badly to close this case while on his watch. But if ambition meant taking shortcuts, it could lead to disaster.
14
Baseball practice had been over for two hours, but the twins were still arguing when they got out of the yellow cab on the corner of Third Avenue and Twenty-ninth Street. They stood facing each other for a moment, tense and angry.
“You know Coach Newell told Chase to hurt him,” Giancarlo said. “It was just practice and he slid into Esteban hard at second with his cleats up.”
“Chase was just trying to break up the double play,” Zak argued, and moved past his brother to the door of the Il Buon Pane bakery. The debate was momentarily interrupted when he opened the door and they were greeted by the smell of fresh-baked pastries and breads.
However, once Giancarlo recovered his wits and noted that they were going to have to stand in line anyway, he returned to the fray. “Esteban had already made the play,” he said, “and, I might add, a frickin’ great play- catches that one-hop blast up the middle, tags second himself, and fires over to first to double them up. He’d let go of the ball ten feet before Chase even got there. There was no reason to go into him like that.”
“Coach Newell is just trying to get us to play hard-nosed baseball with the playoffs coming up,” Zak said, getting more surly and defensive with each point his brother made.
“Esteban got hurt because of it,” Giancarlo said. “That was a nasty cut on his leg from Chase’s cleats.”
“It looked worse than it was.”
“Zak… come on… he was bleeding like he’d been stabbed.”
Zak shrugged. “He should have seen Chase coming and moved.”
“He wasn’t expecting to get a cheap shot by his own teammate.”
“You’d think he would have learned by now.”
Giancarlo stopped and stared at his brother in shock, then slowly shook his head. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said sarcastically. “He should understand by now that a racist xenophobic coach and his little toadies would be looking for ways to hurt a seventeen-year-old because he’s a Mexican. I mean, what a stupid wetback. What does he expect? Fair treatment? Maybe play a meaningless game without one of his own teammates trying to injure him? Dumb spic.”
Zak scowled. Chase Fitzpatrick was the team’s catcher-a big, not terribly bright redhead and one of Max Weller’s toadies. “I’m very impressed with the ‘xenophobic’ adjective, but you’re overreacting.”
“Overreacting!” Other customers turned around or looked up from their tables with disapproval at Giancarlo’s shout. Although there was a constant hum of conversation in Il Buon Pane, people maintained a certain level of decorum meant to preserve the tranquillity of the place, and a shouting teenager wasn’t part of it.
Giancarlo recognized this and immediately lowered his voice to an angry buzz directed at his twin. “I was the only one on the team to go out there to see how bad he was hurt. He was lying on the ground, Zak, holding his leg and bleeding. Coach Newell never even came over. He sent an assistant coach.”
Zak rolled his eyes. “Newell was busy. He probably didn’t think it was that bad.”
“He high-fived Chase when he came back to the dugout!” Giancarlo said.
“I didn’t see that.”
“I did! So did a lot of other guys. And so did Esteban. The guy had tears in his eyes but didn’t say a word, and by the way, thanks for getting my back like you said you would. I didn’t exactly see you come out to help.”
“You didn’t need me,” Zak replied. “And Coach Hames told me to keep warming up. Nobody was jumping your butt for helping Esteban.”
“What about the crap I caught in the locker room after practice? ‘Taco lover,’ ‘Bean Dip’-those were just a couple of names… all homophobic of course…”
Zak replied, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will-”
“Never hurt me. Yeah, I know,” Giancarlo retorted. “But this time Esteban did get hurt. And I could be next. Max and Chase and their pals were all laughing about Esteban, then Chase said, ‘Hey, Giancarlo, maybe now Coach will let you play shortstop for sliding practice.’ Sounds like a threat to me.”
“I’ll kick his butt if he does,” Zak blustered. “He’s just a big, fat catcher.”
“You’re not getting the point-”
Whatever Giancarlo was going to say was cut short by the appearance of Moishe Sobelman. “Boys, boys, what are these hard words and angry eyes?” he asked, clapping a hand on each boy, though he had to reach up to do so. “It’s a terrible thing when brothers fight. But come, let’s discuss this over something to eat. Let me see, will it be your father’s favorite, cherry cheese coffee cake, or could I interest you in something else today? A raspberry almond torte, perhaps? Of course, your mother will probably be angry with me for ruining your dinners.”
The twins immediately stopped sneering at each other and grinned at Sobelman. They happily followed him around behind the counter into the kitchen, where Moishe sat them down at a small table and took their orders. Neither ventured too far, however, from their father’s addiction, opting only to try the blueberry cheese coffee cake.
Sobelman went out to the counter and then returned with the coffee cakes. He then sat down with a cup of coffee and waited for the boys to get well into their treat before asking what they’d been fighting about. He then listened patiently as each boy gave his side of the story.
“It’s only six or seven guys, and we have twenty-five guys on the roster,” Zak said in conclusion. “If something happens and those guys get kicked off the team, or Coach Newell loses his job, we’ll have no chance to take state this year. Why should the whole team suffer for one guy?”
Sobelman looked thoughtful and then responded gently. “Indeed, why should the rights or happiness, or even the safety, of one person supersede what is best for many? Then again, I guess there is a question of what is best for many in the long run. It is a very difficult and often frightening decision to speak up for someone else, Zak. But let’s look at this from the perspective of your report for your bar mitzvah class.”
Sobelman got up and rummaged through a drawer. “In the 1920s, the Nazis were just a few thugs meeting in German beer halls. But they were loud and aggressive, and speaking out against them could even result in a beating. Still, they could have been easily stopped if the majority of Germans who didn’t subscribe to their hateful views had said something, or at least voted against them.” He picked up a piece of paper from the drawer and walked back to the table and sat down.
“You may have heard this; it was part of a speech given by Martin Niemoller, a German minister and philosopher,” Sobelman said, and read from the piece of paper. “‘First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the trade unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.’”
“I’ve heard that before,” Giancarlo said. “When we were studying the Holocaust in a bar mitzvah class my dad was teaching.”
“Good,” Sobleman replied. “I’m glad you’ve heard it somewhere. But did your father tell you much about Mr. Niemoller?”
“No,” the boys said.
“Well, it is good to know his history as well as his words,” Sobelman said. “For instance, he was a submarine commander in World War I but later became a pacifist and anti-nuclear weapons activist. In the 1930s, he was staunchly anti-Communist and initially supported the Nazis’ rise to power. Only when the Nazis made churches subordinate to the party did he balk and begin speaking out against them. He became very popular in Germany, which angered Hitler, who had him arrested in 1937. He spent more than a year in jail. When he got out, he continued to speak against the Nazis, which got him arrested again and this time sent to the death camps at Sachsenhausen and Dachau in ‘protective custody.’ He was, of course, treated better than the Jewish prisoners and so survived seven years in those hellholes until he was liberated in 1945. He gave his ‘they came for the Jews’ speech after that… which has, of course, become a popular treatise on the danger of political apathy.”
“I understand your point,” Zak said defensively. “But what does this have to do with a baseball team and one kid getting bullied a little?”
