We were also in the advanced social studies class
together, and it was actually a really good class, which was
unusual. We had a good teacher too, Mr. Fisher, which was
also pretty unusual. Jonathan excelled in social studies,
and he did it with a minimal amount of blacknosing. He
got into a lot of arguments with Mr. Fisher about the war
in Vietnam. Mr. Fisher went into a detailed explanation
about something called the domino theory, which was
supposed to explain why the United States was sending
troops over to fight in Vietnam. Jonathan said he had
developed his own theory called the Parcheesi theory,
which said that if all the politicians who wanted to send
troops to Vietnam would just sit down and play a simple
game of Parcheesi, then nobody would get hurt. Jonathan
said he had decided that dominoes were far too dangerous.
Jonathan was also into politics. He told me last winter
that President Johnson was going to have a pretty hard
time getting reelected if he kept the war going. Jonathan
said that now would be a good time for a black man to
run for president, but he was a little too young to run.
He said that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would be a good
candidate except that all the honky white folks wouldnever vote for him because he was black. We had a mock
presidential election last fall to preview the upcoming reallife
1968 presidential election. We had Democratic and
Republican primaries. There wasn’t much interest in our
Republican primary, and Rockefeller got our nomination.
However, in the Democratic primary, there was a lot of
debate, with Jonathan supporting Martin Luther King Jr.
and mean-mouthing President Johnson. Mr. Fisher tried
to explain to Jonathan that in real life, Martin Luther
King Jr. would have no chance of getting the nomination,
because he didn’t even participate in party politics, but
Jonathan wouldn’t hear of it. He said that the classroom
exercise wasn’t real life and that the rules of the game were
that we could nominate whoever we wanted—except, of
course, Mr. Fisher wouldn’t allow the nomination of crazy
comedian Tommy Smothers. Jonathan was pretty sly in
accusing Mr. Fisher of being prejudiced for questioning
Martin Luther King Jr.’s credentials. We had speeches and
assigned delegates and went through the whole bit. We
even had one kid act like Walter Cronkite, and he gave
a news report on the proceedings. Jonathan wanted to
get some balloons, but Mr. Fisher said no way. When we
finally took the vote, the results were extremely close, with
Bobby Kennedy just beating out Johnson. Martin Luther
King Jr. got only two votes. King’s two votes seemed
strange because there were three black kids in the class,
and everybody had expected them to vote as a block for
Dr. King. I expected Jonathan to put up a stink over the
missing vote, but he didn’t make much of it and seemed
content with the way the vote had turned out. Later on, Igot him to confide in me about why he wasn’t concerned
about the vote.
“Oh, I know who didn’t vote for Brother Martin. It
was me,” Jonathan said with a huge grin.
“What?” I said.
“Yeah, of course. I knew the Doc wouldn’t win, so I
voted for Bobby. Out of all the whites, Bobby’s the only
one who cares a hoot about us black folks. Sure, LBJ
seemed like he did until he started messing around with
that war of his. As for Dr. King, I just wanted to scare you
white folks into thinking that if we blacks voted together,
we’d cause you a heck of a lot of trouble. So then you guys
decided to vote for the only one of your candidates who
could appease us black folks without us getting one of
our own in office, so we wouldn’t go around rioting. So
I figured I’d jump on board and give old Bobby a little
push. And it worked. That’s politics, my friend.”
I wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but I thought
everybody had voted for Bobby Kennedy just because he
was the best looking. Bobby easily beat Rockefeller in our
general election.
Jonathan was not exactly our best baseball player, but
he managed to get the job done most of the time. There
wasn’t much chance he’d be a starting pitcher for JV, but
I thought the coaches kept him more because he looked
mean than anything else. The coaches either thought
Jonathan looked so mean that opposing batters would
be afraid to hit against him or were too afraid to cut
him. Jonathan didn’t have to put on any nice, intelligent
black kid act to play sports. The coaches weren’t muchinterested in intelligence to begin with since most coaches
weren’t too intelligent, and they certainly didn’t want a
bunch of high school kids to outsmart them. So Jonathan
was content to just act mean. He said that as a black
person, it was his true nature to act mean in the unjust
white-dominated society. He said, “That’s the real reason
why black kids do so good in sports. It’s not because
they’re dumb or because they’ve been educationally and
culturally deprived. And it’s not because they are better
natural athletes, having spent so much time running
away from wild animals in the jungles of Africa, running
away from wild slave owners in the South, or running
away from wild cops in the cities. Blacks are good in
sports because it is the easiest socially acceptable way to
be mean.” According to Jonathan, since being mean was
natural for blacks in the unjust white-dominated society,
it was natural for them to excel in sports. Well, Jonathan
didn’t exactly excel in sports, but he sure did excel in
meanness when he wanted to.
Jonathan didn’t talk much during practice, and he
was usually serious—except when he was pulling one of
his practical jokes. He didn’t even talk much to the other
black kids. They were a little suspicious about Jonathan,
not because he was mean but because he was so different.
Jonathan could jive around a lot if he wanted to, but they
also knew he hung around with a lot of white kids and
was in all the smart classes. But Jonathan was careful not
to be condescending to the other black players. Although
he was worlds apart in many ways, he did know the basic
behavior, and that was to act mean. Jonathan was a realchamp at that. He told me he would practice his scowl
in the mirror for hours, and anyone who ever caught a
glimpse of Jonathan’s scowl would have to believe him.
Jonathan’s favorite baseball player was Bob Gibson.
Jonathan said he liked a lot of the black stars, such as
Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Elston Howard, but
he liked Bob Gibson the most because Gibson was the
meanest. Anyone who ever watched Gibson pitch would
see that Jonathan was right. Now that Sandy Koufax had
retired, Gibson probably had the best fastball in the major
leagues, except Gibson didn’t seem to have quite as much
control as Koufax had. Gibson had a reputation for hitting
batters. Some people thought it was because Gibson just
didn’t have good control. Jonathan said Gibson had great
control and hit so many batters because he tried to hit
them. Jonathan said Gibson tried to hit batters because
he was mean. Jonathan really admired that. Jonathan had
the same reputation for hitting batters in our league, and
everybody knew he could be pretty mean, but we also
knew that Jonathan hit so many batters because he had
lousy control. Jonathan had a real good fastball. A lot of
times, he threw his fastball way inside, and he proudly
called it his Bob Gibson brush-back pitch; however, he
also threw his fastball way outside, into the dirt, and over
the catcher’s head sometimes. Jonathan didn’t have any
names for those pitches.
Jonathan’s family was reasonably normal, except
maybe for his dopey kid sister, Lendora, who was eleven
years old and a real pain. Jonathan once confided that
he could handle almost anybody and could even havehandled Adolph Hitler if he’d had to, but sometimes he
just couldn’t handle Lendora. Last year when Jonathan
ran an unsuccessful campaign for class president he got
nonstop criticism from Lendora. She kept saying that
Jonathan didn’t know how to successfully connect with
his voters.
“She’s a real dang know-it-all,” Jonathan complained.
“But I have to admit she warned me about having my
father help me write my stump speech. He had me going
on and on about having a dream that tenth graders and
ninth graders could get along. Lendora said the speech
was too idealistic and boring. She said I should have just
promised everybody a wild Christmas party. After losing
the election, I hate to admit it, but I think that little
pipsqueak was right.”
Actually, despite her nagging, I thought Lendora
was a big fan of her brother. She came to several of our
freshman baseball games, and a person had to be quite
a fan to come to one of those games, especially if he
or she was rooting for Jonathan. But we could always
hear her in the bleachers, though of course, she didn’t
do much cheering, because there wasn’t much to cheer
about the way we played. She especially liked to pick on
old Mr. Gonzo, which was all right with us players. We
all thought Mr. Gonzo could use a little criticism. She
was also great at booing the umpire. No matter what an
umpire called, if the call was against our team, Lendora
would boo him. One time, an umpire actually stopped
the game, came over to the bleachers, and asked Lendora
to keep quiet. She looked pretty darn scared when hecame over to her, and she shut up real fast—but not for
long. About an inning later, she started all over again.
One time, she almost caused a real rhubarb when
Jonathan was pitching. Jonathan started out pitching
okay but soon began having his usual control problems.
Of course, Lendora kept cheering him on. At one point,
she really started to get on this one batter, calling him a
chump and a puppy dog. Then she yelled for Jonathan
to throw one under his chin, and sure enough, Jonathan
chose that time to throw one of his patented Bob Gibson
brush-back pitches, which was so inside that the batter
had no chance whatsoever to get out of the way, and the
ball hit him right in the back. Well, the batter didn’t take
too kindly to being hit in the back, and he was already
pissed because of Lendora’s razzing, so on his way to first
base, he started yelling at Jonathan and coming at him.
Jonathan didn’t say anything. He didn’t even move, and
actually, it looked like he was pretty scared. Then, all of a
sudden, some of the guys from the other team got off the
bench and started to head out toward Jonathan, so then
our guys started coming from their positions. It looked
like Jonathan was scared and in need of some help, and it
also looked like we were headed for a genuine rhubarb, but
then I saw that old Jonathan, just as the guy was getting
right up next to him, put on one of his all-time meanest,
nastiest scowls. The batter put on the brakes super fast. At
the same time, some of the other guys on our team who
were black put on their meanest oppressed-black-person
scowls, and the other team, which was all white kids,
slowed down a bit. Well, by that time, the stupid umpiresand coaches had jumped up and were trying to calm
things down. They tried to act all professional and kept
saying, “Calm down, gentlemen”—as if calling this wild
bunch of adolescents gentlemen would somehow make
us act like gentlemen. The other team’s coach actually
tried to restrain the batter from going at Jonathan, but
everybody could see that it was just an act because the
batter was too scared to go at Jonathan with Jonathan
looking so mean and he was probably pretty darn happy
his coach was there to help with his little act. There was
a little more yelling and stuff, but things quieted down
soon enough. Jonathan went on to pitch a pretty lousy
inning. The other team scored three runs, with Jonathan
providing three more walks but, fortunately, no more hit
batters. However, we had won a moral victory, which we
liked to consider more important than winning a game,
since we were always more likely to win a moral victory
than a ball game. When we got back to the bench, of
course Lendora had to add her two cents.
“Next time, hit ’im in the head,” she said.
