Read Online Ted & Me by Dan Gutman - Free Book Online

was going to hit him up for money.
    A man and a woman were coming toward me arm in arm. The guy also was wearing a hat. It occurred to me that all the men were wearing hats. I guess men wore hats in those days, even in the summer.
    â€œAm I heading toward Fenway Park?” I asked the couple.
    The woman giggled and pulled her man away from me as if I had a contagious disease.
    â€œWhat are you, a wise guy?” the man said as they hurried past me, laughing.
    Maybe this wasn’t Boston, it occurred to me.
    I spotted a garbage can on the next corner and rushed over there. Just as I’d hoped, there was a newspaper in it. I grabbed it.

    Philadelphia?
    Of course! The Declaration of Independence wasn’t written in Boston. It was written in Philadelphia. We learned that in school. No wonder those people looked at me strangely when I’d asked them how to get to Fenway Park.
    I sat down on a bench between 6th and 5th Streets to think things over. What was I doing inPhiladelphia? Ted Williams played for the Red Sox in the American League. The Phillies were in the National League. I knew that back in the old days, there was no interleague play. The Phillies and Red Sox would never play each other. Something must have gone wrong. Again.
    I cursed my bad luck. How come I never land where I want to land? The last time, when I went to see Roberto Clemente, I landed in New York even though Clemente was in Cincinnati. Now I had landed in Philly even though Williams was in Boston. Just once I wish it was easy.
    It looked like I would have to take a train to Boston. I didn’t know where the train station was or if the trains ran at night. And I didn’t even think to bring money with me. This was not looking good.
    I scanned the front page of the newspaper. I always liked newspapers. You can learn a lot of stuff from them. A lot of people, I know, use electronic readers now. But I like the feeling of paper.
    A nearby streetlamp was bright enough so I could read. I squinted to see the date at the top of the front page: September 27, 1941.
    Well, at least my timing was right. It was about ten weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
    The front page was filled with stories about the war raging in Europe. An article said that Nazi U-boats were terrorizing the North Atlantic Ocean. The German air force, the Luftwaffe, was bombing England. Germany’s biggest battleship, the Bismarck , had been sunk on May 27. Hitler invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, and the Nazis had just reached Leningrad.
    Nothing about Japan. At least according to the newspaper, Japan wasn’t even considered a threat. No wonder the attack on Pearl Harbor came as such a surprise.
    I turned to the sports section. The Brooklyn Dodgers had won the National League pennant, and the Yankees had won in the American League. The World Series was scheduled to begin in three days at Yankee Stadium. The second page of the sports section had an article about Ted Williams.

    September 28—the next day—would be the last day of baseball season. Ted’s batting average stood at .39955—just below the magical .400 mark. It would all come down to a doubleheader the next day against…THE PHILADELPHIA ATHLETICS.
    That’s right! Back in the old days, Philadelphia had a team in the American League called the Athletics, or the A’s. The Red Sox were going to play the Philadelphia Athletics on the last day of the season. That meant that Ted Williams was in Philadelphia!
    So that’s why I landed here. I didn’t have to take a train to Boston. Ted Williams was somewhere near me. I just had to track him down.
    He was probably staying in a hotel nearby, I figured. I stuffed the newspaper back into the garbage can and looked around. There was a grassy field behind me and a grand-looking building at the other end, about a block away. It could be a hotel. Somehow, it looked familiar. I walked toward it.

    I remembered the building. We had