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about our shared hero, Jackie Robinson. Johnny had been to several games in 1947, the historic season when Robinson became the first African American to cross major-league baseball’s color line. Johnny had seen him beat out a bunt, hit an inside-the-park home run, and, most memorably, steal home. Against a backdrop of unyielding pressure his first year up, Robinson batted .297, led the league in stolen bases, and won the Rookie of the Year award. Only later would I come to understand the true significance of Robinson’s achievement: the pioneering rolehe played in the struggle for civil rights, the fact that, after his breakthrough, nothing would ever be the same—in baseball, in sports, or in the country itself. When I was six it was Robinson, the man, the fiery second baseman, who filled my imagination, taking his huge leads off base, diving headlong to snag a line drive, circling the bases with his strange pigeon-toed gait. “There’s no one like him,” Johnny said. “He plays to win every minute.” “Absolutely,” I added, echoing something my father had said. “With nine Jackie Robinsons, we’d never lose a game.”
    Nothing inspires camaraderie like sharing a victory, not only of a game, but of a season. In the splendid performance of the Dodgers that summer of 1949, my relationship with Johnny flourished. Their opening-day rout of the Giants, 10-3, inspired the demented hope that they would add 153 more wins and history would record the only perfect season in the annals of organized baseball. The experts had predicted that the Dodgers would battle the Cardinals in the National League pennant race. Powered by Stan Musial, Red Schoendienst, and Enos Slaughter, the Cardinals made reality of these prophecies. By the end of June, the two teams stood at the top of the league, chasing one another for first. That month, the Dodgers won nine straight, helped along by Johnny’s insistence on wearing the same blue-striped shirt as long as the streak lasted.
    After we became friends, I confided in Johnny my understanding that the tower at the entrance to the beach was being used as a prison for bad children. He admitted he had heard the same thing, but he didn’t really believe it was true. “Why don’t we go over there and find out for ourselves,” he suggested. Though I was not really keen on the idea, I didn’t want him to know I was afraid, so I followed him to the place where the tower stood. Several times we circled the perimeter of the tower, but there wasno sign of life. We were just about to leave when Johnny thought he heard muffled cries coming from inside the structure. I put my ear up against the wall and, sure enough, I heard the same thing. Convinced that it was our job to save the children, we found an indulgent park policeman and led him to the tower. At our insistence, the policeman put his ear against the wall, but said he heard absolutely nothing. When we did the same, the cries we were sure we had heard earlier were no longer audible. We raced back to the pool, determined to try again another day.
    Except for Eddie Rust and Steve Bartha, who lived on our block and occasionally joined us girls in punchball, Johnny was the first boy my age that I ever really talked to. On the playground at school, the girls would play on one side, the boys on the other. The boys came over to our side to tug our braids and ponytails, then, cackling, retreated. Being able to talk at length to a boy was something special. And it was my passion for baseball that made it possible.
    O N A SULTRY F RIDAY evening that same summer, after months of listening to games on the radio, I saw my first game at Ebbets Field. As my father and I walked up the cobblestone slope of Bedford Avenue and approached the arched windows of the legendary brick stadium, he explained how, as a boy, he had watched the ballpark being built, since the place where he had been sent to live after his parents died was only two blocks away. He was at