Mable and the Kids at the Game

We had to take two automobiles to the ball park. It was becoming a glorious warm fall day. The sun was bright and Mother ran back into the house to get her umbrella. She didn’t want to get too much sun, she said. She really had never been an outdoors type of woman, even though she had lived on a farm as a young girl. Father had turned her into a city girl. It was definitely surprising that I became such a tomboy.

When we got to the ballpark, it looked like a beehive. Swarms of people were streaming into the gates. The level of excitement was quite high. There were many young boys there and I was sure they were eager to see their baseball hero. Babe was known for his hard-hitting and for all those home runs. People quoted him all the time; he could be very inspiring and entertaining.

One of my favorite quotes was when Babe said, “I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.” Babe was a big character, and characters always made writing about sports easy. It was the daily stories that challenged any writer. As I looked around for Mr. Ashby at the main gate, where we had arranged to meet him, I was thinking that he was a great sportswriter because he made every article interesting. He made any athlete or any game he was writing about come alive.

Holcomb Park was wonderful, for a minor league park. One upper tier of seating with about twenty-five rows, wrapped around from far right to far left field. It had standard seating for a municipal ballpark and then there were more low bleachers and some standing room areas stretched all around the outfield. It had a capacity of 5.000 fans! The ads on the outfield fences were colorfully painted and neatly redone before every season. The playing field, on the other hand, showed signs of regular and hard use.

“Over here, Mable.” I heard Mr. Ashby call out from behind us. He was running toward us as we stood there by the ticket office. Mother having her flowered umbrella up probably helped him spot us. He had his camera in one hand and his press tag flapping around his neck. He was always ready for a story and a picture.

We all got to our seats and then he asked me to go to the field with him. It surprised me when Mr. Ashby told Mother that we might not be back until after the game, and to meet us at the cars in case that happened. I had been hoping he would get to talk to the two big Yankee stars, but I discovered he was intent on getting a story from one of the kids swarming around the edges of the field. I knew I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, he did a story about a girl swimmer and I was definitely not a star of any kind. He thought I was interesting and that he could write a compelling story about me that people would like to read.

“Look for an interesting kid, would you Mable?” he asked. “Let’s find one who is different from the rest of them.”

I looked around. There were hundreds of people, but not as many children as I thought there might be. I had read in yesterday’s paper that they were expecting at least 8,000 fans today, but it seemed like many more people than that were already there and it was still at least thirty minutes before the game. The teams were already warming up.

I did see a tall, slender girl who looked like she was about thirteen or so, and she had a little brother on each hand. It appeared to me as though she was trying to find a good spot in the standing-room-only outfield area from which to watch the game. She would have to be right up to the fence or the little boys would never be able to see. There were already about three rows of taller folks in front of her, so she was craning her neck to see if there was a better place to try.

“Mr. Ashby, what about that girl over there? The one with the two little boys? She’s trying to find a place to watch from. Maybe we could help her,” I pointed and explained.

“I see her, Mable. Looks good to me. Let’s go,” Ted agreed.

I went over towards her and tried to get her attention by waving and she looked at me, but of course she did not know who I was or why I was waving at her. She made eye contact with me for just a few seconds, and then began looking around again. Again, I waved, but I also called out to her this time.

“Little girl, let me help you,” I told her, in a rather demanding way, now that I think about it.

“I want my brothers to be able to see,” she answered and pointed towards the rows of adults in front of her.

Ted caught up with me as I pressed towards her. “I can help you get in the front, young lady,” he assured her and held his press pass up in front of himself as he weaved us through the crowd.

“We need to get to the bullpen, folks, Press. Press here, please let us pass through to the bullpen,” Ted kept repeating authoritatively. People just stepped aside for him. A few said, “Hi, Ted.” Or “Quite a crowd, huh, Ted?” They either knew him or recognized him from his picture that was next to his column every week. It was unusual being with a celebrity. I guess that’s what you would call him. He was famous, at least in Des Moines. It was exciting.

Ted kept leading the girl and her brothers, and I followed along on their heels. I didn’t want to get lost and be left alone in that crowd. I didn’t have any idea where our seats were from where we were now, but I was confident that Burnie would take care of Mother for me and get everyone else in our families to their seats for the game. I had never seen this ball park so jam-packed.

Ted maneuvered us to and through the gate in the fence by the bullpen. The bullpen is where all the relief pitchers warm up and wait to get their chance to pitch sometime during the game. All the players in the bullpen were Demons. Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were nowhere to be seen. Ted saw the disappointment on my face.

“Mable, we are here to write about the game. We will catch up with the Bambino tomorrow at Drake. We can’t be bothering him during the game. He and Larrupin’ Lou have a home run hitting show to put on. Looks to me like there are at least 10,000 folks here who came itching to see some hard-hittin’ baseball. Babe doesn’t have time for us now, for sure.”

The girl quietly asked, “Are we going to stay here and watch the game?”

Ted turned to the pitching coach, who looked like a growly old bear. “Hey, Joe! Okay if I let these three little baseball fans stay here for a good view? Too many big folks are hoggin’ all the fence space.”

Joe hooted back, “Okay with me, Ted. Any friends of yours are friends of mine. This ain’t no official game no how. No harm…let ‘em sit down and watch from the end of the bench down there.”

All I could think came from my writing brain. ‘This ain’t no official game no how.’ Wow, three negatives in one sentence; Miss Hawn would have flunked him in English for sure! Anyway, I made sure the kids were comfy on the end of the bench, then started looking around.

Ted was starting to take pictures. He took quite a few photographs of the players in the bullpen, and then stepped onto the outfield to take a few shots of the crowd. The ball park was certainly completely over-capacity, and we had the best seats! We were practically right on the field. I hoped Burnie could see well and that Mother was in the shade.

I was gawking at everything there was to see, when I felt Ted right behind my shoulder. He said, “Mable, go talk to that girl, and find out her story. Where are their parents? Are those her brothers? How old are all those kids? Do they usually come to games? We have a story to write here!”

I thought I heard “We have a story to write here.” I knew that’s what I heard! He said “we,” right? Was he going to let me help with the story? Jiggers, that would be wonderful! There might be words that I wrote, printed in the Des Moines Register and Tribune. I was going after my first real story!

I weaved through an uneven row of potential pitchers, none of whom looked too overly eager to be sent in to pitch against Babe or Lou. All big-time talkers, suddenly turned into big-time gawkers. I smiled to myself. It was amusing, seeing these full-grown baseball fellas turned into little boys again. I moved alongside the dark-haired girl and asked if I could sit down with her. She wasn’t really watching the game; she was just watching the two younger boys watch.

“My name is Mable,” is what I opened with. Seemed harmless enough.

She answered me with, “I’m too tired to talk right now.” She really did look tired, too. The minute she sat down and had an opportunity to let go of the boys’ hands in a safe place, she hunched over and looked like a much older person. I noticed then that she had dark circles under her eyes. She was also pretty pale for the end of the summer. All three of them were. It looked like they never got outside.

“Could you please just tell me your name?”

“Edith.”

“What are your brothers’ names? They are your brothers, right?”

She glanced sideways at me. “I am really tired, but their names are Levi and Paul, okay?” She let out a huge sigh.

She really did not want to talk to me. I decided to give it a break: I’d move to the other end of the bullpen and watch the game for a few minutes, then try again.

Ted came over by me and started listing all the fellas on each roster for this game. Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were the only Yankees actually playing on this barnstorming tour. The rest of the players in each stop on the tour were recruited from the local ball club. The Des Moines Demons were pretty evenly split in ability, between the two stars’ teams. Stan Keyes was the star of the Des Moines Demons. He had hit thirty-eight home runs in the 1928 season and had a batting average of .369. That was impressive, considering he was the second oldest member of the Demons. No other players were even close to those stats, and he was about ten years older than they were.

Ted then changed the course of the conversation.

“Mable, go ask those kids if they would like a red hot. They look hungry to me. Maybe they want a fizzy soda, too. Go ask ‘em. Hurry back.”

I hustled back over to Edith’s side. “My friend Ted wants to buy you kids each a red hot. Would you like to have a fizzy soda, too?”

Her eyes brightened a little bit. She turned her head and looked right at me for the first time. “Sure, we would. You call him Ted? He’s not your father?”

“No, he’s a newspaper writer that I know. We are friends. He wrote an article about me last year. I am going to go tell him you want to eat. I’ll be right back,” I said, hoping she was now in the mood to talk to me. Ted was counting on me to get her story. I had to get busy!

I told Ted that the kids would love red hots and sodas, and he excused himself to go get the concessions. I headed back to learn more about these three children. I was an only child. Burnie was like a brother, but that was not the same. This trio of children was beginning to pique my interest.

“Edith,” I began, “do you live near here? How did you get here? Are your parents here somewhere?” I realized almost immediately that I had asked her three questions and not even given her a chance to answer the first one. I was a better interviewer than this! She kept watching the game and acted as though she had not even heard me.

“I’m sorry, Edith. How did you get to the game today? Just wondering?”

She turned slowly to face me. “We walked. We live over on the other side of East 14th Street. Just south of the river. Over by the junkyards.”

“That’s over a mile away. Do you come to many of the games over here?” I asked.

“We came to just a few games this past summer. We mostly sit outside in the grass and listen. Tickets cost too much. My father saved up for our tickets this time.” She smiled.

“Your father sounds really nice. Is he here, also?” I asked.

“No, he’s working today. He works every day. He has two jobs and works really hard,” Edith offered. “He works for the city, and he works at the junk yard on the weekends.”

“Interesting,” I thought out loud. I always wanted to go explore in a junk yard, but Mother and Father would never let me. In fact, they strongly discouraged it; they said it was dangerous. “What does he do for the city?”

“He is a garbage collector. He picks up your garbage, well, everyone’s garbage.” Then she added, rather matter-of-factly, “Our mother died five years ago.”

“I am so sorry to hear that. Really sorry,” I told her. “It must be very hard for your father and you.”

“Oh, we get along okay. Dad and I get Paul ready before school in the morning. The neighbor lady is like a grandmother to us, and she watches him while Levi and I are in school. I watch them both all summer; they are good boys,” she started explaining.

She went on, as we watched a rather uneventful first inning, to explain how she and her brothers became motherless. Her mother died of complications from childbirth after Paul was born. She was eight at the time and basically became a surrogate mother to her two younger brothers. They were now five and seven and she was thirteen. No wonder she looked so tired.

“Oh, look at this, Babe Ruth is going to pitch! He hasn’t even bothered to get warmed up!” Edith exclaimed. She suddenly leaped up to her feet and dashed to the end of the bullpen.

I followed her and so did the little brothers. Just then, Ted entered the bullpen from the other end. His arms were loaded with red hots in steaming fresh buns and a large carton of soda.

“Red hots, anyone?” he sounded like the red hot salesman who roamed the baseball stands. It was funny. “Red hots? Get ‘em while they’re hot.” He stood there, arms laden with that all-American baseball staple, and the boys rushed over to him. Levi brought Edith’s to her and then went back to claim his own. Ted handed them out to the boys, and then brought me one, also.

“You didn’t have to get me one, Ted, but thank you very much. I am a bit hungry.” I said, as I began stuffing the bulging red hot and soft, warm bun into my mouth. It didn’t have ketchup on it, but it was quite tasty. As long as it didn’t have mustard on it, I could eat almost anything.

Ted took a few pictures of the boys and Edith watching the game, and a few more of all of us eating the red hots. I was trying to scan the crowd for Mother’s umbrella. I thought I spotted it once, but then realized it was not her. I was probably not going to get to see her or Burnie until after the game; we would just have to meet them by the car.

Being on assignment with Ted was almost as much fun as just watching the game; there was so much going on. Bath Ruth pitched two innings and Lou Gehrig pitched two innings, but neither of the big Yankee stars had hit a home run yet. Every time one of them got up to bat, the crowd cheered and hollered, but to no avail. They each got some base hits and drove in a few runs, but no balls were going over the fence. It was easy to see the disappointment in the faces of the two little boys. Their big sister Edith was obviously a more seasoned sports fan like me, and she took the let-down in stride. She would glance sideways at me now and then. I didn’t know whether she wanted to talk some more, or if she was just checking to see if I was still there. Either way, I had dropped our conversation in the middle of an interview and I had to get it back on track.

The red hots were devoured and washed down with the fizzy soda. Ted offered to take the boys to the men’s room, so Edith and I were left side-by-side at the end of the bullpen bench. Most the potential pitchers looked more and more relieved as the game wore on…they would not have to pitch to the two greatest hitters in the history of baseball; they were very happy to just observe.

I had to get Edith talking again. There seemed to be more to her story. Perhaps it was the sad look in her eyes or the premature curve in her back when she sat, but I didn’t know exactly what it was. I had to ask.

“Edith, how are things going with school? Paul will be going into kindergarten in the fall, won’t he,” I inquired. “Is Levi in second grade?”

“They are doing well, Mable.” She smiled slightly, but it did not last very long. “Levi really loves school.” Her smile once more appeared briefly and disappeared quickly again.

“Is there something wrong, Edith? I feel like you are really sad about something. Can you tell me? Everyone says I am a good listener.”

“I wish I could tell you, I really do. I am not sure what it is, and I really can’t describe it. I just feel sad, and like giving up, but I know I can’t.” Now Edith looked even more sad. “And I don’t have anyone to talk to, and here come the boys, so never mind, but thank you.” She stood and greeted her brothers with big hugs, and ushered them right back to the near fence, so they could see the whole field again. She peeked back over her shoulder and gave me a wink and a faint smile.

I looked at Ted. “Ted, I have been talking to Edith, and these kids have no mother. Their father works two jobs and she seems so sad. We really didn’t get to talk about baseball that much, I’m sorry.”

Ted shook his head a little, took off his hat, ran his fingers through his hair, and put his hat back on. “Mable, there is a big lesson in this for you.”

“A big lesson? About writing? About sports? Tell me, Ted, please,” I asked him. “I’m here to learn!”

“Listen, Mable, because this is important. At any given sporting event, not all the stories are about sports. Sports always involve people, and people are human. The most interesting and most compelling part of sports is nearly always the human part. Everyone at this game has a story, Babe has a story, you have a story, Edith has a story, even that goofy relief pitcher over there with his socks and shoes off has a story. It’s our job, as reporters, to dig up those stories and bring them to the light of day in the newspaper. That’s why I love this job!”

Wow, I had to talk some more with Edith. She definitely had a story.