September 19, 1942: Brooklyn, NY:
"Come on Vinnie! Keep us alive!" Harry Barrell shouted from the top step of the dugout.
Sitting behind his brother on the bench, Fred Barrell shook his head and gave a small, soft chuckle. Harry turned around and raised an eyebrow.
"What? You don't want to win?" he asked.
Fred shrugged. He was tired. It was hot - late September days in Brooklyn typically weren't in the 80s, but this one was. And it was the 12th inning and the Kings were losing 8-6 to the Montreal Saints. The Saints had entered the game at 73-74 on the year. Even worse, Brooklyn came in at 68-79.
"Aww, he's just melancholy, is all," drawled Frank Lightbody. "Us old fellers, well, we get like that from time to time," he added. Frank, like Fred, was 36 years old and though he hadn't come right out and said so, Fred though that Frank was also going to hang up his spikes at the end of what had been a long and frustrating season for Brooklyn.
The Kings were a team in transition. The days of wine & roses, as Fred now saw them, were over: Brooklyn was - at best - a mediocre club. Sure, Harry was still a great player and the team had Al Wheeler, but Dan had retired due to his bum knee, Tom had got himself dealt to Pittsburgh where he was now working out of the bullpen. Oh, how the mighty had fallen. The Kings' future lay in young outfielder Rats McGonigle, one of the most physically gifted athletes Fred had played with - and he'd played with some greats. McGonigle would be supported, it was hoped, by young slugger Tim Hopkins. Dubbed "Tiny Tim" by Harry - something picked up by the writers too - Hopkins was anything but tiny. And he could hit the ball a country mile.
"I'm not melancholy Frank. I'm just tired," Fred groaned. And he was. This was "Fred Barrell Appreciation Day" at Kings County Stadium and Fred had been feted before the game, given a bunch of gifts and forced to make a speech, feeling extremely uncomfortable the whole time. Tillie, standing beside him, had been thrilled and must have whispered "This is wonderful!" to Fred fifteen times during the approximately fifteen-minute festivities. And now Fred just wanted the game to be over.
Harry groaned as Vince D'Alessandro popped the ball on the infield. Saints shortstop Jake Hughes drifted a bit to his right and caught it two-handed, then clapped McGonigle - who had been on first - on the back as he ran past. The game was over, Montreal had won, and Fred looked forward to a shower and dinner with Tillie, Harry and Harry's wife Sarah.
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Fred's plans were a washout. It turned out that Kings skipper Powell Slocum had booked reservations at the Bigsby Club over in Manhattan. Fred, like most of his family, had a disdain bordering on hostility for the Bigsby family, but their fancy restaurant served some of the best steak on the East Coast. War or no war - or maybe because of the war - Fred wasn't going to turn that down.
So it ended up being a big to-do. Aside from Fred, Harry and their respective spouses, Powell and his wife Claudia (once married to Jimmy Barrell, so long ago it seemed like a dream) were there as was Rollie's daughter Marty, who was attending college at Henry Hudson. Fred was impressed by Rollie's daughters, they were both really intelligent and also driven to make their own place in a man's world. Rollie himself had joked with Fred about younger daughter Allie's determination to follow her father as owner of the Detroit Maroons football club. Fred had countered by noting that both girls apparently took after their mother.
Marty bounced in to the restaurant on the arm of a man in a US Navy uniform.
"Thanks for agreeing to let Jack come along Uncle Powell," she said when she reached the table. Powell, technically, was not her uncle, but as Claudia had once been married to a Barrell, Powell had sort of been grandfathered into the family by most of the Barrell clan.
"No problem my dear," Powell said in his Alabama drawl. Claudia, still a beautiful woman though now in her mid-forties, gave the Naval officer the once-over. "What is your name, lieutenant?" she asked.
"Jack McCarver, ma'am," the man replied. He then proceeded to shake hands with Powell, Fred and Harry in turn. Harry apparently recognized the name because he asked, "The Jack McCarver who plays for the Paladins?"
McCarver gave a lopsided grin and said, "Yep, one and the same."
Harry looked at Fred and explained, "McCarver here is a fullback. He plays for Pittsburgh in the AFA. Probably how Marty here met him," he nodded at his niece.
Marty nodded her head. "Yes, we met because of football. Dad dragged us all to some party for some coach or something and though Allie of course was entranced, I was bored until I met Jack," she punctuated her statement by squeezing the navy blue sleeve of McCarver's uniform.
"Joined up, did you?" Fred asked him.
"Yep. My parents immigrated to the States before I was born and they really drilled it into me what a privilege it was to live in the U.S." He explained that his parents were from different parts of Europe - his mother was from what was now Czechoslovakia, technically part of the Third Reich "at the moment" as McCarver put it while his father was Scottish and would fight anyone who called him "British" or god forbid, "English."
"So what are you doing here in New York?" Harry asked pointedly.
McCarver actually blushed. "Well...." he began before Marty interrupted. "He's here to play football. He plays for Great Lakes Navy, you know," she added.
"Ah," Harry said with a nod. "I guess the football players are getting some of the same treatment the ballplayers are - you know, play for the services, keep up morale, etcetera..."
"You sound like you don't approve," McCarver replied, and sounded a bit aggravated.
"Oh, no, not at all. I think it's important to keep up morale," Harry said. "If I wasn't married and didn't have a toddler I'd have probably signed up."
McCarver nodded and smiled.
Harry nodded his head at Fred, "Freddy here is already signed up."
Fred sighed, wishing Harry could keep his trap shut.
"That so?" McCarver asked.
"Technically, yes. I am going into government service, but not the armed forces. State Department, starting in about two weeks," Fred explained hoping that the boring cover job he was taking would derail this particular conversation.
"State Department? You're going to be a diplomat or something?" McCarver asked. Everyone else around the table looked a bit uncomfortable. Most of the family knew - without anyone explicitly saying it out loud - that Fred would be doing something distinctly different, and more dangerous than, diplomacy.
"Translator, actually," Fred said. "I have an ear, or maybe it's a tongue? For languages," he added. He looked at Claudia, who had helped him get up to speed with German, and winked at her.
"He's actually very good," Claudia said right on cue. "I am from Germany, and he speaks my mother language better than I do," she added with a laugh.
"That's not quite true, but thank you," Fred replied.
"This football thing... I'm going to request sea service after the season," McCarver said and Fred inwardly sighed in relief at the conversation moving away from his "branch of service" and back into safer areas.
"What! You didn't tell me that, Jack!" Marty exclaimed. "What if you get torpedoed by one of those nasty U-Boats?"
Jack patted her arm. "Don't worry Marty, Navy ships have ways of defending themselves you know."
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Marty Barrell with Jack McCarver, 1943