A League Of Their Own

Even when Betty wanted to strike out, everyone else was determined to get Paul to the big game!

hurried down the stairs.

“No, it’s something else,” Brendan said.

Betty heard an unhappy note in his voice.

Uncle Corey, it turned out, could not take Paul to the All-star Game in Minnesota.

“Olivia’s finally got that hospital appointment,” Brendan told Ellen. “An overnighter, and Corey is required to accompany her.”

Betty was at the top of the stairs now, trying to recall whether she’d reminded her father to refill her car with gasoline after he used it.

She had to go shopping for a blouse.

“But he has to go to the game,” her mother said in a worried voice. “Those tickets were like gold dust, Brendan.”

Betty could see the thinning top of her father’s head, nodding.

Her parents heard her on the stairs and looked up.

“We need to ask you something, honey,” Brendan said.

“That is a very lovely dress,” Ellen added.

They wanted her to take Paul to the baseball!

“I have work and everything, and less than no interest in baseball,” Betty said. “Paul can go to the next one.”

Her parents talked about Brendan’s work, and the fact that mom didn’t have a driver’s licence, and the fact that Uncle Corey and Aunt Olivia were completely out of the picture.

“You’ve got your car,” Brendan said. “Paul has set his heart on this.”

Betty could hear her brother banging around upstairs as the three of them stood arguing.

Paul was the light of everybody’s lives because he was cute and wore that dumb baseball outfit as soon as he got in from school.

“I don’t have a choice, do I?” Betty said at last.

Her parents looked at her with pained, apologetic expressions.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Ellen said. “We’ll book up a motel for you on the way.”

It was not until Betty stamped back upstairs that she realised that, if she took Paul, she’d be missing her date with Jimmy.

Her parents knew about the date, because Brendan had made a point of rearranging his chess night so as to be home.

It wasn’t really a surprise that her parents did not comprehend the importance of her relationship: they were old, and it had been decades since they’d had to navigate the choppy waters of first love.

A person should not just have to cancel an evening with her future husband in order to drive her baby brother some place!

She had disappeared in this family set-up, giving way to a little kid!

But she had no choice. Women’s rights had barely got going, and way behind them came the rights of teenage daughters!

****

She set off the following day in her Corvair with Paul beside her.

“You can talk between towns,” she told him, “but not about baseball.”

But Paul could not keep quiet about baseball. Betty thought about the nineteen-hour journey ahead and wondered if he’d run out of detail eventually.

In a quiet moment while Paul was consuming a bag of peanuts, Betty said to the windshield, “It’s funny how I’m not old enough to have my boyfriend over without a chaperone, but I am old enough to drive a kid a thousand miles.”

“What’s a chaperone?” Paul asked. “Did you know the Yankees’ manager retired?

“They’ve got a new one. Shall I tell you the five Yankee players on the American League team?

“Dad said I should do it alphabetical, but I get confused after –”

“It’s fine, Paul,” Betty said. “Why don’t I wait and look at the team when we get there, huh?”

“You can buy a programme. Mom gave me fifty cents. Shall we get one for you and one for –”

“Paul. We haven’t even done a hundred miles. Can we have a little quiet?”

Betty began to wonder what might oblige them to turn around and head home – an earthquake or a bad cold, maybe.

Paul could watch the game on the television; he’d forget he’d ever been going to see it in person.

He was six; there would be fifty more All-stars games before he was even old!

And then an opportunity arose. Just the other side of Cleveland, coming out of a gas station shop in her sandals, Betty’s foot slipped off a gas pump pedestal and she landed hard on a sharp lump of metal. The pain was excruciating.

She looked down to see blood pooling on the ground.

“Oh, my goodness, that looks bad!” An elderly man in a cotton sun hat and dungarees leaped out of his pick-up. “You have to see a doctor – I’ll take you.”

Paul was fetched from the car and then the gas station employee joined in, finding out where they’d come from and where they were headed.

“I’m going to store your Corvair behind here,” the gas station guy said. “Now, see what the doctor says.”

The doctor said that Betty wasn’t going to be driving any time soon. She emerged from the consulting room with a foot swathed in white, to find Paul sitting up on the desk, talking away to the dungaree man and a receptionist lady.

“Mickey Mantle and Bobby Richardson, they’re the best,” Paul was saying in the voice he used when he was being boring, and the grown-ups were smiling at him as though he was the Queen of Sheba. “Sorry,” Betty said. The lady smiled at Paul. “Don’t I recall that Mickey Mantle was one of those two boys they called the –”

“The M and M Boys!” Paul interrupted, delighted.

“Sixty-one and fifty-four home runs! They were Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris.

“He’s my favourite ever but he’s not playing this year.”

“You know your baseball,” the doctor said, coming out of the consulting room and making a beeline for Paul.

“I guess we can get a train back to New York,” Betty said.

“But there’s a bus from Cleveland main bus station just nearby. Buses go west to Chicago,” the old man said.

“It’s fast.” He smiled at Paul. “You’re halfway there now.”

Betty knew that wasn’t true but the guy was adamant, and when the doctor and the receptionist looked upset at the idea that Paul would miss the darned baseball game, Betty didn’t feel she could contradict a row of strange adults.

The lady fetched them lunch while the doctor told Betty that he’d waive the fee.

“You don’t know what you might need,” he said, “now you can’t use the car.”

The man in the dungarees came back with two bus tickets in his hand. He chuckled.

“My friend Ed works at the bus station,” he said. “Tickets to Chicago and not a cent to pay! I can take you there so you can hop on. Gus at the garage will take care of the car.”

****

As the bus trundled along Betty marvelled at the Cleveland people.

If she and Paul had been homeless people in Central Park, or somebody beaten up for protesting segregation, she could understand their drive to help and to send them on their way.

Paulie was just a kid with a sister rich enough to have her own car, and money in her pocket.

Paul just kept on sorting his baseball cards, or explaining the difference between the two leagues to Betty.