“I see.” I was less than thrilled by my new home.
The depot was bedlam. Thousands jammed the streets. Signs and banners waved everywhere. Currie’s Zouave Band, in bright red baggy pants, played “Hail to the Chief” as we squeezed into open carriages behind the bandwagon. I rode with Andy and Hurley. We set off through the streets. Men and boys cheered us, women and girls waved red scarves. We turned up Fourth, the city’s fashionable promenade, where crowds were even thicker in front of the expensive stores. The color red flowered everywhere. One store had fashioned an enormous C entirely of scarlet stockings. Crimson streamers floated down on us from upper stories. I’d wondered how ticker-tape parades felt to astronauts or World Series heroes. Now I had a pretty good idea.
“‘Is it not passing brave to be a king,’” Hurley quoted ironically, “‘and ride in triumph through Porkopolis?’”
“Who wrote that?” I said, thinking his tone odd.
“Marlowe,” he answered. “After a fashion.”
“You two can lay off,” Andy said. “It’s plain you’re educated.”
“Aw now, me foine lad.” Hurley’s abrupt brogue was thick as porridge. “It’s ye who’re the best of us, Andy, make no mistake.” A melancholy out of keeping with the occasion edged his voice, puzzling me.
We were deposited at the Gibson House, a newly refurbished six-story luxury hotel on Walnut, where dignitaries awaited us on a second-floor balcony. The street below was a noisy carpet of people. Windy speeches ensued, one boiler-lunged politician bellowing that our march to the sea would have made Sherman proud. Harry, George, and Brainard stepped forward to speak—only George seemed to enjoy it—and then Gould, a popular hometown figure, managed a few words. Finally Champion, at Harry’s urging, told the throng that we needed to rest before the Grand Complimentary Game that afternoon.
Since the contest was only hours away, Harry insisted that we remain at the Gibson. Brainard complained, and others echoed. I wasn’t happy either; I wanted to look around my new city. But Harry held fast, saying he wouldn’t see his own family until after the exhibition match. Then he surprised me by announcing that Hurley and I would captain the “picked nine” against the first nine that afternoon.
He made it sound like an honor. To me, facing the Stocking starters seemed more an ordeal.
We climbed down from a pennant-bedecked omnibus. The double gates of the Union Grounds closed behind us. The crowd’s clamor was punctuated by a cannon that boomed in the outfield, lifting me six inches off the grass. We marched onto the field in a line, Caesar’s legions returning in triumph. I was coming to like this hero business.
The field was green as malachite in dazzling eighty-five-degree sunshine. It was a gorgeous ballpark, rivaled in my experience only by the Capitoline Grounds in Brooklyn. The grass was thick, the infield a pebble-free mix of dirt and clay, its drainage so good that no trace remained of earlier showers.
A wooden clubhouse rose behind the third-base stands adjoining a ladies’ pavilion known as the Grand Duchess, the two structures forming a high L behind home plate. Carriages moved on a track inside the fence. From a high platform beside the Grand Duchess’s cupola, the Zouave Band floated festive airs over the diamond. Spectator areas were awash in red: scarves and handkerchiefs fluttered; parasols waved; hats flew in the air. At fifty cents a head—not to mention the five-dollar tickets to tonight’s Grand Reception Banquet selling fast—I knew the club’s coffers must be swelling.
At three-thirty, Hurley and I joined Harry at home plate for the toss. Hearing a commotion, we turned to see a flatbed wagon carrying a bat as big as a tree. A gift of the Cincinnati Lumber Company, it proved to be twenty-seven feet long. The names of the starting nine were inscribed on it in red letters—and then: “Substitutes—Hurley and Fowler.”
“You did that?” I said to Harry, who just smiled. After that he could have asked me to climb the flagpole naked and I’d have tried my damnedest.
We set about the business of playing. My teammates included Stockings from previous years, when pros and amateurs had played together. A few were youngsters on the way up. One of them, a strapping lad named Oak Taylor, had considered himself next in line for a substitute spot. He wasn’t ecstatic over my presence.
I started at catcher, then played the outfield and first base. Except for a couple of passed balls, I handled my chances without mishap. Our main problem was at short, where a nervous kid named Brook-shaw kicked so many balls that Hurley finally took the position himself.
I faced Brainard five times. My first trip up he returned my grin in a friendly way—then put a ball under my chin. It came so fast I barely could twist away. I picked myself up slowly. He was still grinning. Very funny. I dug in and twitched my bat menacingly—and fanned air on three pitches.
“Thanks, Acey,” I said dryly. “I realize this is for the whip pennant and all.”
“I’ll lay one where you can plank it next time,” he promised.
He did. I planked it sharply into the left-center gap for a double.
“Charity’s done!” he called.
He popped me up twice on rising balls, but I felt my timing improving. My last time up, he hummed in another riser. I adjusted slightly, leveling my swing, whipping the bat fluidly. Crack! The ball rocketed to the center-field fence almost before Harry or Andy could react. It bounced high off the boards and back over Harry’s head as he sprinted to the track. The crowd laughed and applauded as I pulled into third standing up. Brainard shot me a look under the brim of his cap. I shrugged, grinning happily. I hadn’t hit a triple since high school.
It was a rare moment for
