Joseph Gainza Reads "Jackie's Bat"

Narrated by the Brooklyn Dodgers' white batboy, Joey, Lorbiecki's (Sister Anne's Hands ) heartwarming tale set in 1947 tells two parallel stories. The first is Jackie Robinson's difficult but ultimately triumphant first season in the major leagues, and the other is Joey's challenging, but also triumphant, battle against his own racism. With understated simplicity, Joey recounts the numerous indignities Robinson endures: taunts from opposing teams, pitchers aiming at him, hate mail, separate hotels and some insults inflicted by the batboy himself (e.g., Joey cleans the shoes of every player except Robinson because, the boy thinks to himself, "Pops says it ain't right,/ a white boy serving a black man"). Robinson confronts Joey: "There's people out there who don't/ treat me as a man 'cause my skin is black/.... They don't know what a man is." Joey chronicles Robinson's gradual progression from outsider to "one of the guys" as his teammates start defending and working with him. The final scenes depict Robinson offering Joey his hand to shake, "one Dodger to another," and Pops wearing an "I'm for Jackie" button, saying, "That man's earned his place in history." These moments give added emotional weight to this straightforward but often moving re-imagining of how an American hero's struggle and achievement helped transform a nation.

In introducing the book, Joseph tells that he grew up in Brooklyn and loved the Dodgers. But a more important story was about Joseph's own father, who worked on the docks. In his first job, unloading ballast from a big ship, he was part of a long line of men who handed the rough ballast stones hand over hand from the ship's hold, up the stairs, and onto the dock. Joseph's father worked next to an older African-American man, who had a worn and torn pair of gloves on his hands, while Joseph's father's hands were getting all ripped up. At a pause in the movement of stones, the man drew out a pair of new gloves from his back pocket and said to Joseph's father, "Here, son, wear these." Joseph's father said he couldn't take the man's new gloves, but he insisted. Joseph said his father never forgot that, and he never heard his father say anything derogatory about black people, and their home was one in which all people were respected. What Joseph drew from this experience is that a small act of kindness can have huge consequences.