standing on first because I got confused? Huh?" "No, sir, I don't."

"What do you think, then, boy?"

"Think you was out, sir."

Everybody was at first base now--the nine guys from each team and the nine coloreds who'd taken seats after the new game had been drawn up.

Ruth heard "out." He heard "safe." Over and over. He heard "boy" and "nigger" and "nigra" and "field hand." And then he heard someone call his name.

He looked over, saw Stuffy McInnis looking at him and pointing at the bag. "Gidge, you were closest. Flack says he's safe. Ebby had a good eye on it, and he says he's safe. You tell us, Babe. Safe or out?"

Babe had never seen so many angry colored faces this close. Eighteen of them. Big flat noses, lead-pipe muscles in their arms and legs, teardrops of sweat in their tight hair. He'd liked everything he'd seen in these ones, but he still didn't like how they looked at you like they knew something about you that they weren't going to tell. How those eyes sized you up fast and then went all droopy and faraway.

Six years back, major league baseball had had its first strike. The Detroit Tigers refused to play until Ban Johnson lifted a suspension on Ty Cobb for beating a fan in the stands. The fan was a cripple, had stumps for arms, no hands to defend himself, but Cobb had beaten him long after he was on the ground, applying his cleats to the poor bastard's face and ribs. Still, Cobb's teammates took his side and went on strike in support of a guy none of them even liked. Hell, everyone hated Cobb, but that wasn't the point. The point was that the fan had called Cobb a "half-nigger," and there wasn't much worse you could call a white man except maybe "nigger lover" or just plain "nigger."

Ruth had still been in reform school when he heard about it, but he understood the position of the other Tigers, no problem. You could jaw with a colored, even laugh and joke with one, maybe tip the ones you laughed with most a little something extra around Christmas. But this was still a white man's society, a place built on concepts of family and an honest day's work. (And what were these coloreds doing out in some field in the middle of a workday, playing a game when their loved ones were probably home going hungry?) When all was said and done, it was always best to stick with your own kind, the people you had to live with and eat with and work with for the rest of your life.

Ruth kept his gaze on the bag. He didn't want to know where Luther was, risk looking up into that crowd of black faces and accidentally catching his eye.

"He was safe," Ruth said.

The coloreds went nuts. They shouted and pointed at the bag and screamed, "Bullshit!" and that went on for some time, and then, as if they'd all heard a dog whistle none of the white men could hear, they stopped. Their bodies slackened, their shoulders lowered, they stared right through Ruth, as if they could see out the back of his head and Sticky Joe Beam said, "Awright, awright. That's how we're playing, then that's how we're playing."

"That's how we're playing," McInnis said.

"Yes, suh," Sticky Joe said. "That's clear now."

And they all walked back and took their positions.

Babe sat on the bench and drank and felt soiled and found himself wanting to twist Ebby Wilson's head off his neck, throw it on a stack with Flack's beside it. Didn't make no sense--he'd done the right thing by his team--but he felt it all the same.

The more he drank, the worse he felt, and by the eighth inning, he considered what would happen if he used his next at bat to tank. He'd switched places with Whiteman by this point, was playing fi rst. Luther Laurence waited on deck as Tyrell Hawke stood in the box, and Luther looked across at him like he was just another white man now, giving him those nothing-eyes you saw in porters and shine boys and bell boys, and Babe felt a shriveling inside of himself.

Even with two more disputed tags (and a child could guess who won the disputes) and a long foul ball the major leaguers deemed a home run, they were still down to the coloreds by a score of 9-6 in the bottom of the ninth when the pride of the National and American Leagues started playing like the pride of the National and American Leagues.

Hollocher ripped one down the first base line. Then Scott punched one over the third baseman's head. Flack went down swinging. But McInnis tore one into shallow right, and the bases were loaded, one out, George Whiteman coming to the plate, Ruth on deck. The infi eld was playing double-play depth, and Sticky Joe Beam wasn't throwing nothing George could go long on, and Babe found himself praying for one thing he'd never prayed for in his life: a double-play so he wouldn't have to bat.

Whiteman feasted on a sinker that hung too long, and the ball roared off into space and then hooked a right turn somewhere just past the infield, hooked hard and fast and foul. Obviously foul. Then Sticky Joe Beam struck him out on two of the most vicious fastballs Ruth had seen yet.

Babe stepped up to the plate. He added up how many of their six runs had come from clean baseball and he came up with three. Three. These coloreds who nobody knew, out in some raggedy field in Shit-heel, Ohio, had held some of the best players in the known world to three measly runs. Hell, Ruth himself was hitting one-for-three. And he'd been trying. And it wasn't just Beam's pitching. No. The expression was: Hit 'em where they ain't. But these colored boys were everywhere. You thought there was a gap, the gap vanished. You hit something no mortal man could chase down, and one of these boys had it in his glove and wasn't even winded.

If they hadn't cheated, this would be one of the great moments of Ruth's life--facing off against some of the best players he'd ever come across with the game in his hands, bottom of the ninth, two out, three on. One swing, and he could win it all.

And he could win it all. He'd been studying Sticky Joe for a while now, and the man was tired, and Ruth had seen all his pitches. If they hadn't cheated, the air Ruth sucked through his nostrils right now would be pure cocaine.