Outskirts Press, INC.

“To Kill a Mockingbird” meets “Dirty Dancing”!

It’s 1959 in Newburgh, N.Y., and all 11-year-old Louisa (“Louey”) Levy wants to do is listen to rock ‘n roll and play ball with her big brother and their pals. It’s an idyllic, small-town life, until that life starts crumbling: In the space of a few weeks, Louey’s hero Buddy Holly is killed in a plane crash; her mother dies of cancer, and her dad, Newburgh’s city manager, suffers a stroke as he prepares for the city’s 250th anniversary celebration. When she finds her best friend’s big sister bleeding in an alley, Louey must quickly—and painfully—learn the meaning of loyalty and courage in the midst of loss. In the tradition of “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Dirty Dancing,” this touching novel is filled with eccentric, endearing characters, humor, and an exploration of Jewish and American values—all of which Louey needs to pull her through.

Stealing home is the hardest thing a player can ever do. This is the number of times the Yankee hero Lou Gehrig stole home in 17 years: two. This is the number of times Babe Ruth did it, in 22 years: zero. And this is the number of times Jackie Robinson did it, a man who wasn’t allowed into the major leagues ’til he was 28 and then played only 10 seasons: 19. And the time Louey saw him do it was his last and greatest steal of all. First, with only one out, he tripled on a hit to left, when any other player would have stopped at second. Then he danced and darted and faked off of third so many times that nobody knew when he was going to go. When he finally barreled toward home, it seemed as if he couldn’t possibly make it. The catcher already had the ball in his mitt for one full second, two full seconds, and you could see his cruel catcher-sneer right through the steel bars of his mask. But Jackie slid and with his left foot drilled that catcher in the stomach, and the ball popped right out of the mitt where it had been cemented for ... for forever, it seemed. And when they collided, the catcher’s mask went in one direction and his face in another and the ball in a third, and Jackie sent him sprawling and yelling, and the fans were cheering, and the dust was flying so high and thick around the plate you could hardly see through it. But the ump could see: “Safe!” The Dodgers won that game by one run. But the steal and the victory — neither of them was the best part. “Here is the best part,” Louey told her father that night, and her friends the next day, and anyone else who would ever listen to her again in her whole life. “Here is the part I will never forget.” Earlier in the game, in the third inning, during an at-bat in which he made an out, an at-bat that no one but Louey Levy would ever remember, Jackie fouled off a pitch. He got under it, and it lifted easily, with a lot of backspin, high, and then started falling past the perfect, blue Brooklyn sky, down and down, and on downward toward Louey Levy’s seat behind third base. Like all the other people in that section and with her eyes on the ball the whole time, Louey slowly stood, shoving her wooden seat up with her leg so she could move her right foot back a few inches. Danny, meanwhile, on her left, was determined to catch that ball himself. “I got it! Move! I got it! Look out!” he yelled, doing a standing breaststroke to try to create space for himself. With that motion, though, he inadvertently pushed a nun in the row in front of them, a black-habited Little Sister of the Sick Poor. She had been standing and raising her hands to … praise the Lord? Catch the ball? Ward off the devil? Avoid getting beaned? Her intentions were unclear. But in one of her hands she was holding an open box of popcorn, and upon being shoved, she tossed it up and backwards, over Danny’s head and straight to a man behind him whose reaction, for some reason, was to take his eyes off the ball and instead try to catch the popcorn — with the same hand in which he was holding a large paper cup of Ballantine beer. Popcorn and beer rained all over Danny, leaving him delightfully drenched. Ruth Levy saw none of it. She had scrunched down in her seat and ducked her head underneath the New York Times she’d brought along — trusting, no doubt, that all those words would protect her. “Watch out, kids!” she called from under there. “It’s coming our way!” Danny was 10 already, and much taller than Louey. He probably thought he could just reach over her and make the catch. Wrong. Without taking her eyes off the ball or moving one other muscle from scalp to toes except for a slight flaring of the nostrils and a clenching of the jaw which no one could see, Louey raised her left knee up towards her stomach and thrust her foot downward and sideward, hard, onto her brother’s right foot. She didn't know or care if his yelp was from surprise or a broken bone, but it made Ruth peep out from under her Times, and that's how she, too, got to see The Catch. The noise from the people around them swelled (“Look out! It’s comin’ ovah heah! Mine! I got it! Mine!”), but for Louey the sound faded. She saw every single stitch in that ball and smelled its leather cover as it fell to her, and she knew she would secure it in her hands, which she had formed into a sacred vessel in front of her. Just as she felt the ball’s touch, all in one smooth movement, she brought it to her chest — to her heart, as she always said afterwards — more like how you fair-catch a football, really, than how you catch a baseball. It made a sharp “thump” as it hit her. A couple of people nearby said, “Ouch!” in sympathy, but it didn’t hurt. She caught it that way on purpose, to make sure of it. And it worked: She got it. It was as if in that very moment, it was written that she would get it. And she saw that she would get it, and it was good. And then she turned, grinning, and waved the ball to the people all around her, who were clapping and cheering for her and yelling, “Ay, good catch, little girl!” and, “Let’s see! Let’s see it! Can I see it?” “Right heah! Throw!” a colored man a few rows behind them called. As if Louey Levy would ever toss away her Jackie Robinson ball. “Like hell,” she called back to him, smiling sweetly. “Louisa!” her mother scolded loudly, waggling her finger. “Like fun, I mean,” Louey said, grinning back at the man. Everybody laughed; the nun, the colored man; everyone. Even Danny, who was still picking wet popcorn off his shoulders and eating it. They were a good team, Ruth and Louey Levy, and they knew it. They had great timing. Better than the Marx Brothers, Abe always said; better than Lewis & Martin. “Hey, girl, how old are you?” a tall boy asked, staring at Louey from a few rows below them. “Nine. Almost nine,” she said. She’d be nine in week or so. “Did that hurt?” he asked. No, but it left a small, heart-shaped bruise right over the bone in the middle of her chest. Louey hoped it would never go away. She pressed it often during its brief existence, to make it hurt a little and encourage it to stay. But after a few happy days of purple, it slowly turned yellow and then faded away. Anyway, after the Dodgers had beaten the Giants like God wanted them to, that’s when — getting back to what Louey always felt the “best part” was — that was when Ruth took the kids over to the area from which Beau Mahan had told her the Dodgers would be leaving Ebbets Field. Ruth had ditched her Times. She took her Newburgh News press-pass out of her purse and pinned it onto the left side of her dress. She also got out the skinny reporter’s notebook that she always had with her, and a pen. When Jackie Robinson finally came into view, she stepped in front of him. “Excuse me, Jackie?” she said. “Yes, ma’am?” he said. And then, looking in wonder at her press pass, he asked, “Are you a sportswriter?” “Yes.” And that’s true, in a sense, Louey thought. She had heard the story of how, many years ago, when Beau Mahan was sick, Ruth had been assigned to cover the harness races at the Goshen track. At that time, Abe was working as an assistant to Thomas C. Drummond, a state senator who lived in the wealthy, leafy hamlet of Balmville, just north of Newburgh. A colleague from Drummond’s district office on Broadway had invited Abe to go to the races with him, and having nothing better to do, Abe agreed. And there along the rail was Ruth Elsie Alcott, with her thick, wavy blonde hair and her camera and her “Press” pass, and Abe struck up a conversation with her. The funny thing was, neither Ruth nor Abe had the slightest interest in horseracing. Neither had ever gone to the races before, nor did they ever go after that — not once. Instead, they did other things. They talked, they went to the movies, they fell in love, and they eloped. They moved into a little apartment on Carpenter Street, near Downing Park. And they both wanted to give Hitler hell, so on their first anniversary, Abe enlisted in the Army, and Ruth enlisted in the SPARS. And when the war was over, they came back to Newburgh and had three kids. But having covered the Goshen track that day certainly made Ruth a sportswriter; no doubt about that. There also was no doubt about something else: Jackie Robinson was going to treat this woman like any other reporter, and in fact, he was going to be a little nicer to her than he was to any of the others. He took a step back and put his fists on his hips. “Wow! Good for you!” he said, peering again at Ruth’s press pass. “You’re from the … Newburgh News?” “Yes.” “I know Newburgh — that’s just 60 miles up the river, isn’t it?” “Yes.” And he smiled and said in a soft voice, “Yeah, I know guys who go up there. Some of the Yankees go up there all the time.” “I know; I know,” Ruth mumbled. They both gave sidelong glances at the kids. Yankees came to Newburgh? All the time? That was the first Louey had ever heard of that. “You on deadline?” Jackie asked. “Yes I am,” Ruth answered. And in a sense, that is absolutely true, Louey said to herself. Because everybody’s on some kind of a deadline. Like … like we have to get home for dinner tonight. “But I just have one question for you,” Ruth said. “Would you please sign a ball you hit into the stands, for the little girl who caught it?” She held out her pen and pointed to the ball, which Louey was clutching. “Sure,” he said, taking the ball and pen. He smiled at Louey briefly as he took the ball from her and asked, “What’s your name?” “Louisa, but they call me Louey. L-O-U-E-Y.” And then she couldn’t help blurting out, “That was fantastic, how you stole home!” “Well, thanks, Louey,” he said. “Not bad for an old man, huh?” And as he signed The Ball, he asked her without looking up, “You catch it on the fly?” “Yup,” she said. “It was my greatest catch ever.” “Holy cow,” he said, and his eyes grew wide. “Your greatest catch ever, huh?” And he threw his head back and giggled like a kid. And he wrote, “To Louey — great catch! Jackie Robinson, 9/8/56.”