In the Balance

“Okay,” Yeager said, glad to be enlightened. He walked over to the stairs, Fiore trailing after him. The elevator man sneered at them. That always made Yeager feel like a cheapskate, but he was too used to the feeling to let it worry him much. For that matter, the hotel was cheap, too, with a single bathroom down at the end of the hail on each floor.

He used the room key, tossed his duffel onto the bed, picked up suitcases and tossed them beside the duffel, started transferring clothes from the duffel and the closet to the bags as automatically as he hit the cutoff man on a throw from the outfield. If he’d thought about what he was doing, he would have taken twice as long for a worse job. But after half a lifetime checking out of small-town hotels, where was the need for thought?

On the other bed, Fiore was packing with the same effortless skill. They finished within a few seconds of each other, closed their bags, and hauled them downstairs. They were the first ones back to the lobby; for most of their teammates, packing didn’t come so easy yet.

“Another road trip done,” Yeager said. “Wonder how many miles on the train I’ve put in over the years.”

“I dunno,” Fiore answered. “But if I found a secondhand car with that many miles on it, I sure as hell wouldn’t buy it.”

“You go to the devil.” But Yeager had to laugh. A secondhand car with that many miles on it probably wouldn’t even run.

The rest of the Commodores straggled down by ones and twos. A few came over to shoot the breeze, but most formed their own, bigger group; the bonds of youth were stronger than those of the team. That saddened Yeager, but he understood it Back when he started playing pro ball in the long-dead days of 1925, he hadn’t dared go up to the veterans either. The war only made things worse by taking away just about everybody between him and Fiore on the one hand and the kids on the other.

The manager, Pete Daniels (universally called “Mutt”), settled accounts with the desk clerk, then turned to his troops and declared, “Come on, boys, we got us a five o’clock train to catch:” His drawl was as thick and sticky as the Mississippi mud he’d grown up farming. He’d caught for part of two seasons with the Cardinals thirty years before, back in the days when they were always near the bottom of the pack, and then a long time in the minors.

Yeager wondered if Mutt still dreamed of a big-league manager’s job. He’d never had the nerve to ask, but he doubted it: the war hadn’t opened those slots. Most likely, Daniels was here because he didn’t know anything better to do. It gave the two of them something in common.

“Well, let’s go,” Daniels said as soon as the clerk presented him with a receipt. He marched out onto the street, a parade of one. The Decatur Commodores tromped after him. The year before, they would have piled into three or four taxis and gone to the station that way. But with gas and tires in short supply, taxis might as well have been swept off the street. The ballplayers waited on the corner for the crosstown bus, then plopped their nickels into the fare box as they climbed aboard.

The bus rolled west down Washington Avenue. At the intersections with north-south streets, Yeager could see water looking either way; Madison sat on a narrow neck of land between lakes Mendota and Monona. The bus went around Capitol Park before returning to Washington to get to the Illinois Central station. The capitol itself, a granite-domed white marble building in the shape of a Greek cross, dominated the low skyline of the city.

The bus stopped right in front of the station. Mutt Daniels waved train tickets. He’d kept track of things in a four-city swing through Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin; now the Commodores would spend the next month back at Fan’s Field, so he’d only have to worry about lineups for a while.

A colored porter wheeled up a baggage cart. He tipped his cap, grinned to show off a mouthful of gold teeth. “Heah you go, gentlemen,” he said, his accent even richer than the manager’s. Yeager let the fellow heave his bags onto the cart, tipped him a nickel. The gleaming grin got wider.

Sitting beside Yeager in the passenger car, Fiore said, “When my dad first got to New York from the old country, he took the train from there to Pittsburgh, where my uncle Joe already was. First smoke he’s ever seen in his life is the steward, and he’s got gold teeth just like the porter here. For months, my, dad thought all colored folks came that way.”

Yeager laughed, then said, “Hell, I grew up between Lincoln and Omaha, and I never saw anybody who wasn’t white till I went off — to play ball. I’ve barnstormed against colored teams a couple of times, make some extra money during the winter. Some of those boys, if they were white, they could play anywhere.”