The bus rolled south out of Birmingham on the team’s first road trip, a 130-mile journey to Columbus, Georgia. Three days later they would cross the state to Macon for three more games. On board were twenty-two players (average age of twenty-two), with no college grads, eleven married men (eight with children), and fifteen smokers, with Marlboros and Winstons being the cigarettes of choice.
“Hey, Bussie,” hollered Hoss, “could you pull over?”
“A piss stop already?” asked Lindblad.
“No, I want to see if I can find that home run you gave up. Oh, wait. Bussie, keep going. It’s at least another ten miles.”
In the minor leagues, bus trips are as much a part of the players’ experience as foul balls. The team is both isolated and confined, a rolling band of brothers, sleeping, snacking, cussing, lying, spitting, farting, playing cards, and one-upping each other. There are no outside distractions. Being away from wives, kids, and trips to Piggly Wiggly to pick up some TV dinners translates into talking about cars, girls, and sliders on the corner. Bus trips can make or break a team. It’s where team chemistry is built… or destroyed.
The Barons’ bus passed through a corridor of tall pines in the gently rolling countryside. Using his own money, Belcher had bought the bus—a converted Greyhound, nicknamed “Iron Lung” by the players. Its air conditioner was broken, windows wouldn’t open, and the smell of diesel fuel permeated the inside. In April, this was not a problem. In July and August—watch out.
Lindblad handed the sports page to Hoss and then pulled it back. “Oh, I forgot,” he said. “They don’t teach reading down there in Arkansas. And what about math? Do they teach you how to do averages? If not, I can help. You’ve got zero hits for the season. That means you’re batting zero.”
“Keep going, Bussie,” said Hoss, “that ball should be up here somewhere.”
Despite the “sociological success” of the opening of the baseball season in Birmingham, other parts of Alabama continued with segregation as usual. In Notasulga, a hundred miles southeast of Birmingham and not far from Auburn University, Ku Klux Klan arsonists set fire to a high school scheduled to enroll six black students in the fall, forcing its closure. No arrests were made.
In Montgomery, Governor George Wallace’s strong showing in Midwest primaries had given his presidential campaign a new concern—his personal safety. At campaign events away from Alabama, he had sometimes encountered hostile crowds, despite being surrounded by three or four armed guards. With primaries coming up in Maryland and Indiana, his advisers requested more security. (This concern foreshadowed by eight years the assassination attempt in 1972 that would leave him paralyzed.)
Bolstered by Wallace’s success, Bull Connor began to stir again politically, resurfacing as a spokesman for White Citizens’ Councils, traveling around the state to raise funds to fight the civil rights movement.
“Segregationists might be on the one-yard line with our backs to the wall,” he said. “But we will fight back. I guarantee it.”
In Birmingham, Belcher was keeping himself informed about Connor’s actions… just in case. And along with everyone else in the city, he was following the FBI’s attempt to bring justice in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. Despite the most extensive investigation in the Bureau’s history, as well as eyewitness testimony, no arrests had been made.
An editorial in the Post-Herald argued that the civil rights bill being debated in Congress was a “threat to traditional liberties of American people.” If passed, the editorial concluded, “it would give the government too much power over the daily lives of citizens.”
As had been the case in Birmingham, Columbus’s game with the Barons would be its first-ever integrated game. Although Columbus (a Yankee farm team) had a long minor-league history, it had been five years since its last professional game. Local ownership there had also shut down the team there rather than integrate.
With a population of 150,000, Columbus advertised its white colonial houses with well-tended gardens, lush lawns, forests of azaleas, and elaborate wrought-iron verandas. The city was home to RC Cola and Tom’s Roasted Peanuts. Locals liked to call it “simply one of the best places on Earth.” But in the early 1960s, urban blight and white flight had taken their toll on its once bustling core.
The city had a troubled history of racial violence. Assaults on black people were frequent and often brutal. In 1954, Dr. Thomas Brewer, a black physician who helped create the Columbus chapter of the NAACP and orchestrated voter registration drives, was shot by a white police officer seven times in front of his own office. Despite several witnesses to the shooting, no arrest was ever made.
In recent months, racial tension in the city had ratcheted up, due in part to the increased number of black soldiers arriving for basic infantry training at nearby Fort Benning. Many of these soldiers would be leaving soon for the escalating war in Vietnam. They not only faced hostility from white soldiers on the base, but when they ventured into Columbus they were banned from whites-only restaurants, bars, restrooms, and public parks. That they were soldiers prepared to give their lives for their country seemed not to matter.
As the bus stopped in front of the historic Parsons Hotel downtown, the players disembarked, grabbed their bags from the bus, and headed inside to receive their room keys—two men to a room. Or at least the white players did. As the bus pulled away from the curb, with the black players still on board, Lindblad watched it disappear around the corner.
“Where do those guys stay?” he asked.
Nobody knew.
For Lindblad, this was a new experience. During his first season with Burlington in the Midwest League, the blacks stayed in the same hotels. On one road trip, he and Tommie Reynolds had roomed together.
After checking into the Parsons Hotel, Lindblad headed out on foot in search of lunch. Other than the home run on his first pitch, his initial appearance had been satisfying, even though Sullivan hadn’t given him any indication if he’d get a starting assignment on this trip.
Wandering into Woolworth’s in Columbus Square, he sat down at the lunch counter (where there’d been a series of sit-ins the previous year). Surveying the menu, he debated between a BLT for fifty cents, or a ham salad sandwich for thirty cents. What he really craved was a chili cone from Barker’s Dairy back home in Chanute, or even a burger, but Woolworth’s didn’t serve burgers, not in Columbus, not anywhere.
He ordered the cheaper ham salad sandwich, mindful of the tight budget he and Kathy were on. Financially, his big hope was that he would stick with the Barons for ninety days and earn his $1,000 “progressive bonus.”
He inquired as to the cost of a slice of apple pie and a large Coke. “Pie is a quarter, Coke is a dime… just like it says on the menu,” answered the waitress.
He did a little quick math. The sandwich, pie, and Coke would come to sixty-five cents. Add a dime for a tip—no, she had an attitude—and he’d still have $2.35 of his per-diem meal money left. He couldn’t even fathom getting the $18-per-day meal money the big leaguers got, but if he continued to watch his pennies on the road, he could return home with four or five extra dollars. He and Kathy could buy diapers for a month with that, or apply it to the $70-a-month rent on their apartment.
After inhaling his ham salad sandwich, he walked back to the Parsons. He thought about calling Kathy, but held off, deciding to wait until later when the rates were cheaper.
Kathy answered the phone in their two-bedroom Birmingham apartment, excited as always to get a call from Paul. She was also apprehensive.
For as long as she’d known him, she’d thought about telling him her big secret—that her stepfather had sexually abused her starting when she was in junior high. She had never told anyone, not her sisters, not her mother. She didn’t know if her stepfather had also abused her sisters, or if her mom knew about it. In the era of Ozzie and Harriet, sexual abuse somehow seemed improbable in a small, wholesome Midwestern town. She’d never even heard anyone talk about it.
As often as she’d thought about telling her husband, she couldn’t get past a feeling of shame, as if it were somehow her fault. What if she told him and he couldn’t handle it? Paul was the nicest person she’d ever met, the perfect husband for her… but the fear of risking what she had with him was inhibiting. But if not now, when?
Hearing his voice on the phone, as always, made her feel better. There was just something so comforting and calm about him, a feeling that he would always take care of her and the girls. After asking her how her day had gone, he told her that he’d just pitched four scoreless innings in relief against Columbus.
“Maybe Sully will give me a start in Macon,” he said.
She knew that now was definitely not the time to tell him.
“And guess what?” he added. “I’ll have a little present for you when I get off this trip.”