Inevitably Saturdays were all devoted to play. Neither Neale's parents
nor he himself could have conceived of any other way of spending
Saturdays. What were Saturdays for?
It is true that in some of the more prosperous German-American families,
Saturday was music-lesson day, just as four o'clock instead of ushering
in roller-skating or marbles meant sitting in front of a piano, or
stooping over a 'cello. But Neale felt for play-mates thus victimized
the same slightly contemptuous pity he felt for Jimmy Taylor's lameness,
and the same unsurprised acceptance of his own good luck in being free
from such limitations.
Once in a while, too, Mother took him over to New York to a matinee, and
that was all right, too, if it didn't happen too often. Neale liked
going out with Mother pretty well, and if there was fighting in the play
he liked it fine. But all that was having something done to you, a
sensation of which school gave Neale more than enough, and which he
didn't like half so well--oh, not a quarter as well--oh, really not at
all, compared to the sensation of starting something and running it
yourself. If it really came right down to a comparison, there wasn't any
fun at all in seeing Irving pretend to be a crazy man, compared to the
fun of starting out Saturday morning, with no idea what you were going
to do, and rustling around till you got enough fellows together for the
game of the season.
To stand in your old play-clothes on your front-step, of a Saturday
morning, all the world before you, unfettered by obligations, a long,
long, rich day of play before you that was _yours_ ... how could anybody
be expected to prefer to dress up in things you had to try to keep
clean, sit in a dark, hot theater and watch painted-up men and women
carry on like all possessed about things that weren't really so. But
that was all right enough for a change, and was as good a way as any to
spend a rainy afternoon. Also, you could occasionally get ideas about
fights, out of a play.
But the real occupation of life was the playing of games. He nourished
his soul and grew strong on the emotional thrills of games. They were
the rich, fertile, substantial soil out of which he shot up into boyhood
from childhood. They were his religion, and his business-in-life, the
wide field where, unhampered, free as any naked savage, for all his
decent knickerbockers and sweater, he raced to and fro, elastic,
exultant, wild with the intoxication of the heady young strength poured
into him by every new day.
The astounding volume of sound, bursting up like flame and lava from a
volcano, which rose from every group of boys at play bore witness to the
extravagant and superabundant splendor of the intensity with which they
lived, a splendor not at all recognized by suffering householders near
whose decent and quiet homes a gang of boys settled down to play and
yell and shriek and quarrel and run and yell again.
It was the boys' world, not only untouched by grown-ups but blessedly
even unsuspected by parents. Since it was theirs, since they created it
anew every day, it exactly fitted their needs, and it grew and changed
with their inner growth as their school never did. They were far from
any self-conscious notion that they created it. Rather they seemed to
themselves to accept it from the outside, as they accepted the weather.
What had they to do with the succession of the seasons, either of games
or temperature? In the nature of things you could no more play marbles
in the autumn than pick wild strawberries in December.
In the autumn, they played football, a sort of association-football with
no limit to the number on each side, played with a heavy black rubber
ball, blown up with a brass tube. The tube always got lost, and the
valve always leaked. After a few games it became deflated, with the
resiliency of a soggy sponge. But it was kicked to and fro just the
same.
When snow came, there was snow-balling, with forts of a rich, chocolate
color, from the street-dirt mixed with the snow. About these raged
feudal chivalry, loyalty and pride of place, one street against another.
Sometimes all the district united against invading Huns from Hoboken or
Jersey City Heights. Only a few boys skated, and Neale was not one of
them, but everybody made slides in the slush.
With spring came roller-skates, marbles (utilizing the cracks between
sidewalk slabs), tops, kites, cat (a game for two), and, ah! baseball in
the vacant lots!
Neale was neither a star nor a dub at any game, but craving proficiency
more than anything else in the world, he learned to do pretty well at
all of them. At baseball, the major sport of the year, he toiled
incessantly, and when he was ten years old, he was pretty sure of his
job at second base on the Hancock Avenue Orioles. On ground balls he was
erratic, but so was everybody on those rough, vacant-lot diamonds, where
the ball ricocheted zig-zag from one stone to another. Long practice
catching fungoes gave him a death-like certainty on pop flies. His "wing
was poor," as he expressed it; strong enough in the arm, he had never
mastered the wrist snap that gives velocity. As a batsman he was
temperamental; one day he would feel right, and hit everything, another
day his batting eye would inexplicably be gone, and he would fan at the
widest dew-drops.
One Saturday afternoon they were playing the Crescent Juniors, a
glorious swat-fest of a game in which Neale had run wild all the
afternoon. It was in the ninth, the score was 17 to 15, with the
Crescents ahead. One was down, Neale at the bat, Marty Ryan, the
captain, was dancing on the base line, ready to dart in from third,
Franz Uhler was taking a dangerous lead off second. Neale rapped his bat
professionally on the plate and glared at the pitcher.
"Hit it out, Crit, old man!" yelled Fatty Schwartz, with a perfectly
unnecessary steam-calliope volume of tone, "Hit it out! Save me a lick!"
"Much good you'd do with a lick," thought Neale to himself. "You
couldn't hit a basket-ball with a telegraph pole." Yes, it was up to
him, to him alone. It was like a scene from one of his favorite stories
about himself, actually happening; and it went on actually happening. A
wide one, another wide. They didn't call balls in Neale's league. He
rapped the plate, "Aw! put it over if you know how!" he taunted. A foul
tip caught, another wide one haughtily ignored, a strike. The catcher
put on his mask and moved up close behind the bat. Neale felt himself
nerved to great things. He glued his eyes to the pitcher. By the motion
it should be a slow out. It wasn't breaking. Neale stabbed at it, sliced
it and landed a Texas leaguer back of short.
He didn't see what happened. He ran. He flew. As he rounded second he
caught a glimpse of the left fielder and short-stop falling over their
feet, both trying to pick up the ball. As he turned the corner at third
he saw the pitcher starting to run in to cover the plate and guessing
that the catcher was chasing a wild throw, Neale put his head down and
sprinted for dear life. Fifteen feet from the plate he dove, and shot
over in a cloud of dust.
Neale, the ball, and the pitcher all arrived there at the same moment,
but a partial umpire called it "safe." Don Roberts fouled to the
catcher, Fatty Schwartz fanned. But the game was won.
With his chest a couple of inches bigger than normal, Neale started for
home, and there on the sidewalk watching him, stood his father, looking
right at him, instead of over his head as Father was apt to do. Father
patted him on the shoulder. "That was a good swat, Neale," he said.
Neale wriggled. "Well, we had to have a hit," he explained, "and I knew
Don and Fatty wouldn't do much."
His father found no other comment to make. Neale had said his say.
Silent as Iroquois, they walked home to supper.
The next afternoon Father brought him a Louisville Slugger bat and Neale
was in the seventh heaven.
And yet, at the next game, he fanned the first three times up and Marty
waved him to the bench. This was terrible.
But the sting did not last because two days later Miss Vanderwater gave
each of them a present of a little book in German, and said auf
wiedersehn for the summer.