Willie & Me by Dan Gutman Read Free Book Online Page A

knew that they had night games in 1951, but most baseball games still took place during the day.
    I was pretty sure I had the right year, but I wanted to make sure I had arrived on the right day . The easiest way to find out was to look at a newspaper.
    There weren’t any newsstands around, but there was the next best thing—a garbage can. You can almost always find a newspaper in a garbage can, especially back in the old days before they had recycling.
    I spotted a can near the corner and went over to it. I rooted around until I found a copy of the New York Times . . . .

    Okay, good. It was probably yesterday’s paper. Everything was working out perfectly. After eleven trips, I was finally getting the hang of this time travel thing. Maybe my luck had finally changed.
    I scanned the Times for a minute. It cost just five cents in 1951, I noticed. The first parking meters were being installed in Brooklyn. The heavyweight champion Joe Louis had signed a contract to fight Rocky Marciano. RCA was inviting the public to see an early test of color television. But I wasn’t about to waste my time reading the paper. I wanted to get inside the ballpark.
    Standing right next to it, I thought the Polo Grounds somehow looked different from the other times I had been there. I pulled on a door, but it was locked. I tried another one. No luck. I looked for a window I might be able to climb into. But it was a solid brick wall. It occurred to me that maybe I was in the back of the ballpark. I walked all the way around to the front and backed away from the wall until I saw this. . . .

    What?! Yankee Stadium isn’t even in Manhattan. It’s in the Bronx . Everybody knows that. That’s why the Yankees are called “The Bronx Bombers.” I needed to be in Manhattan. What was I doing here ? Somehow, I had messed up, again.
    Across the street, I spotted a guy in overalls pushing a big broom. He was on a walkway next to the river. I ran over to him.
    â€œExcuse me,” I said in my most polite voice. “Can you tell me how to get to the Polo Grounds?”
    The guy stopped sweeping and looked up at me with disgust.
    â€œYou from outta town?” he asked me. “Or just stupid?”
    He turned around and pointed across the river. There was a ballpark on the other side, and a big hill behind it.

    I didn’t know that the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium were so close to each other.

    Of course ! Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds were right next to each other on either side of the Harlem River. I knew that. I had forgotten.
    â€œI’m from out of town,” I said, running off. “Thanks, mister!”
    â€œFuhgetaboutit,” he mumbled.
    One of the things I like about New York City is that it’s easy to get around, because the streets are numbered. There was a small bridge that crossedover the Harlem River into Manhattan. A little sign said it was the Macombs Dam Bridge, and it opened in 1895. That was the year Babe Ruth was born, I remembered. I jogged across the bridge.
    It ended with a fork that led onto 155th Street. I walked two blocks north to 157th, and there it was. . . .
    The Polo Grounds.
    It wasn’t a beautiful ballpark, like Wrigley Field, Shibe Park, and some of the other places I had visited. But this was the ballpark I remembered from my previous trips. I ran across the street and peered through the chain-link fence. The place looked empty.
    I figured I would just hang out at the front gate until somebody showed up and the ticket booths opened. There was a lot of time to kill. I wished I had brought a portable video game system, or something to read. Waiting is boring.
    That’s when I remembered the little video camera that my grandmother had given me for my birthday. I had been planning to bring it along and shoot some video from 1951, but I must have left it on the desk in my room. Bummer!
    I kept looking through the fence and thinking that anybody could