like the Brooklyn Dodgers, and ran the bases like Cobb. They beat Goodyear, the Army team from Fort McClellan, and every cotton mill team for one hundred miles. “We even beat the college boys,” Hammett said, in a time when the pretty girls thronged the first-base line, and the air smelled of parched peanuts and barbecue, not hot metal and cotton poison.
Hook Burroughs was so named because he had a curve ball that almost changed zip codes on the way to the plate, and Jutt Harrelson would take one for the team, even a fastball off his chin, if that was what it took to win. But it was Hughes at the middle of it, a man with tree-trunk legs, forearms as big around as fence posts. He could play any position and scat around those bases quick, for a big man. He had such reach he could clear the bases even if you threw it at his shoe tops, or a foot and half outside.
Some of the boys called him Dago—the reason why is lost, because he was not Italian, at least not that they know of—but Clay Hammett never did.
“Some people did say I was pretty fair,” said Hammett, “but man, I liked to watch that big rascal play.”
No one seems to remember their records, just that they were always winners in the 1920s, 1930s, and even into the 1940s, when the soldiers returning from World War II would become the last generation of great textile mill ballplayers.
Clay Hammett left the mill for other work before it broke him, the reason, he believes, he lasted ninety years. But he did not move away. It is an odd condition of people whose childhoods are bound by the mill. Even in old age, they are held to it.
He does not know, for sure, that he gave all that much to the people who came to see him play, but he knows what they gave him. “They were the best people I ever knew,” he said. “You could see the faith in those people,” he said, but he is not speaking of religion. “You can’t beat that faith, in your neighbors, in your friends.”
He could feel it, maybe a little stronger, on Blank Saturdays. He used to remember it all, the scores, even the plays. But he recalled, till the end, that feeling pouring in from those crowded bleachers.
“Some people,” he said, “ are better than other people.”
___
As much as he loved the game of baseball, it was hard, on a warm day in 2003, to travel far from his memories of his wife. “She passed November 25, 2002,” he said, pointing to a sepia-toned photo of them taken when they were still young. “She was a wife to me, boy,” he said, and then he looked around the room, his eyes fierce, as if daring someone to disagree. He is asked if he has anything else to say about baseball, but he is lost now, in a place even the cheers cannot reach, cannot brighten.
chapter seven
breath
Eula Salter, a little girl then, used to wonder what it was like inside the mill. It was a fortress, a great, red-bricked wall. In those days, the 1950s, a man named Joe Green would hitch his mule to a creaking wagon and give Eula and other black children a ride around town. One late afternoon, in another burning summer, he drove them down Alexandria Road, past the mill.
Eula looked up, up to the second floor, and saw them.
“People were hanging out of the windows,” she said, “trying to breathe.”
She would never forget those people, their mouths wide open. They would lean as far into the breeze as they could, gasping, then give up their place to the next man or woman in line.
Eula watched the people, over her shoulder, till the mule slowly pulled her out of sight.
High above, a man named Leon Spears stood choking in the heat and the swirling cotton mist, waiting his turn for a breath of air. A lifetime later, he does not recall a little black girl, or a mule wagon, or anything else on the ground below.
But he remembers that breath.
“It put bread in your mouth, that mill did,” said Spears, his mouth slack from his medicines, his oxygen bottle—necessary since the brown lung disease
Hook Burroughs was so named because he had a curve ball that almost changed zip codes on the way to the plate, and Jutt Harrelson would take one for the team, even a fastball off his chin, if that was what it took to win. But it was Hughes at the middle of it, a man with tree-trunk legs, forearms as big around as fence posts. He could play any position and scat around those bases quick, for a big man. He had such reach he could clear the bases even if you threw it at his shoe tops, or a foot and half outside.
Some of the boys called him Dago—the reason why is lost, because he was not Italian, at least not that they know of—but Clay Hammett never did.
“Some people did say I was pretty fair,” said Hammett, “but man, I liked to watch that big rascal play.”
No one seems to remember their records, just that they were always winners in the 1920s, 1930s, and even into the 1940s, when the soldiers returning from World War II would become the last generation of great textile mill ballplayers.
Clay Hammett left the mill for other work before it broke him, the reason, he believes, he lasted ninety years. But he did not move away. It is an odd condition of people whose childhoods are bound by the mill. Even in old age, they are held to it.
He does not know, for sure, that he gave all that much to the people who came to see him play, but he knows what they gave him. “They were the best people I ever knew,” he said. “You could see the faith in those people,” he said, but he is not speaking of religion. “You can’t beat that faith, in your neighbors, in your friends.”
He could feel it, maybe a little stronger, on Blank Saturdays. He used to remember it all, the scores, even the plays. But he recalled, till the end, that feeling pouring in from those crowded bleachers.
“Some people,” he said, “ are better than other people.”
___
As much as he loved the game of baseball, it was hard, on a warm day in 2003, to travel far from his memories of his wife. “She passed November 25, 2002,” he said, pointing to a sepia-toned photo of them taken when they were still young. “She was a wife to me, boy,” he said, and then he looked around the room, his eyes fierce, as if daring someone to disagree. He is asked if he has anything else to say about baseball, but he is lost now, in a place even the cheers cannot reach, cannot brighten.
chapter seven
breath
Eula Salter, a little girl then, used to wonder what it was like inside the mill. It was a fortress, a great, red-bricked wall. In those days, the 1950s, a man named Joe Green would hitch his mule to a creaking wagon and give Eula and other black children a ride around town. One late afternoon, in another burning summer, he drove them down Alexandria Road, past the mill.
Eula looked up, up to the second floor, and saw them.
“People were hanging out of the windows,” she said, “trying to breathe.”
She would never forget those people, their mouths wide open. They would lean as far into the breeze as they could, gasping, then give up their place to the next man or woman in line.
Eula watched the people, over her shoulder, till the mule slowly pulled her out of sight.
High above, a man named Leon Spears stood choking in the heat and the swirling cotton mist, waiting his turn for a breath of air. A lifetime later, he does not recall a little black girl, or a mule wagon, or anything else on the ground below.
But he remembers that breath.
“It put bread in your mouth, that mill did,” said Spears, his mouth slack from his medicines, his oxygen bottle—necessary since the brown lung disease
Similar Books
