AN ACT OF BLATANT COWARDICE

1959

     We had a big game with all black Centennial High, our cross-town rival, a school Ron Bart hated, especially after they thrashed us in football. We played them at Cressey Park, a fine municipal stadium with symmetrical fences and stands wrapping around from third to first bases and lights and a press box, where Howard Handy, sports editor of the Compton Herald American newspaper, sat and reported on games. The ball park was located in the black part of town, off Central and Rosecrans boulevards. Like us, Centennial had some good prospects, including smooth switch-hitting sophomore shortstop Roy White, who would go on to have a big career with the NY Yankees, and several formidable specimens—strapping, sinewy, mercury-quick man-children with fierce us-against-them attitudes. The stands were filled with mostly black folks.

     Bowlin, already drawing scouts with his live fastball and excellent control and poise and confidence, pitched, and it was close, a tense game. A very powerful senior outfielder who played linebacker on the football team, was on first base, and he began talking to me at second base. “Comin’ down, skinny white boy, gonna cut your balls off, gonna take yo skinny ass out!”

     Loman cupped his hand to his mouth. “Don’t pay him no mind, Ragman. He’s all jive, just bluffin’.”

     “I been sharpenin’ my spikes, boy, gonna cut you up good.”

     Sure enough, the hitter slapped a ball in the hole between short and third. Loman backhanded it and in one motion that I felt took forever snapped me a perfect waist-high peg. I heard the base runner thundering down the line screaming like a kamikazi, and for the first time ever I hopped like a frightened hare across the bag too quickly to avoid his spikes-high slide. The ump called him safe in a voice that seemed to boom and echo in my ears for unendurable minutes. I never completed the throw to first, gripped the ball tightly, head down, unable to look at my team mates or anybody as the baserunner stood, smile gleaming as he brushed himself off.

     I heard the Centennial dugout’s chorus: “Buck buck buck! Chicken boy! Buck buck buck!” I heard the baserunner whisper, “Footsteps.” Finally, I faced Bowlin, who’d stepped off the mound to deliver me a look of pure loathing and disgust. “Gutless motherfucker,” he fumed.

     “Gutless yourself,” I growled back, finding my strangled voice. I gunned the ball at him so hard he staggered to catch it. Then I heard Ron Bart at first: “Guess you didn’t inherit your old man’s CAJONES, huh?”

     I couldn’t look at him. Centennial broke the game open, and when the inning ended I went to the far end of the dugout and sat. Even Edgmon left me alone. Loman finally sat beside me, stared straight ahead, patted my knee. He never said a word, and on the bus ride back to campus, after we lost, he sat beside me in the back.

     “Everybody has a day like you did,” he said softly. “Next time, you’ll get ‘em back. I know you will. That’s how you learn.”

     “Loman, sometimes I wish I were you,” I found myself telling him. “Black, with no Dad as an ex big leaguer, and folks expectin’ me to fill his shoes.”

     He gazed at me. “If you feel that way, like you wanna be me, well, my friend, you are in powerful big trouble.”

     When I got off the bus last, Edgmon waited for me, put his arm around my shoulder and walked me toward the locker room. “Son,” he said. “I’m stickin’ with you no matter what. I’m in your corner. What happened today, it’ll never happen to you again. I guarantee it. You got spooked. I been spooked. You got too much heart and character. I know you, and you got the right stuffings.”

     At the dinner table that night, I felt like it was extra quiet.Dad acted as if nothing in particular had happened, and though I didn’t see him at the stadium, I’m sure he’d heard about it. When you prove yourself a coward, you’re sure the whole world knows about it, and the mirror is no friend. Nobody is.

     (Next Sunday installment” Big Moe Gets the Boot.”)