Katie had laid the letter on his nightstand about a week ago, but Joe had seemed to take no notice and the envelope didn’t look like he had opened it. She swore she wouldn’t pry. He received a lot of mail, even in these waning years (though far from his golden days in Chicago). But something seemed different about this letter. Its stamp celebrated the 100 years of U.S. postage stamps, with George Washington and Ben Franklin looking as stately as thieves and presiding in their ovals over transportation modes used to deliver the mail during that century.
Katie wondered which one would have taken this long to drop this letter off in Greenville, South Carolina. The postmark looked as faded as Joe’s dungarees and seemed to say San Francisco and “194,” but she didn’t feel confident with any guesses. Joe had been having nightmares lately and his cold sweats scared her with an intensity that put her in his mood. When she asked him if he was okay, he would nod and admit “I feel as grand as I did when Wilson was president.”
“Did you ever meet President Wilson?” she asked.
“If I did, I don’t remember. He was president when we won the Series in 1917, but I can’t recall whether he came to see us afterward or maybe he threw out the ball at Comiskey the next year,” Joe said, plowing into his eggs like he had to prepare them for this season’s tobacco crops. But his farming days were long over and his liquor shop brought in enough money and rumors for him to not have many worries. But that burden slipped to Katie cautiously and slyly one night and they spoke no more about President Wilson or any World Series decades ago.
The next morning, Joe awoke exceedingly early for a man in his 60s and aroused Katie long before she cared to wake up. She didn’t realize the time, settling into her usual routine by brewing coffee and frying some ham steaks before they walked the six blocks to the store. But when Joe appeared at the kitchen table, he gave her an uneasy look and then delicately slipped into his chair.
“No need for a fuss this morning, Katie dear. I have to pick up Hal from the train station. He’ll have been traveling all night. We won’t open the store today, but we’ll stay open an hour later each day for two weeks and we’ll make up this inconvenience, which isn’t much of an inconvenience for me, as I can’t wait to see how Hal has changed in all these years,” Joe said, finding a little extra perk in this morning’s coffee.
“Hal who?” Katie asked, not ever hearing that name before.
“Hal Chase of course. Didn’t I tell you about the letter?”
In his day, Hal Chase was perhaps the finest first baseman in all of baseball. If not for a few great men in the intervening years, he might still retain that moniker. And maybe if he hadn’t been kicked out of baseball for betting. And that’s what drew Hal to Joe. They could hit the ball to all parts of the field, they could track down any ball hit their way, and they were as quick as liquid gold and perhaps just as valuable. But they fell into the trap presented by greed and never recovered.
Shoeless Joe Jackson had agreed to appear on television to explain why he and some of his fellow Chicago White Sox teammates had taken money to squander his team’s chances to win the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. Hal Chase had been banned from baseball after the 1919 season for possibly having influenced those players. Neither man would be allowed induction into the Hall of Fame unless a commissioner deemed them eligible. They were almost teammates in 1915 with the White Sox, but Hal had jumped from Chicago to Buffalo in the offseason and Shoeless Joe wasn’t traded from the Cleveland Indians to the ChiSox until August 1915. But baseball and betting would tie the men together in history forever.
“This letter came the other day, I guess, but I didn’t notice it until a couple days ago. It says Hal is coming here to see me and talk with me about getting us back in baseball’s good graces. He must know about the TV show,” Joe said as Katie cleared the dishes.
In brief, the letter said:
Dear Joe,
This war has given me great cause to consult my life frame by frame, like I’m at a picture show watching everyone else have a good time and I can’t join in. I ain’t got no reason to want to play again at this age, but I’d like to coach or to at least attend a game without all the whispers. I have a plan we can take to Commissioner Chandler and I think he’ll hear us out. But because he’s on your coast, I might as well come visit you before we decide whether to go to New York to see him.
I know we ain’t been on talking terms in a long time, so I hope you’ll forgive me for that error. But I have other sins to confess and I hope you’ll be my confessor and my savior. I won’t hold no grudge if you say no to anything, but I’ll be arriving in Greenville on May 20 and I hope you’ll meet me at the train station. I have other plans prepared if you don’t meet me. But please consider it.
Give my best to Katie. I ain’t hardly cared to look at a woman in ages, so you’re blessed in this regard. I’ll hope to see you soon, comrade in commiseration.
Your pal,
Hal
Katie read the letter and then noticed what had troubled her about this letter from the time it had arrived: the date of May 1, 1947. Joe must have missed it, thinking Hal meant the Korean War. But she also knew that Ford Frick had become the new baseball commissioner in 1951. She read the stories in the paper, even if Joe refused to pay any attention to baseball anymore. She laid down the letter and went into the bedroom, where she kept a baseball encyclopedia she had bought brand new in January. She turned to the page for Hal Chase. He died May 18, 1947, in Colusa, California, at age 64—the same age at which Joe would die seven months later.
“Joe, Hal’s dead,” Katie said, pointing to the entry for Hal in her book. “He died four years ago. He never made that train.”
Joe grabbed the five-pound book and heaved it through the front window, shattering his final dream.
***
Christopher Stolle has been published by Indiana University Press, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Coaches Choice, “Tipton Poetry Journal,” “Flying Island,” “Last Stanza Poetry Journal,” “The Alembic,” “Sheepshead Review,” and “Plath Poetry Project,” among others. He lives in Richmond, Indiana.
