The rabbi was inhaling deeply as he walked and talked, as if memorizing the odors of the brilliant Tuesday morning. He was free of the closed air of the synagogue basement, and he loved it. He was perspiring heavily in his black suit, wiping away sweat with a finger, stopping to drink from a stone water fountain. But his body seemed oddly lighter, and he walked with a joyous bounce.
And then up ahead, through two stone pillars, the trees vanished and the light was brighter, and they could smell hot dogs frying and hear car horns honking. They were pulled along in the human river, out of the park and into Flatbush Avenue. Now another great human stream was feeding the river, a darker stream, as hundreds of Negroes arrived, many of them with gray hair and paunchy bodies and lined faces. They were walking from Bedford-Stuyvesant. They were coming from the Franklin Avenue stop of the IRT. They were hopping off buses. The older ones had waited decade after decade for a morning like this. They had waited for longer than Michael had been alive.
And he gazed at them, more Negroes than he had ever seen before, some of them coal-colored and some chocolate-colored and others with skin the color of tea with milk. There were flat-faced Negroes and hawk-nosed Negroes, men with wide eyes and squinty eyes, fat men and skinny no-assed men, men who looked like prizefighters and men who looked like professors. All greeting each other with jokes and smiles and handshakes.
“America!” the rabbi said. “What a place.”
And then before them, rising above the low houses, above the umbrellas of the hot dog carts and the whorls of cotton candy, right there in front of them was Ebbets Field. Up there was the magnet pulling all of them through the summer morning. Up there was Jackie Robinson.
Michael felt unreal as he moved with the rabbi through the crowd. The scene was like Coney Island and the circus and the day the war ended, all in one. And Michael was in it, part of it, feeding it. Music blared from the concession stands. Men with aprons and change machines hawked programs and pictures of the Dodgers, pennants and posters. A grouchy woman stood beside a cloth-covered board that was jammed with buttons. All were selling for 25 cents.
“Pick one!” the rabbi said.
Michael chose a button that said I’M FOR JACKIE.
“Two!” said the rabbi.
They moved on, their buttons pinned above their hearts. They eased along Sullivan Street, staring up at the weather-stained facade of the great ballpark. It was more beautiful and immense than anything Michael had ever seen. Bigger than any building in the parish. Bigger than any church. He paused, balanced on the crutches, to allow the sight to fill him. So did the rabbi. They stared up at the structure, seeing people walking up ramps, and behind them, thick slashing bars of black girders and patches of blue sky through the bars. As they stood there, like pilgrims, the crowd eddied around them, and Michael felt a tingle that was like that moment in a solemn high mass when the priests would sing a Gregorian chant and the altar seemed to glow with mystery.
Then they turned another corner, into Montgomery Street, and found one more entrance, their entrance, and a guy bellowing, “Program, getcha program here!” The rabbi pushed his glasses up on his brow and squinted at their tickets.
“This is the hard part,” he said. “To find the chairs.”
“Seats, Rabbi.”
“Here, you look.”
Michael examined the tickets and led the way to the gate. A gray little man with a mashed nose like a prizefighter’s was guarding the turnstile. Rabbi Hirsch handed him the tickets and he tore them in half and gave back the stubs.
“Enjoy da game, Rabbi,” the ticket taker said brusquely.
The rabbi looked startled.
“Enjoy da game,” he said to himself, passing through the turnstile after Michael, shaking his head in wonder. America.
Inside, Michael stood under the stands, not moving for a long moment. Savoring it. Inhaling the cool smell of unseen earth and grass. Feeling holy.
I am here, he thought, in Ebbets Field. At last.
Then they climbed and climbed on the ramps, the crutch pads digging into Michael’s armpits, the dank, shadowed air smelling now of concrete and old iron, ushers directing them ever onward, climbing until the street seemed far below them and Michael could see the church steeples scattered across the endless distances of Brooklyn. The crowds thinned. Then they passed through a final darkness. And Michael could feel his stomach move up and then down and his heart stood still.
For there it was. Below them and around them. Greener than any place he had ever seen. There was the tan diamond of his imagination. There were the white foul lines as if cut with a razor through a painting. There were the dugouts. And the stands. And most beautiful of all, there below him, the green grass of Ebbets Field.
Ballplayers were lolling in the grass, tossing balls back and forth, breaking into sudden sprints. They were directly beneath him and the rabbi. The Pirates. The rabbi gripped a railing for a moment, as if afraid of losing his balance and tumbling down the steps and out onto the field.
“Is very high,” he said, his face dubious.
But an usher directed them to their section, and they found their seats, on the aisle, eight rows up in left-center field. The rabbi sat in the end seat. The seats beside Michael were empty. Behind them were three men wearing caps adorned with union buttons. International Longshoremen of America. Michael explained to Rabbi Hirsch that the game hadn’t yet begun, that the Pittsburgh players were taking batting practice, getting ready for the game. Together, as they ate Kate Devlin’s cheese sandwiches, Michael and the rabbi, like new arrivals in Heaven, explored the geography of the field. They could see the famous concave wall in right field and the screen towering forty feet above it, with Bedford Avenue beyond. Red Barber had helped put that screen into their imaginations, and there it was before them, as real as breakfast.
“An Old Goldie you could hit over the fence?” the rabbi said.
Michael said Yes, over the fence was an Old Goldie. He showed the rabbi the famous sign in center field where Abe Stark of Pitkin Avenue promised a suit to any player who hit it with a fly ball. “A heart attack the fielder would need to have for a ball to hit this sign,” the rabbi said, and Michael laughed. There were other signs too, for Bullova watches and Van Heusen shirts, for Gem razor blades and Winthrop shoes, but Abe Stark’s sign was the only one anybody ever remembered. Michael explained the distances marked on the walls: 297 feet to right field, 405 feet to center, 343 to left. He explained the scoreboard. He explained the dugouts. He was explaining the pitcher’s mound, and its height, and the meaning of the word mound, when there was a sudden sharp crack and a ball sailed from distant home plate on a high, deep line to the upper deck in left field.
Then another crack, another ball flying into the upper deck while the crowd ooohed.
Then another.
“Jesus, that Kiner kid can hit the baseball, all right,” a man behind them growled.
“No doubt about it, Louis,” his friend said.
“Even if it’s on’y battin’ practice.”
“He does it in games too, this guy.”
Ralph Kiner! A rookie last year, out of the navy. Now the big young star of the Pirates. Driving one ball after another into the stands. At the lowest point, the drive went 343 feet; balls hit into the upper deck would go 450 feet. Michael was afraid for a moment, imagining Kiner doing it in the game to Ralph Branca, the Dodger pitcher. On this day, the Dodgers must win; he did not want to remember forever a Dodger defeat. Then he thought: The man’s right, it’s only batting practice.
Then Kiner was finished and behind him came another batter. There was a medium-sized cheer, and the rabbi asked why in Brooklyn they were cheering for a player from Pittsburgh. The growling man behind them gave the explanation.