a native Bostonian, suggested a rooming house in Back Bay that he said was clean and cheap. Seeing that his evaluation of the place was accurate, I moved into the house when we returned. It turned out to be owned by Bucky’s aunt.
Since our first full day back in Boston was a Sunday, I was free to find an amusement that would divert my mind from thoughts of murder.
I didn’t share the usual ball player passions for liquor, tobacco, or gambling, but I did have one weakness, and I was going to Scollay Square to indulge it.
The late-afternoon sun was still warm when I stepped out of the rooming house. I walked slowly to prevent working up any sweat that might spoil my clean crisp appearance. I strolled casually toward my destination, taking in the sights along Beacon Street.
Turning into Tremont Row, I spotted the building I was seeking. As approached it, I glanced about to see if there was anyone around who might recognize me. I did not want to be seen going into this place.
My heart raced, and with a deep breath I stepped inside the door.
My excitement waned considerably when I got a look at the chunky, graying woman who greeted me. Though disappointed, I decided to carry through with my plans anyway, and walked up to her.
“One please,” I said, sliding a dime through the ticket window.
She handed me a paper stub back, and said with a smile, “Go right in.”
I removed my hat, and found an empty seat in the darkened theater. A Mack Sennett comedy flickered on the screen in front of me.
About five years before, I had started going to the moving pictures. As a gypsy ball player, I was always finding myself with time to kill in unfamiliar towns. Almost every burg, no matter how tiny or remote, had a tavern, a church, and a nickelodeon. Since I wasn’t good at drinking, and figured I wasn’t bad enough to need churches, I took to the flickers. They were supposed to be bad for the hitting eye, though, so to avoid getting in trouble with my managers, I kept my vice a secret.
It was through my interest in moving pictures that I had met Miss Peggy Shaw. She was actually Mrs. Peggy Shaw, but I preferred not to be a stickler about that.
During a Saturday rainout last year, I had come to this theater for the first time to see the Mary Pickford picture that was advertised. At the ticket booth was a shapely young lady with light honey hair and sparkling green eyes. She looked like a Gibson Girl who just stepped out of the pages of Collier’s. I was instantly smitten.
As the movies began that day, the visual delight from the ticket window sat down at the piano. She played beautifully, choosing music that complimented each scene perfectly, and performing as if she were in a concert hall instead of a nickelodeon. Mary Pickford got barely a glance from me as I kept my eyes in the direction of the piano, eager for every glimpse of the musician that the flickering illumination from the movie screen provided.
I went back to the movie house almost every day the Braves were at home, and soon found out that the daytime ticket-taker and nighttime piano player was named Peggy Shaw. It wasn’t long before we started seeing each other outside of the theater.
Although we’d had no communication since last fall, I simply assumed that she would still be working here. It was my eagerness to see her again that had made me so particular about my appearance. And it was seeing someone else in her place at the ticket window that had sent my hopes plummeting. Feelings of guilt crept upon me as I sat and fretted in the theater. Could she have believed it when I said I’d write? I thought it was just a standard expression that people used to make goodbyes seem less final. Now I wished I had written.
I was only vaguely aware of the Keystone Kops capering on the screen in front of me, as I reviewed last autumn’s scenes of Peggy Shaw and Mickey Rawlings.
Although she looked about my age, Peggy had five years on me, and had once been married. At twenty-one she’d married a newspaper writer. Less than a year after the wedding, she became a widow when her husband was struck down with yellow fever while reporting on construction of the Panama Canal. She’d been widowed almost three years when I met her.
I wasn’t comfortable enough with the subject of her late husband to ask about him, but now and then Peggy would reveal bits of information about their brief life together. I gathered that her husband was the sort of reporter Teddy Roosevelt would call a muckraker. I also had the impression that he discussed his work with her a great deal, and that she had a deep interest in it. She once mentioned working for passage of child labor laws. I told her of my experience in the cotton mill, and she seemed impressed that I had quit the mill in protest.
Peggy also told me she had once dreamed of being a concert pianist. As a girl, she practiced for hours every day. Then, like me, she realized that she didn’t have the natural skills to be great. She stayed with music, though, giving lessons and playing at theaters. Just as I was determined to be the best utility baseball player, she intended to be the best nickelodeon piano player. This similarity between us seemed to cement our friendship, and raised in me hopes of becoming more than friends.
Now it seemed I would never have a chance to find out.
I should have written.
Chapter Seven
I showed up two hours early for practice Monday morning. Except for that interrupted view through the runway corridor, it was my first real look at the Fenway Park playing field.
It was the damnedest baseball field I had ever seen. There was a hill in left field! About twenty-five feet in front of the left field fence, the ground began an upward slope, rising to a height of ten feet where it made contact with the wall. The rest of the park was strange, too. It seemed as if it had been squeezed in several directions to fit into the shape of the building lot. The outfield fence went from shallow to deep to shallow as it wound its way from the left field corner around to right, with a number of interesting nooks and corners that would make playing the outfield far too much of an adventure for me.
I was surprised that my roomie also arrived early to get in some extra fielding practice. As my counterpart in the outfield, Clyde Fletcher filled in for Speaker, Hooper, or Lewis if they needed relief. He hadn’t played so much as a single inning this year, but here he was, eager to shag some flies. I had dismissed him before as a dissipated sloth, but he obviously took professional pride in his play, and I grudgingly discovered that I was developing some respect for him.
Since there were no other players around, Fletcher and I traded off. He hit me practice grounders, then I hit fungoes out to him in left field. He looked pretty comical stumbling up the hill trying to go back for fly balls, but I had to admire his determination. He said if he never got into a game all year, he was going to conquer that hill. I suggested that if he got rid of his enormous wad of tobacco, he’d be a lot lighter and could run up the slope faster. He suggested I do something to myself that I unfortunately had never yet experienced doing to anyone else. I decided Clyde Fletcher and I might get along after all.
Soon other players joined us on the field, and fans trickled into the stands. I picked out the Red Sox stars as they warmed up—the ones who played with ease and grace, the natural ball players Clyde Fletcher and Mickey Rawlings would never be. We could fill in for the stars when they were hurt, but we’d never have their fame and stature.
Centerfielder Tris Speaker was the team’s leader and second only to Ty Cobb as the best all-around player in the American League; he was exchanging long throws with Duffy Lewis and Harry Hooper in the outfield. Jake Stahl, coming to the end of the
