Magic Baseball Cards

[Arroyos]

Magic Baseball Cards


A singing cafeteria is a strange thing, Slummings realized. Stranger yet when the cafeteria is in a mental hospital. And strangest of all was the man who had stared at him, the man who leaned over and whispered, “You ain’t gettin’ outa here,” or something like that. Slummings was so shaken by the words, by the guy staring at him throughout breakfast, and by the whole cafeteria erupting in song that he wasn’t sure exactly what had been said. But he got the gist of it. “You ain’t gettin’ outa here.”

“Ignore him,” Mayberry said.

“What?”

“Ignore him. Lemme show you something.”

Mayberry rose from his chair and carried his breakfast tray across the cafeteria to the conveyer belt. Slummings hurried to catch up, tossing his tray noisily on the belt.

“What?” Slummings asked.

“What what?” Mayberry echoed.

“Whatta got to show me?”

“You’ll see.”

Mayberry headed out of the cafeteria and across the quad toward his room. Slummings followed.

Inside his room, Mayberry waited for Slummings to catch up, then closed the door behind him.

“Stand there,” Mayberry said, indicating the door. “Don’t let anyone enter.”

“Why?” Slummings asked, even as he did what he was told.

“You’ll see.”

Mayberry pulled the pillow off his bed, revealing a second pillow, a strange looking, lumpy pillow. Slummings wondered why anyone would have such an uncomfortable pillow on their bed. Mayberry reached into the second pillow and withdrew a stack of rubber-banded cards. He pulled the top two off the pack and spread them out on the bed. They were like no playing cards Slummings had ever seen.

“What are they?”

“Baseball cards.”

“Baseball cards?” Slummings echoed.

“My cards. Eddie Mathews,” he said, pointing to one of the cards, “and Luke Easter.”

“Baseball cards?”

“Special cards. Mathew and Luke. I still need Mark and John.”

“What? Like the Gospels?”

“Yeah. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. When I find Mark and John, I can leave.”

“Leave the hospital?” Mayberry nodded. “The only thing keeping you here are baseball cards?”

“Ain’t easy to find.”

“I don’t get it. Are they magic or something?”

“If you want.”

“If I want?” Slummings said, incredulously. “If I want?”

“If you wanna believe,” Mayberry said, “then, sure, it’s magical.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You don’t want to believe?”

“Not in magical baseball cards, no.”

“Then maybe it’s sort of like a password, or papers, you know, identity cards, like in the old Soviet Union. If you got ‘em, you can pass.”

“So, you’re gonna show those cards to Security and they’re going to let you waltz right out of here? I don’t think so.”

“Not quite … but almost.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You don’t live here, so don’t expect to.”

“So why show me?”

“So you can help me.”

“Help you how?” Slummings pointed to the pair of cards on the bed, their names in red print in the center of the card, surrounded by numbers in red and black. “Help you find the other cards?”

“Yup.”

Slummings said nothing, tried to take it all in, tried to imagine how baseball cards could be the key to springing this man from the hospital, how four cards could return his General Manager to Yuma. But he couldn’t.

“Where do you get these cards?” Slummings reached to pick one up and examine it more closely, but Mayberry swept them off the bed and held them against his chest.

“You know what I’ve been through to get these cards?”

“No, I don’t. What?”

Mayberry looked at Slummings. What he saw was an old man like himself, bearded, wrinkled, squinting to read the cards, an old man who just might be able to understand what it meant to finally and officially leave this damn hospital. He studied Slummings long and hard, and what he saw—what he imagined—was the wealth this man had. Money enough to buy the Yuma ball club to begin with and to support it when the previous owners absconded with the club’s cash. Mayberry imagined that this man had the financial resources to search for and purchase two 1957 APBA baseball cards. Mark and John, that’s all he needed.

“If I tell you about the fire and the escape and all the running and hiding and … and all the therapy that led me to these two cards,” Mayberry said, his face pinched in an effort not to feel what he felt, not to relive what he’d tried to forget, what the shock therapy had almost erased, but what still snuck in on him in the middle of the night when he lay, trying to sleep, in his narrow bed, “if I tell you that, will you help me get the last two cards?”

[Borealis]

Ah... Luke Easter... I think he was one of my grandfathers faves... I have a memory of sitting along a creek somewhere in the mountains above Fort Hunter-Ligget (I believe) - the western side of the Central Valley, near Lake San Antonio (I believe - I was young), where my grandparents had a cabin - with him telling me stories of the old Indians players...

[Arroyos]

Ah... Luke Easter... I think he was one of my grandfathers faves... I have a memory of sitting along a creek somewhere in the mountains above Fort Hunter-Ligget (I believe) - the western side of the Central Valley, near Lake San Antonio (I believe - I was young), where my grandparents had a cabin - with him telling me stories of the old Indians players...

Yes, Lucious Luke had 3 great seasons with the Indians, 1950-52, after a lengthy and productive career in the Negro Leagues. Good memory, Mike!

[Sandgnats]