Mickey & Me (7 page)

THE GAME WAS OVER
,
THE CHICKS HAD WON
,
AND EVERYBODY
was happy. As we piled triumphantly into the dugout, I had one thing on my mind—there was an excellent chance that I would get to see the Chicks naked again.

I'm not proud of it or anything. I know I should have been thinking about how I had contributed to the victory. I should have been thinking about Dolores Klosowski and her broken leg. My dad in the hospital back home. But I'm being honest here. I'm thirteen years old. I don't know about you, but I know what I think about pretty much all the time.

In fact, I had been thinking about it ever since they held me down and forced me to put on a dress. Right then and there, it had occurred to me that after the game I'd be in the locker room again. If I could just blend into the woodwork, they just might
forget I was there.

“P.K. is coming!” Tiby shouted just as we entered the locker room.

“He's probably going to congratulate us on our stirring victory!” Ziggy beamed.

“Quick! Clean up the mess!” Connie shouted. “P.K. hates a sloppy locker room!”

The girls started running back and forth, throwing things into lockers, drawers, and cabinets. Nobody was taking any clothes off.

“Who's P.K.?” I asked Mickey Maguire.

“Philip K. Wrigley,” she replied. “You know, the chewing gum guy. He owns the Cubs.”

Of course, I'd had Wrigley gum. I had even been to Wrigley Field in Chicago. But why was Philip K. Wrigley coming here?

“He owns our whole league,” Mickey informed me. She said Wrigley started the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League because he was afraid the war might completely shut down baseball. With so many major and minor leaguers away fighting, there would be a lot of empty ballparks.

According to Mickey, P.K. was a little odd. He wouldn't dial the telephone, for instance. His wife dialed for him. He was a millionaire, but he rode a motorcycle to work. And he once paid a guy five thousand dollars to put a hex on the Cubs' opponents.

The girls had just about finished tidying up the locker room when a voice boomed down the hallway.

“If the boys in the lab can't create a chewing gum that doesn't stick to false teeth, then tell 'em to create false teeth that don't stick to chewing gum! Get on it, Tommy!”

“Yes, P.K.,” answered some other guy.

Suddenly, two men burst into the locker room. The older, grayer one was clearly Mr. Wrigley. The other one was short, geeky, and had the look of a low-paid, pencil-pushing yes-man. Each man wore a suit and a hat and carried a briefcase. I looked around for Max Carey, but he must have left already.

Suddenly, two men burst into the locker room. The older, grayer one was clearly Mr. Wrigley.

“Oops!” Wrigley said, as if he had entered the locker room by accident. He covered his eyes with his hand. “Is everybody decent?”

“Good evening, Mr. Wrigley,” the girls replied sweetly.

“Evening, girls. Who wants gum?”

“I do!” everyone declared enthusiastically, and the guy named Tommy passed out gum all around.

“I have some exciting news, girls!” Wrigley announced. “I just signed a contract with the Milwaukee Symphony! They're going to entertain the fans before each game in the second half of the season! In tuxedos! Isn't that great?”

Why, I asked myself, would baseball fans want to listen to classical music before a game?
Looking around the room at the blank faces, it appeared that the players were asking themselves the same question.

“That's fabulous, Mr. Wrigley,” Mickey said, not very convincingly.

“Yeah, maybe we'll be inspired to play better after hearing some Beethoven and Mozart and stuff,” Tiby cracked, hiding a smirk.

I'm not sure if Wrigley caught the sarcasm, but his mood seemed to change after Tiby's remark.

“Sit down, girls,” he said quietly. He didn't continue until everyone was seated. “I started this league a year ago to help take people's minds off the war for a few hours every day. That's our main job. Those people in the stands, their sons and husbands
and boyfriends are living in foxholes; they're getting shot at, bombed, injured, and killed. We want them to forget about that for just a little while.”

“We're doing our best, Mr. Wrigley,” Ziggy said.

“I know,” Wrigley went on. “But we've got to do better. I don't need to tell you there are a lot of empty seats out there every game. You see them. We need to put fannies in those bleachers if this team and this league are going to be successful.”

“What are you planning to do, Mr. Wrigley?” Mickey asked, almost meekly.

“Tommy and I have batted around a bunch of ideas,” Wrigley said, gesturing to his assistant. “I have an important meeting to get to, so I'm going to let Tommy go over the details with you.”

Tommy the geek went to the center of the locker room while Wrigley made his way toward the door.

“Oh, one last thing,” Wrigley said before leaving, “I love the new chicken.”

Everybody smiled at me as Tommy the geek took off his suit jacket and hat, pulled a notebook out of his briefcase, and cleared his throat. With his boss out of the room, Tommy seemed to enjoy being in charge.

“Girls, I'm going to give you the straight skinny,” Tommy announced. “Mr. Wrigley didn't like what he saw out there tonight. Arguments with the umpire. Yelling at the fans. Being called back to the dugout to put on your lipstick. Potatoes being thrown on the field! You girls have to shape
up. It's just not ladylike.”

“Baseball isn't ladylike,” Ziggy muttered, loud enough to be heard by everyone.

“Look,” Tommy said, putting down his notebook, “nobody wants to see tomboys play baseball. The attraction is that you are girls. That is what is entertaining. To attract fans—especially male fans—you've got to look and act more like girls.”

“And what, exactly, do girls look and act like?” Mickey asked, her hands on her hips.

“Girls are feminine,” Tommy stated firmly. “That means lipstick, nail polish, and makeup on at all times. Hair stylishly groomed. Courteous and polite language. You should walk, talk, and behave like ladies.”

“So in other words,” Connie Wisniewski said, “you want us to play like men, but look like girls.”

“Exactly!” Tommy exclaimed. “You see, men don't want to come out to the ballpark and see women who look like men.”

“Are you saying we look like men?” Mickey said, taking one step toward Tommy.

“I didn't say that,” Tommy replied, shrinking backward and holding his briefcase over his chest.

“Sure you did.”

“What difference does it make what we look like?” Ziggy asked. “I thought we were here to win ball games.”

“You are,” Tommy agreed. “But let me set you straight. You are entertainers first and ballplayers
second. Don't forget that.”

“Well, as long as we have our priorities straight,” Tiby snorted.

“Just in case some of you didn't read our league's rules of conduct, Mr. Wrigley requested that I post them for all to see.” Tommy pulled a sheet of paper out of his briefcase and tacked it up on the bulletin board.

 

RULES OF CONDUCT

1. ALWAYS appear in feminine attire. AT NO TIME MAY A PLAYER APPEAR IN THE STANDS IN HER UNIFORM OR WEAR SLACKS OR SHORTS IN PUBLIC.

2. Boyish bobs are not permissible, and your hair should be well groomed at all times with longer hair preferable to short haircuts. Lipstick should always be worn.

3. Smoking or drinking is not permissible in public places. Obscene language will not be allowed at any time.

4. All public social engagements must be approved.

5. All living quarters and eating facilities must be approved. No player shall change her residence without permission.

6. All players must be in their rooms two hours after the finish of each game.

7. Baseball uniform skirts shall not be shorter than six inches above the kneecap.

8. The members of different teams must not socialize at any time during the season.

9. Players are not allowed to drive their cars past the city limits without the special permission of their manager.

FINES OF FIVE DOLLARS FOR THE FIRST OFFENSE, TEN DOLLARS FOR SECOND, AND SUSPENSION FOR THIRD WILL AUTOMATICALLY BE IMPOSED FOR BREAKING ANY OF THE ABOVE RULES.

 

“What?”

“You've got to be kidding!”

“Ten bucks?”

“You're going to tell us where we're allowed to eat?”

“You're going to tell us where we're allowed to drive?”

The Chicks were in open rebellion. I was afraid they were going to take the rules of conduct list right off the bulletin board and rip it up.

“Girls! Girls!” Tommy shouted, raising his voice and his hands to get their attention. “Simmer down. If attendance doesn't go up, Mr. Wrigley is going to move the Chicks away from Milwaukee next season.”

“We've only played thirteen games!” Mickey said. “Give us a chance.”

“We like it here,” insisted Ziggy.

Tommy the geek pulled a handkerchief out of his
pocket and wiped his forehead with it. He gathered up his suit jacket and hat.

“Look,” he said, “if the truth be known, Mr. Wrigley started the AAGPBL last year because he thought the war would mean the collapse of major-league baseball. Now we're winning the war. It won't be long until the DiMaggios and Williamses and Fellers and Greenbergs and all the rest will be coming home. When that happens, Mr. Wrigley just might shut down your whole league. I didn't want to tell you this, but that is a fact.”

“He can't do that!” Ziggy exclaimed.

“Sure he can,” Tommy said. “He owns the league. He shelled out two hundred thousand dollars of his own money for it already. He pays your salaries. And need I remind you that the average American worker earns ten or twenty dollars a week? The rookies among you get paid fifty dollars a week, and some of you are getting a lot more.”

“This stinks,” somebody in the back mumbled.

“If you don't like the way Mr. Wrigley is running things, you are free to leave and go join some other professional baseball league for girls. Good evening!”

With that, Tommy put on his hat and left. Something told me there were no other professional baseball leagues for girls.

THERE WAS A SOMBER MOOD IN THE LOCKER ROOM AFTER
Tommy the geek left. Some of the players were angry about what he'd said. Others felt that getting paid for playing baseball was the chance of a lifetime, and they didn't mind putting on lipstick and putting up with a few silly rules to keep playing.

It was 9:30, according to the clock on the wall. Time for me to go. My cousin was home all by herself, and my father was in the hospital. I had to get back to Louisville, back to my own time.

Even though I'd had to put on a skirt, I'd had a good time. I'd stolen three bases to win the game. I'd seen a bunch of girls naked. And who was I kidding? Nothing was going to happen between me and Merle. I was just a kid. She was a grown woman.

“I'd better be going,” I said as I wiped the lipstick off my mouth with my sleeve.

“Don't go!” Merle, Connie, and Mickey begged.

“You're our good luck charm,” Ziggy reminded me. “Stick around.”

“Whatsamatter?” Tiby asked. “Got to go home to mommy?”

“Is it past your bedtime?” Teeny smirked.

“No,” I said defensively. “I have to baby-sit for my little cousin.”

“How old is your cousin?” Connie asked.

“She's nine.”

“Nine!” exclaimed Mickey. “When I was nine, my parents put me to work on the farm.”

“Your cousin probably put herself to bed by now,” Ziggy said. “What's the rush?”

Merle sidled over to me and put an arm around my shoulder. Her curly blond hair brushed against my face.

“Won't you please stay, sweetie pie?” she said, batting her eyelashes at me. “Come on, don't be a fuddy-duddy. At least let me take you out for dinner to show our appreciation for helping us win the game. I've got my own car. Pleeeease?”

“Stop corrupting the boy, Merle!” Mickey said as she handed me my clothes from her locker.

Merle was asking me out to dinner! The Blond Bombshell wanted to be alone with me! She had a car! This would be my first official date with a girl!

“Okay, I'll stay,” I agreed. My cousin could wait.

“Great!” Merle said, giving me a hug. “I've got to shower and change clothes. I'll meet you at the front
gate in fifteen minutes.”

“Where do I change my clothes?”

Merle took me down the hall to a big closet where mops, sponges, and cleaning supplies were stored.

“I'll see you in fifteen minutes,” she said, giving my hand a squeeze.

She gave my hand a squeeze!
All my life has been leading up to this night,
I said to myself as I slipped the dress down my legs. I had waited and waited and waited for puberty to arrive. First, my voice had changed. Then, hair started growing under my arms and my sweat started to stink. And now, I had a real date with a girl! An older woman, no less! Merle was probably twenty!

With all respect to Lou Gehrig, today I was the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

I washed my armpits in the sink in the storage room and dried myself off with paper towels. I put on my clothes and did my best to smooth them out. I wanted to make myself look as good as I could. There was no mirror, so I checked my reflection in a large glass jug. I wished I had a comb. Some toothpaste. Deodorant. Nicer pants.

Oh, forget about it. If Merle didn't like the way I looked, she wouldn't have asked me out on a date. Whistling to myself, I made my way to the front gate of Borchert Field.

Nobody was there when I found it, but a few minutes later I heard the sound of a car horn and
Merle shouting “Yoo-hoo! Stoshie!”

My heart shifted from fourth gear to fifth. My date had arrived. I turned around to see Merle behind the wheel of another one of those PT Cruiser clones.

And Connie Wisniewski next to her. And Tiby in the backseat with Ziggy. My heart downshifted into reverse.

“Hop in, honey pie!” Merle hollered. “Let's hit the road. We're starved!”

Nobody had told me it was going to be a group! I tried not to let my disappointment show as I climbed in the backseat between Tiby and Ziggy.
Maybe this would be even better, I tried to convince
myself. I was being taken out on a date with four girls.

They looked a lot different than they did in their baseball uniforms. Checkered blouses, jeans, and cowboy boots seemed to be the style of the Chicks.

“I thought jeans were against the rules of conduct,” I said.

“The heck with the rules of conduct,” Ziggy declared. “Nobody tells me what to wear.”

Merle drove a few miles until we reached an area where there were more farms than houses or stores. The girls broke into the “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” a song I knew because my mom forced me to listen to one of her CDs, which I had titled
Stupid Old Songs to Puke By
.

I thought they would be taking me to a health
food restaurant—seeing as how they were athletes and all. But when Merle pulled into the parking lot of Johnny's Bar-B-Cue, I realized I was wrong. For all I knew, health food didn't exist in 1944.

The place was a bit of a dive, with peanut shells on the floor and cowboy stuff on the walls—ropes, saddles, hats, and so on. There was a pool table by the bar, which I assumed was the “Cue” in Johnny's Bar-B-Cue. The place was almost empty.

The girls ordered ribs, hot dogs, malteds, and Cokes. Tiby got tomato soup too. I ordered a burger.

“Something to drink?” the waitress asked.

“I'll have a Sprite,” I said.

“A what?” The waitress looked up from her pad.

“Uh, Mountain Dew, please.”

“I beg your pardon?”

I looked around. Everybody was looking at me funny.

“A Coke,” I finally decided. “Give me a Coke.”

“Sure thing.”

While we waited for our food, there was a loud noise on the front steps and—to my astonishment—a chestnut horse walked right into the restaurant! And riding the horse—with a cowboy hat on her head—was Mickey Maguire.

“Yee-haw!” she bellowed.

I was sure that “yee-haw” was just one of those things you only heard in the movies and not in real life. You know, like “yippee-I-oh-ki-yay” and all that hokey cowboy talk.

Nobody seemed to think it was weird to see a woman ride into the restaurant on a horse. I assumed Mickey must do it all the time.

Mickey tied up the horse to a pole outside and joined our table. The waitress came with the food and I dug in. The burger tasted good. I realized that I hadn't eaten since the macaroni and cheese I'd shared with my cousin Samantha about four hours earlier.

“You like tomato soup?” I asked Tiby.

“No, I hate it,” she said, slurping up a spoonful.

“Then why are you eating it?”

“The last time I ate it, I went four for five.”

“You think the tomato soup helped you go four for five?”

“Didn't hurt,” she replied.

The girls rehashed the game, congratulating me again on my baserunning and mascoting skills. But they agreed that they should have won the game much earlier than the ninth inning. If they had made a couple of key hits, if they hadn't made a few errors, they would have beaten the Peaches easily.

I thought about standing up and proposing a toast. That's what grown-ups did when they got together for meals, wasn't it? I would thank them all for being so nice to me, and I'd make a special toast to Mickey because her husband would be coming home from the war soon.

Something stopped me, though. Nobody else had mentioned it, and Mickey had acted kind of weird
when she had heard the news that the Allies captured Rome. I decided to drop the idea of a toast.

When everybody was done eating and they had divied up the check, Merle leaned over to me.

“How would you like to go to a special place?” she whispered in my ear. “Just you and me?”

“Just you and m-me?” I wanted to make sure I understood her this time.

“Alone,” she whispered, her blond hair brushing me again.

I gulped. This was it. She wasn't kidding this time.

“Sure,” I croaked.

Merle got up from the table. “Girls,” she announced, “Stoshie and I are stepping out. I'll see you in the morning.”

“Have fun, you two,” Mickey said. The others giggled.

Then Merle shot them a wink. I'm positive about that. It was a wink.

“Oh, we will,” Merle replied, taking my hand. My heart shifted back into fifth gear as she led me to her car.