"Ball two!" said the umpire to Big Poe.
"Are they going to walk him?" asked my mother of me. "Are they crazy?" To the woman next to her: "That's right. They been acting funny all week. Last night I had to tell Big Poe twice to put extra butter on my popcorn. I guess he was trying to save money or something."
"Ball three!" said the umpire.
The lady next to my mother cried out suddenly and fanned herself furiously with her newspaper. "Land, I just thought. Wouldn't it be awful if they won the game? They might, you know. They might do it."
My mother looked at the lake, at the trees, at her hands. "I don't know why Uncle George had to play. Make a fool of himself. Douglas, you run tell him to quit right now. It's bad on his heart."
"You're out!" cried the umpire to Big Poe.
"Ah," sighed the grandstand.
The side was retired. Big Poe laid down his bat gently and walked along the base line. The white men pattered in from the field looking red and irritable, with big islands of sweat under their armpits. Big Poe looked over at me. I winked at him. He winked back. Then I knew he wasn't so dumb.
He'd struck out on purpose.
Long Johnson was going to pitch for the colored team.
He ambled out to the rubber, worked his fingers around in his fists to limber them up.
First white man to bat was a man named Kodimer, who sold suits in Chicago all year round.
Long Johnson fed them over the plate with tired, unassuming, controlled accuracy.
Mr. Kodimer chopped. Mr. Kodimer swatted. Finally Mr. Kodimer bunted the ball down the third-base line.
"Out at first base," said the umpire, an Irishman named Mahoney.
Second man up was a young Swede named Moberg. He hit a high fly to center field which was taken by a little plump Negro who didn't look fat because he moved around like a smooth, round glob of mercury.
Third man up was a Milwaukee truck driver. He whammed a line drive to center field. It was good. Except that he tried to stretch it into a two-bagger. When he pulled up at second base, there was Emancipated Smith with a white pellet in his dark, dark hand, waiting.
My mother sank back in her seat, exhaling. "Well, I never!"
"It's getting hotter," said the lady elbow-next. "Think I'll go for a stroll by the lake soon. It's too hot to sit and watch a silly game today. Mightn't you come along with me, missus?" she asked Mother.
It went on that way for five innings.
It was eleven to nothing and Big Poe had struck out three times on purpose, and in the last half of the fifth was when Jimmie Cosner came to bat for our side again. He'd been trying all afternoon, clowning, giving directions, telling everybody just where he was going to blast that pill once he got hold of it. He swaggered up toward the plate now, confident and bugle-voiced. He swung six bats in his thin hands, eying them critically with his shiny green little eyes. He chose one, dropped the others, ran to the plate, chopping out little islands of green fresh lawn with his cleated heels. He pushed his cap back on his dusty red hair. "Watch this!" he called out loud to the ladies. "You watch me show these dark boys! Ya-hah!"
Long Johnson on the mound did a slow serpentine wind-up. It was like a snake on a limb of a tree, uncoiling, suddenly darting at you. Instantly Johnson's hand was in front of him, open, like black fangs, empty. And the white pill slashed across the plate with a sound like a razor.
"Stee-rike!"
Jimmie Cosner put his bat down and stood glaring at the umpire. He said nothing for a long time. Then he spat deliberately near the catcher's foot, took up the yellow maple bat again, and swung it so the sun glinted the rim of it in a nervous halo. He twitched and sidled it on his thin-boned shoulder, and his mouth opened and shut over his long nicotined teeth.
Clap! went the catcher's mitt.
Cosner turned, stared.
The catcher, like a black magician, his white teeth gleaming, opened up his oily glove. There, like a white flower growing, was the baseball.
"Stee-rike two!" said the umpire, far away in the heat.
Jimmie Cosner laid his bat across the plate and hunched his freckled bands on his hips. "You mean to tell me that was a strike?"
"That's what I said," said the umpire. "Pick up the bat."