Once we had our admission policy, Jonathan started

letting more and more kids into the cell. Before he would

let people in, he would make them study all the parts of

the cell. The new applicants would then have to recite the

cell parts according to their status in Jonathan’s cell. He

also made them say, “Sock it to me, baby,” three times

to their biology teacher. Another member of the cell

would have to witness the kid saying, “Sock it to me,

baby,” or if that was not possible, Jonathan would grant

a “Sock it to me, baby” waiver and instead make the kid

wear a Groucho Marx disguise. All this stuff actually

encouraged a lot of kids to join because most kids would

use any excuse to do something stupid during school

hours. Our membership grew and grew, or as Jonathan

would say, the cell was expanding. The trouble was, we

were being overrun by Golgi bodies. It seemed a lot of the

kids actually liked being Golgi bodies at first because it

was such a weird name. A lot of the guys liked to make

jokes about the girls who were Golgi bodies. When some

of the guys would walk by some of the good-looking girls,

they’d say, “Now, there goes a Golgi body,” with emphasis

on the word body.

One day, as we went into biology class, Jonathan had

a strange look on his face and told Phil and me in a

serious voice that he wanted to meet with his nucleolus

Mickey Mantle’s Last Home Run | 89

immediately after class. Nobody except teachers ever used

the word immediately, so Phil and I figured it was pretty

important. When we met in the hall, Jonathan looked

strange. He kind of looked scared and was a little pale,

which was a little hard for black kids, I guessed.

“My homeroom teacher said I have to go see the

principal at ten o’clock,” Jonathan said. “She said it has

something to do with ‘Sock it to me, baby’ and Golgi

bodies.”

Phil and I started to crack up, but then Jonathan

said, “Hey, wait a minute. This is serious. How did the

principal find out about the cell? Hey, I could get in big

trouble.”

“Nah. Don’t worry about it,” I said. “He probably just

wants to join.” I laughed.

“Oh yeah. Thanks a lot. You’re a big help,” Jonathan

said sarcastically.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Phil said. “You can handle

it. You’re the nucleus.” Phil and I laughed, but Jonathan

failed to see the humor.

“Thanks a lot,” Jonathan said, shaking his head, and

then he headed off down the hall.

Our next class was English. Phil and I went into

English class without Jonathan, who headed to the

principal. We couldn’t have been sitting in class for

more than ten minutes, when the messenger from the

administration walked in and gave a note to our teacher.

The teacher called Phil and me to her desk and gave us

the note. We were to report immediately to the principal’s

office. We both gulped and walked out of the classroom.

As soon as we got out of the room, Phil kind of panicked,

and he said, “Holy smokes! Jonathan probably blamed

everything on us.” He backed up against the wall and

held his forehead.

“Well, now, let’s not jump to conclusions,” I said.

“Maybe he’s not even talking about the cell. Maybe he

wants to congratulate you on your excellent campaign

for class president.”

“Aw, come on now. That was months ago,” Phil said.

“Yeah. You’re right. Maybe …” I couldn’t think of

anything else to say, so we just headed downstairs. We

figured we were already in enough trouble, so we didn’t

want to be late in reporting to the principal on top of

everything else.

Our principal, Mr. Little, was a rather big guy, but

nobody knew that because hardly anyone ever saw him.

As a matter of fact, I didn’t even know where his office

was. He even had his own private secretary. His office

was on the first floor, in the main hallway, not far from

the auditorium. To get there, we had to go through the

area known as “the office,” where there were a bunch of

secretaries who didn’t do anything having to do with

teaching. Most people said they kind of ran the school.

Nobody was really scared of Mr. Little because we hardly

ever heard of anybody going to see him. Mr. Krauzer was

the guy everybody was afraid of—he was the detention

officer. You usually didn’t go to see Mr. Krauzer; he usually

came to get you. Mr. Krauzer taught only one class all day,

and the rest of the time, he was busy yelling at the kids

the teachers were sick of yelling at. Mr. Krauzer did do

Mickey Mantle’s Last Home Run | 91

one thing none of the others did: he stayed after school

every day. It was part of his job. He ran the detention

class, which met for one hour every day after school. Mr.

Krauzer just stood there and looked mean for the whole

hour, and he was pretty calm about the whole thing. He

rarely even yelled during the hour. He just held on to his

detention roster. If you said one word, he tacked one day

extra onto the original detention punishment. I was only

in detention once, but I had the misfortune of spending

my sentence with Frankie. Jonathan’s the one who got me

in trouble, of course, and Frankie kept me in trouble once

I got into detention.

You had to be pretty darn bad to get detention, and

I honestly did not think I deserved it. I had the bad luck

of being caught by Mr. Krauzer on a slow day when he

was out looking for recruits for his after-school gathering.

Jonathan had a brainy idea that we could steal all the

chalk from Miss Stewart’s class during lunchtime. He

figured that if she didn’t have any chalk with which to

write on the blackboard, her ability to teach a class, which

was already pretty limited, would be, in Jonathan’s words,

“further diminished.” Miss Stewart’s English class was

our first class in the afternoon, so Jonathan figured we’d

hang around a little in the halls after the morning classes

and then sneak on over to her room, number 212, to

steal all the chalk. The tricky part was that kids were not

allowed to roam the halls during lunchtime. We were

supposed to head to the lunchroom immediately or leave

the building until a quarter after one.

Every lunchtime for about a week, Jonathan and I

would take the long way to the lunchroom in order to go

by room 212. One of us would stand outside on guard

while the other one went into the room to steal all the

chalk. It worked really well for a whole week. Miss Stewart

would begin every class by fumbling around looking for

the chalk, and then she’d get all frustrated and not know

what to do. Then Jonathan would ask one of his stupid

blacknosing questions, and he’d manage to waste most of

the class. One day Miss Stewart didn’t look for the chalk

until just before she was going to give us our homework

assignment, and she got so frustrated about not finding

the dopey chalk that she forgot to give us the homework

assignment.

Then came the day when old Mr. Krauzer caught

me—not for stealing the chalk. Nobody ever figured out

who did that, but he caught me in the hall well after

the lunchtime period began. You see, after Jonathan

and I completed our little thievery, we had to quickly

head down to our lockers and then hurry on over to the

lunchroom. Well, the time I got caught, I went all the

way to the lunchroom but forgot that I needed some

vocabulary words to study for Miss Stewart’s class, so

I headed back up to my locker, and on my way back to

the lunchroom, I met old Mr. Personality, Mr. Krauzer.

Well, he needed some recruits, and I looked perfect, so he

nabbed me. I guessed that in a way, ole Miss Stewart got

justice. Jonathan just said, “Justice will catch up to you

white folks in the end. Us black folks got a lot of justice

coming our way, so we can get away with this sort of stuff.

Mickey Mantle’s Last Home Run | 93

I bet even the Doc would agree.” Jonathan liked to refer

to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as the Doc, and he had a

way of believing that his hero, Dr. King, would approve

of all his shenanigans. I kind of doubted Dr. King would

approve of anybody stealing chalk, but I thought he’d

agree that I had gotten what I deserved and that Jonathan

was just a bit luckier for not getting caught.

My one-day detention sentence turned into an entire

week because I met Frankie there. Frankie was on the

third day of a one-day sentence. He had a way of getting

caught for doing something pretty dumb but harmless

and then winding up stretching his detention out for more

than a week because he could not ever sit for one hour

without saying a word. With me sitting next to him, he

couldn’t help but try to talk to me. I’d try to tell him to

pipe down, but old Mr. Krauzer would hear us. He’d put

a check mark by our names and simply say, “One more

day for our two gentlemen in the back.” That happened

for four straight days. Finally, Frankie was sick and was

absent from school, so I was able to keep my mouth shut

and finally finish my sentence.

When the secretary showed us into Mr. Little’s room,

Jonathan was sitting attentively in a chair opposite Mr.

Little’s big desk.

“Come in, gentlemen,” Mr. Little said. Phil and I

were both a tiny bit scared. We sat down and fidgeted.

We didn’t know what to say. Then Mr. Little said, “Well,

Jonathan, so this is your nucleolus.”

“Yes, sir,” Jonathan said. “But they used to be other

parts. Phil used to be an endoplasmic reticulum, and T. J.

used to be a mitochondrion. As a matter of fact, we seem

to be quite low on mitochondria right now, but we’re

hoping to make promotions soon.”

“I see,” Mr. Little said, and he rubbed his chin. “Let

me see now. You have all the different parts of the cell

represented?”

“That’s right, sir,” Jonathan said. He was using his

blacknosing voice.

“Well, now, being an ex–biology teacher …”

As soon as Mr. Little said that, Phil and I looked

at each other with a little smile because it looked like,

judging from the way Jonathan was going into his flawless

blacknosing routine and being that Mr. Little was an ex–

biology teacher, things might not turn out so bad.

“I still have an interest in the different parts of the cell.

But tell me, Jonathan—what is all this about a cell wall?”

I thought, Oh my God, is Jonathan going to tell the

principal of the school that in order to get into the cell or be

promoted in the cell, you have to do stuff like wear a Groucho

Marx mask or say, “Sock it to me, baby”?

“Well, you see, sir,” Jonathan answered, “in order to

get into the cell, you have to pass a simple quiz having to

do with the biological makeup of the cell or the function

of a part of the cell. For instance, ask T. J. what the

function of a mitochondrion is.”

“Well, T. J., you’re on,” Mr. Little said.

I was caught off guard by the question, but I sure as

heck knew that a mitochondrion was the powerhouse of

the cell, which was why I’d wanted to be a mitochondrion

Mickey Mantle’s Last Home Run | 95

in the first place. “Um. It’s the powerhouse of the cell,

sir,” I said.

“Excellent,” Mr. Little said.

“You see, sir, that’s one of the reasons why T. J. has

made it all the way up to the nucleolus,” Jonathan said.

“I see,” Mr. Little said, “but what about all these Golgi

bodies?”

“That’s actually the entry-level position in the cell, sir.

It’s somewhat like starting out as a teacher. But if you’re

smart enough and work hard enough, you can move all

the way up to the nucleus, or to be the principal, like you

did, sir.” Jonathan said this with his best blacknosing

smile.

“Yes. Yes, I see,” Mr. Little said with a kind of crazed

gleam in his eyes. “Yes, I understand. In addition to being

a learning experience for your members, your cell is like a

metaphor for this school.” Mr. Little stood up and made

a sweeping motion with his arm. “Why, it’s a metaphor

for the entire country!” he exclaimed.

I didn’t think even Jonathan knew what the heck old

Mr. Little was talking about.

“Well, Jonathan and boys, I think you’ve got quite

an idea here. I think we should sanction your club as an

official school club. That will give it the same status as

the Spanish club, the glee club, or the technicians’ club.”

I was starting to think this was more than even

Jonathan had hoped for.

“Then you can conduct meetings. Maybe even have

an outing. What an excellent way to learn about biology. I

should have thought of something like this myself when I 

 was a teacher. Why, we could even have trips to museums

and maybe even a trip to the university lab.”

We were all starting to get a little worried, and then

Mr. Little really floored us. “And of course, you’ll need an

adviser. I think I’ll appoint Mr. Hackney.”

“Oh no! No,” Jonathan said. I could see that Jonathan

was pretty upset, but he tried to do his best to remain

calm. “Um, no. That won’t be necessary. Ah. You don’t

have to inconvenience Mr. Hackney. He’s already done

enough for the cell.”

“Don’t be silly, young man. A club must have an

adviser,” Mr. Little said.

“Yeah. But that’ll be okay. We really don’t need an

adviser,” I blurted out. I couldn’t sit back in silence any

longer.

“Yeah, that’s right. We don’t need an adviser,” Phil

added.

“Hmm.” Mr. Little rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I

think I know what you’re trying to say. Old Clarence—

Mr. Hackney—is somewhat boring, isn’t he? Well, I’ll

tell you what. Yep. I know exactly what I’m going to do.”

We were all really worried now.

“I’ll be your adviser!” Mr. Little said as he slapped

both hands on his desk.