Big Mike

On days when there was no Dodger game, Mrs. Mann still liked me to stop by the window. It seemed that I kind of made her day a little brighter. She asked about my brothers and what they were doing. She always inquired about Mom. We also just talked about baseball in general and the Dodgers in particular. She got as excited as I did just talking about baseball and all the wondrous facets that made up the game, from the stars, to the rookies, to the umpires. She loved the colorful characters that were part of the game. I loved stopping to see her as she could really get me pumped and excited about baseball. I must say that she looked like a queen sitting up in that bed with her cucumber sandwiches, her Coke or Pabst, the pile of pillows and her radio within arm’s reach. Sadly Ferril Mann died of cancer that autumn. I saw her two daughters all dressed up, their Dad in a suit, the family leaving for the funeral in their big gray Buick. I was hiding in the alley so I could watch. It made me afraid. I didn’t know what happened at a funeral. I sure didn’t know that you had to get all dressed up. I didn’t understand death and had no experience with that kind of loss, but a big lesson was headed my way. My mom went to the funeral but she never talked to me about it. A piece of the Dodgers died when Ferril Mann passed away. Jackie Robinson was my favorite baseball player. I didn’t know he was black and the first black player in the major leagues. He was just Jackie Robinson -- the most exciting player in the major leagues. When I learned he was black, it didn’t make any difference. In my family, there was no reason to talk about the color of a man’s skin. It just didn’t much matter.