Ray & Me by Dan Gutman

Author:Dan Gutman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-09-21T01:15:07+00:00

12

The Good Old Days

STUPID! THAT’S WHAT I WAS. STUPID!

What was I thinking? That a player in 1920 would just willingly put on a batting helmet with no questions asked?

I should have known better. I mean, I don’t know as much about baseball history as Flip, but I do know that athletes didn’t start wearing protective gear for a long, long time. My dad once told me that when he was a kid, hockey players didn’t wear helmets. It wasn’t considered “manly.” Baseball players didn’t even wear gloves when the game began.

Bringing Ray Chapman a batting helmet was a dumb idea. I might as well have brought him a cell phone.

The Indians must have thought that busting up my helmet was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. While they fell all over themselves laughing, I slinked out of the locker room. Nobody seemed to care.

Why do I do this? I asked myself as I wandered through the tunnels of the Polo Grounds, looking for an exit. Why do I take it upon myself to save the world? Nobody cares. Even if I was able to change history, nobody would notice. Because they would never know what would have happened if I had left things the way they were.

I should have whacked Carl Mays with a bat when I had the chance. That would have been the simple solution. Heck, I could have whacked Ray Chapman with a bat and knocked him out of the lineup! That would have saved his life too.

I was disgusted. I figured I’d just find a quiet spot, take out one of my new baseball cards, and go home. There was no point in hanging around the Polo Grounds any longer. Chalk it up to experience.

But suddenly, I caught a whiff of something. Something good. It was the smell of roasted peanuts. Man, that’s a good smell! They don’t roast them at the ballpark anymore. Now you just buy peanuts in plastic bags. It’s not the same.

I didn’t have any money, but I couldn’t resist following the smell. It led me to a door; and when I pulled it open, there was the field.

You can talk all you want about the Grand Canyon, the pyramids, and all those other wonders of the world. But for me, there’s nothing more beautiful than walking up the ramp to see the grass of a ball field. It just hits you in the face with green.

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