Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir (5 page)

I
F
C
HARLOTTE
was a distant ideal, living as she did away from home through most of my childhood, Jeanne was an everyday presence. For as long as I can remember, she was a surrogate mother, looking out for me, taking care of me when our mother was sick. The nearly ten-year gap in our ages eliminated the potential for competition and defined our roles: she was the grown-up; I was the kid sister. Loving, patient, and gentle, she gave to me more than I gave her in return. Whatever hesitations she must have had about taking responsibility for me, she always made me feel as if she had been waiting for a little sister all her life.

In the summer of 1949, Jeanne was sixteen, about to enter her junior year in high school. She was one of the top students in her class: vice-president of the student organization, treasurer of her Hi-Y club, president of the dramatic club, and leader of a service organization that gathered canned goods for needy families in the Deep South and knitted afghans for veterans’ hospitals. Though I had no idea why the people in the Deep South needed food, I got so caught up in the canned-goods drive that, each time I went to the corner store for my mother, I would bring
home an extra can of soup and hide it under my bed. When my hidden cans added up to a dozen, I proudly presented them to my sister as my contribution to the overall effort, taking immense pleasure in the thought that my hoarded cans would soon appear on the kitchen table of families far away.

I tagged along with Jeanne everywhere—to the movies, the beach, the houses of her friends. There must have been times when I aggravated her, but she was never openly resentful, and only rarely bossy. On rainy Saturdays, she patiently took me with her to the movies, where she and her girlfriends talked with each other and flirted with the boys. We had two movie theaters in Rockville Centre: the Strand, which had once been a vaudeville house, boasting a live orchestra and a Wurlitzer pipe organ, and the newer Fantasy Theatre, an ornate picture palace designed in an Egyptian motif at the time King Tut’s tomb was found, with a deep balcony, lush carpeting, and matrons dressed in black. As long as I kept relatively quiet and curbed my natural tendency to plunge into any conversation—especially when the boys turned the talk to baseball—she let me sit by her side. She remembered that, when she had gone to the movies with Charlotte, she was forced to walk several paces behind Charlotte and sit by herself seven rows to the rear of Charlotte’s group. No exception was allowed, and Charlotte had warned her that if she told our mother about their arrangements she would be committing a mortal sin in the eyes of the church, called “tattletaling.” The routine continued until Jeanne, in preparation for her First Communion, went to First Confession. She told the priest of her temptation to tell her mother about her unhappiness, though she knew it was a mortal sin to tattle. The priest laughed, and told her she needn’t worry. Tattletaling was not a mortal sin. When Jeanne emerged from the confessional with a big smile on her face, Charlotte knew the jig was up. From that day forward, she had to let Jeanne walk beside her on the sidewalk and sit next to her at the movies.

My favorite sight at Jones Beach was the Art Deco poolhouse (
above
), a veritable castle of red and tan brick that held the magnificent pool. I had been told the tower (
right
) was a prison where little kids were held if they did not obey their elders.

Jeanne also let me accompany her when she and her friends went to Jones Beach, which remains the finest beach I have ever seen, finer than the exclusive resorts on the Caribbean, finer than the private beaches in Malibu. Jones Beach was not just sand and water but a world-class public resort, “a kind of people’s palace or people’s country club,” as critic Paul Goldberger once described it, “as careful and determined in its symbolism as a seat of government.” Completed in 1929 under the leadership of New York Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, it was unparalleled as a design for public space: six miles of perfectly kept snowy white sand, two giant bathhouses, two large, heated, saltwater pools for fifteen thousand swimmers, dressing rooms, lockers, beach shops, comfort stations, five cafeterias, and a marine dining room. A paradise for children and grown-ups alike, it contained two ice-cream parlors, a roller-skating rink, an outdoor dance floor, an Indian Village, and a mile-long boardwalk with a pitch-and-putt golf course, shuffleboard, Ping-Pong, handball, paddle tennis, and archery.

Approaching the beach from the parkway, we knew we were drawing near as soon as we caught a glimpse of the giant red brick water tower that stood as the symbol of the park and could be seen for many miles on a clear day. I caught my breath in anticipation not unmarked by apprehension every time I saw the tower, which stood nearly two hundred feet high and resembled a Venetian campanile. Though the tower presaged our arrival at the beach, it also had an aura of menace: I had been told that this tower was in fact a prison where little kids were held if they did
not obey their elders at the beach. I could never figure out how the kids were lowered into the tower, or what they did once they were inside, but I did not pursue my curiosity, deciding it was better not to know too many details.

Our parking lot was Number Four, connected to the beach and the bathhouses by an underground tunnel that formed an echo chamber if you shouted “helloooo,” as we invariably did. Emerging from the tunnel, we were greeted by a fabulous display of petunias and, if we were lucky, five or six cottontail bunnies scurrying amidst the flowers. My favorite sight was the Art Deco poolhouse, a veritable castle of red and tan brick that held the magnificent pools. My sister and her friends preferred the ocean beach. Radios settled carefully on the edge of their blankets, they lay for hours, securing their tans, flirting with boys, and reading love stories in
True Confessions
. Every now and then they would stir from their lethargy to add a layer of their favorite tanning concoction, a mixture of baby oil, iodine, and cocoa butter. When the heat of the sun became unbearable, they would dip themselves in the ocean for a minute or two and then slowly saunter back to the blanket, hoping to lure the orange-and-black-suited lifeguards from their perches in their high double chairs.

As soon as I knew where on the beach my sister’s blanket was located, I raced to the tunnel that led to the pool. Inside, the smell of the chlorine produced a feeling of happy intoxication which lingered even as I emerged into the open and was momentarily blinded by the brilliant light reflected from the blue water, gleaming diving boards, and white balcony. Jeanne was the one who had taught me how to swim, and she knew that I could handle the pool on my own. Surrounded by hundreds of fellow swimmers, I would stay in the pool for hours, paddling up and down the lanes, or clinging to the side and watching
as people dove off the high diving board. Though Jeanne could dive frontward and backward off the highest board, I never learned to dive, and I watched the graceful plunges of other swimmers with awe.

Jones Beach also became the setting for a new friendship in that summer of 1949. Johnny was eight years old. He had blue eyes and curly hair. Not only was he a Dodger fan, but he knew far more about the Dodgers than I did, perhaps because of his two-year seniority. My small stock of stories and fables was far outdistanced by what seemed to me a truly breathtaking knowledge of the team and its history, derived, like mine, from his father and his family. It was my first introduction to the invisible community of baseball, which now, for the first time, was extended beyond my street in Rockville Centre, to the town of Mineola, where Johnny lived. In years to come, I would find that the lovers of the Dodgers, and, indeed, of baseball, shared common ground, reaching across generations and different social stations dispersed across the country. Even now, wherever I travel on a book tour or to give a lecture, I invariably encounter an old Dodger fan, or the child of a fan, eager to exchange stories laden with that mingled pain and exultation which was the shared lot of every Brooklyn follower.

It was Johnny who first told me the story of the 1941 World Series between the Dodgers and the Yankees, when Dodger catcher Mickey Owen dropped the third strike, a story I was to hear many times from many people, all ritually re-enacting the tragedy which the years had translated into strange delight. The Yanks had won two of the first three games, but in the fourth game, the Dodgers were leading 4-3 in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and no one on base. Tommy Henrich stepped to the plate to face Dodger reliever Hugh Casey. Casey quickly got two
strikes on Henrich and then threw a wicked curve, which may have been a spitball, which Henrich swung at and completely missed. The game was over and the Dodgers had won, the Series was tied at two games apiece—or so it seemed, until it became clear that Mickey Owen had been unable to catch the third strike. In fact, the dropped third strike had rolled all the way to the backstop behind home plate, and Henrich had reached first base safely. The Yankees made the most of their opportunity: the next batter walked, and the batter after him doubled. The Yankees won the game and eventually the Series.

Ever the fantasist, in my imagination I would stop the action at the point where Casey was about to throw the third strike. This time Owen caught the pitch, the third out was recorded, and the Dodgers went on to become champions of the world. I wondered how many times Mickey Owen himself had replayed that same moment in his mind and tried to force a different ending. I felt terrible for him. Years later, I learned that he was never really the same afterward and that Hugh Casey eventually became a heavy drinker and killed himself with a shotgun blast in his hotel room.

But for every tale of woe there was a tale of joy, and nothing gave me greater happiness than talking with Johnny about our shared hero, Jackie Robinson. Johnny had been to several games in 1947, the historic season when Robinson became the first African American to cross major-league baseball’s color line. Johnny had seen him beat out a bunt, hit an inside-the-park home run, and, most memorably, steal home. Against a backdrop of unyielding pressure his first year up, Robinson batted .297, led the league in stolen bases, and won the Rookie of the Year award. Only later would I come to understand the true significance of Robinson’s achievement: the pioneering role
he played in the struggle for civil rights, the fact that, after his breakthrough, nothing would ever be the same—in baseball, in sports, or in the country itself. When I was six it was Robinson, the man, the fiery second baseman, who filled my imagination, taking his huge leads off base, diving headlong to snag a line drive, circling the bases with his strange pigeon-toed gait. “There’s no one like him,” Johnny said. “He plays to win every minute.” “Absolutely,” I added, echoing something my father had said. “With nine Jackie Robinsons, we’d never lose a game.”

Nothing inspires camaraderie like sharing a victory, not only of a game, but of a season. In the splendid performance of the Dodgers that summer of 1949, my relationship with Johnny flourished. Their opening-day rout of the Giants, 10-3, inspired the demented hope that they would add 153 more wins and history would record the only perfect season in the annals of organized baseball. The experts had predicted that the Dodgers would battle the Cardinals in the National League pennant race. Powered by Stan Musial, Red Schoendienst, and Enos Slaughter, the Cardinals made reality of these prophecies. By the end of June, the two teams stood at the top of the league, chasing one another for first. That month, the Dodgers won nine straight, helped along by Johnny’s insistence on wearing the same blue-striped shirt as long as the streak lasted.

After we became friends, I confided in Johnny my understanding that the tower at the entrance to the beach was being used as a prison for bad children. He admitted he had heard the same thing, but he didn’t really believe it was true. “Why don’t we go over there and find out for ourselves,” he suggested. Though I was not really keen on the idea, I didn’t want him to know I was afraid, so I followed him to the place where the tower stood. Several times we circled the perimeter of the tower, but there was
no sign of life. We were just about to leave when Johnny thought he heard muffled cries coming from inside the structure. I put my ear up against the wall and, sure enough, I heard the same thing. Convinced that it was our job to save the children, we found an indulgent park policeman and led him to the tower. At our insistence, the policeman put his ear against the wall, but said he heard absolutely nothing. When we did the same, the cries we were sure we had heard earlier were no longer audible. We raced back to the pool, determined to try again another day.