Ballplayers who lined the dugout steps to slander jokes out the sides of their mouths during games. Who talked quiet and laughed loud, shared from the hip bottle one of them doubtlessly had. Who couldn’t wait to hear the mean stories that sprouted anytime they were together. What things the shortstop’s sister, the one from St. Joe, would do with a guy if she got one alone a few minutes. How Claude Nethaway couldn’t play Saturdays because of religious observance. Who it was that shit in that men’s room sink in Hannibal when the roadside cafe ran out of beer, and what maneuvers were required for a guy to perch up there in the first place. And most prominently in July of 1919—this the ballplayers’ most side-splitting chatter—how the bride Dwyer came to find out she’d accidentally married a Negro.
It was in all the papers. The girl sued for an annulment once her scandal was discovered. This man Dwyer, it turned out, was of African lineage. He’d fooled everyone for years before his bride revealed his secret. What a joke it became. Not even the fact that the judge threw out her suit for lack of evidence could slow the players’ mocking. According to judicial decree, she’d have to stay married to him after all, this Negro Dwyer, which is how they all saw him.
That this was the month of the Interrace Game at Rourke Park played no small role in their orneriness. There was always plenty of talk between the lines during this bout of Northside Negroes v. Southside Bohunks. Now the white team wouldn’t let up about bride Dwyer. What a shock it must have been to find out she hadn’t married a man like she thought she had. The ballplayers had laughed about it for a month already and roared louder at the start of the Interrace Game. They’d planned out their barbs weeks in advance and daydreamed how humiliated their black opponents would be.
To their surprise, the Northsiders found the whole thing just as funny as anyone. “Sure enough she took a shock at what she found,” they laughed, slapping their gloves. “That girl lucky she lived to tell the tale. Believe that.” “Why you suppose it took so long to figure it out? Why didn’t she have a clue until her honeymoon night?” The Northsiders howled about how her jaw must have dropped once Dwyer revealed his Negro self. Only on a ballfield would they dare say such things in mixed company. The blacks in their solid grays, the Southsiders in their pinstripes. Both teams with OMAHA across their chests in felt patches of either red or black.
Jap Marceau, the Southside third baseman, didn’t like how the Northsiders teased back, but it didn’t matter. The game went on. The Southsiders shut up about bride Dwyer then and forever. And the less they talked, the louder the black ballplayers from the other dugout became. The game itself was as close as it could get, 2–2 after three frames, but it ate up the hotheads on the Southside how grievously they’d misplayed the shit talking.
Karel and his friends leaned into the rail at the end of the dugout during the game. Rourke Park held seven thousand people when packed. If it wasn’t for Karel’s status with the team they’d have been stuck out in the grass beyond the outfield fences, straining to see each pitch. In the dugout they could see everything. Karel rose to the rail to note the weather, to tilt his cap and check out the clouds, the flags, to decode which way the wind blew, if it swirled, if there was a glare that could conspire against an outfielder. Karel in his pinstriped whites and black-brimmed cap. He went through his routine just for fun, since he was a spectator, the same as the masses beyond the fence and in the grandstands. The Interrace Game always attracted attention, and even more so this year, after the riots in Chicago and Washington, DC, after so many doughboys came back to find their slaughterhouse jobs had been filled by blacks. And nothing had been done about that. Karel checked the grandstands, all white. In the bowl beyond the outfield fence it was a different story, where a section for black spectators took hold from left field alley to right. Beyond that, streetcar lines ran double time to bring in more and more who couldn’t even get into the park, folks who followed the game by trying to decode uprisings in the crowd, from the section the cheering or groaning was coming from. Karel fixated on the crowd. He faced the wrong way when a foul ball lined over his head, spun just in time to see a blur sail by and peg a man in the shoulder. Karel knew better than to not pay attention, but this was his first Interrace Game, his first Fourth of July really, out free in the city.
The rest of his family had gone to the country. His father and sisters, even Maria, to visit Anna. Anna had been gone a long time by then, over a year. Karel had visited only once. The grounds were kept nice enough up there, he remembered, and had been told. Shady and cool. Croquet was played evenings. There was a lobby with fine furniture and books. A sweeping veranda with ceiling fans churning. Five-course meals were served to visiting families on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. Even that night there would be a fireworks display, which was why the rest of Karel’s family was there. No matter how pleasant the grounds were, Karel acted sour. His sister ignored him the one time he visited her, wouldn’t hardly say a word to him, only the required courtesies, which was worse than saying nothing. He refused to go again because of the way Anna treated him.
Karel spent all his time on the ballpark, or tagging along with ballplayers after a game. Since Herr Miihlstein and Frau Eigler visited Anna in the countryside most weekends, Karel was left to spend his time in Southside saloons. He became one of the ballplayers that summer, truly. He was fourteen and had grown into a tall, loping creature. If he wasn’t running, he tripped over his feet, so he tried to be running all the time. The ballplayers commended his hustle. He liked that. Even his friends belonged by then. This was the summer Jimmy Mac spent mornings at a boxing gymnasium to learn what it meant to be River Ward Irish. His hands grew thick from swelling, his shoulders and neck and forearms too. He talked all the time about how Jack Dempsey was going to be the new champ once he got his shot. This was the summer Alfred squared off. His shoulders grew. His hips, mercifully, slimmed. Even though his father couldn’t come to see him—Emil Braun was laid up at home from the beating he took at the Santa Philomena, and might be forever—it gave Alfred more than a bit of pride to man second base for the junior squad, and to do it well. He could move his feet now. He could dance the bag to bring the ball around the horn. All three boys fit at the end of the Southside dugout. They belonged.