Blue Moon sat in fourth-period wood shop, glancing at the clock, wishing the bell would hurry up and ring. Seemed like he was always watching the clock. It wasn’t just senioritis—although in truth he was ready to be done with high school. His impatience had more to do with his rush to sign a contract and start playing pro ball.
On this day, his girlfriend, Perrie, would be walking home with him for lunch. She’d forgiven him for choosing to go fishing with his friends over the chance to go out with her in her daddy’s car. How could she not have forgiven him? As disappointed as she’d been, she appreciated his sense of right and wrong, an attribute she knew he’d learned, along with a solid work ethic, from his mother. Blue Moon was always telling her how he needed to hurry to practice or to get to work. She just wished that sometimes he would show that same commitment to her. She was dreading the day Blue Moon would leave Macon to take off in pursuit of his dream, not to mention her worries about all those other girls he would surely meet. His mother, Florine, believed he learned his values from going to the Methodist church with her every Sunday, but Blue Moon wasn’t buying that theory. He didn’t like going to church and sitting still for an hour. The sermons flew by him.
With one eye still on the wood shop clock, Blue Moon continued to apply the lacquer to his latest project, a shoeshine kit. He was pretty sure he was getting an A on this project, as well as in the class. In his math, social studies, and English classes, however, he was just limping along with C’s, finding it hard to get motivated to do his homework and study like his mother kept harping on him to do. Why should he? He knew that the baseball scouts coming to see him pitch didn’t give a rip whether he got a C or a D in algebra.
College was still an option—he’d gotten a football scholarship offer from Southern University—but with a couple of months left in the school year, he was 99 percent sure he would sign a baseball contract the day he graduated. He didn’t know how much of a bonus he’d get, but scouts from the Giants and Red Sox were hinting he could get as much as $20,000. That would be enough, he reasoned, to buy his mom a new house and allow her to quit that job cleaning those white people’s house. And he had visions of that new car.
Teams were prohibited from making him a formal offer until after he graduated, but there were rumors that at least a dozen teams would have a scout at the ceremony, ready to get his John Hancock before he even got out of his cap and gown. He didn’t have an agent. Nobody did in 1964—not Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Sandy Koufax, or his hero, Bob Gibson. Robert Slocum, his high school coach and as close as he had to a father figure, had promised to help advise him and his mother with the negotiations, knowing that a naive eighteen-year-old teenager who’d never had more than a couple of nickels to rub together would certainly be no match in financial negotiations with a slick and seasoned representative of a major-league franchise. The two things Blue Moon would have going for him in these negotiations, however, were a cannon for an arm and the fact that a lot of teams wanted his services. A bidding war could erupt.
The bell finally rang, and he hustled out of class. As usual, Perrie was waiting dutifully by his locker, ready to follow.
It was a chilly spring day as Blue Moon and Perrie walked the five blocks from Ballard-Hudson to his home. As he did most days, he was spending his lunchtime with her. He had friends at school, but no best friend. He considered himself a loner.
The street near his house wasn’t paved, so he picked up a few rocks off the gravel road and halfheartedly gave them a toss. Growing up, he’d spent many hours on that road, picking up rocks and throwing them at the nearby trees. He might pretend to be Bob Gibson, or Don Newcombe, or even Satchel Paige, the legendary star of the old Negro League. Macon never had a team in the Negro League, but occasionally teams would come to town on barnstorming tours. Blue Moon never went to any of those games. Attendance was a financial luxury his mother couldn’t afford.
With the exception of a couple of years, Macon had fielded a team in the South Atlantic (SALLY) League, a Class A league. But now Macon was moving up to AA for the 1964 season—the Southern League—joining franchises in Birmingham, Columbus, Knoxville, Lynchburg, Chattanooga, Asheville, and Charlotte… with integrated teams, as well as integrated grandstands in each city.
Unlike Birmingham, Macon had fielded integrated teams over the past decade. That’s not to say that Macon fans at Luther Williams Field greeted black players on opposing teams with open arms. (The stands were segregated, with black fans required to sit in bleachers down the left-field line.) Many nights, white fans brought megaphones to the ballpark, and any time a black stepped to the plate, they started chanting: “Hit the nigger in the head.” If he got on base, they started a new chant: “Watch out. That nigger’s gonna steal.”
In a couple of months, these fans would overflow Luther Williams Field for Blue Moon’s debut.
Sitting in the back of his senior comp class, Blue Moon eyed the principal’s secretary entering the room and whispering something to the teacher, who turned and motioned for Blue Moon to come to the front of the class. The principal wanted to see him in his office, on the double.
He had no idea why he’d been summoned. He wasn’t a troublemaker, he didn’t sass his teachers, he didn’t bully, and he never skipped classes. About the only bad thing he’d done was smoke a few cigarettes, but not on campus.
Nearing the office, he passed a framed photo of John F. Kennedy. When Kennedy was assassinated five months earlier, Blue Moon heard the news at football practice. Play-off games across the state the next day were postponed, and on Monday kids were still crying in the hallway, especially the girls.
Entering the office, he was greeted by the principal, as well as Coach Slocum. They were both smiling.
“There’s somebody on the phone who wants to talk with you,” said Coach Slocum, handing him the receiver.
On the other end was Charlie Finley, the owner of the Kansas City A’s. Blue Moon knew who he was, but just barely. Team owners weren’t on his radar.
He listened to Finley for a moment, then put his hand over the receiver and whispered to the two men: “He wants to fly to Macon next week and talk to me about signing with the A’s.”