The Real Rules of Parkchester Baseball

As early as she could remember, Tabby Moskowitz was aware of a world beyond the sixth-floor apartment, revealed by the westward-facing living room window. From the two-bedroom dwelling she shared with her parents and older sister, Tabby would gaze upon the playground and green ballfields in the foreground — a perfect view of the first base line and left field. Sometimes, she’d fixate on a lone tree — a silver maple — that cast a late afternoon shadow over third base. On clear days she could see beyond the end of the Bronx and the Harlem River to Manhattan and its beckoning skyscrapers.

“So pretty,” Tabby had said. She must have been five at the time. Maybe younger.

“Pheh,” was her mother Zelda’s response. “Urban, concrete ugliness. Vienna. Now that was a city. The architecture, the cathedrals, the squares, the Danube. Did I ever tell you about the Lipizzaners, the dancing horses? You’ve never seen anything like it. Horses on their toes, like ballet dancers. The most graceful creatures you’ve ever seen. Vienna was a sparkling city, it could lift spirits, not crush them in filth.”

Tabby couldn’t understand her mother’s response; how could one not be awestruck by the world before them? There was so much she didn’t understand about her mother. For instance, why Zelda had forcibly taken the pencil, fork, and toothbrush out of Tabby’s left hand and put it into her right. “The world wasn’t built for left-handed people. Better to fit in.” Or why she would look upon her younger daughter with a near-constant scowl of disapproval. Pigtailed and stout, Tabby was the kind of girl born to run, jump, throw a ball, or climb a fence, who preferred pants to skirts. She was always tall for her age and thickly built with uncommonly broad shoulders and strong forearms. It was as if her mother didn’t like how the clay mold had dried and wished to resculpt her offspring.

“Vilda kinder,” Zelda would say. Wild child. “Tabitha,” she’d say, using the given name Tabby loathed. “You move like a bull, not a ballerina.”

 

In Tabby’s eighth summer, New York City experienced a stifling heat wave. “Mama, it’s so hot,” Tabby had said. “Can we open the door?”

To mitigate the heat on summer nights — Parkchester hadn’t been wired for air-conditioning — the Moskowitz’s Italian, Irish, Polish, and fellow Jewish neighbors, who might have been mortal enemies in other parts of the Bronx, did something that defied the basic natural laws of New York City. They kept their doors and windows open all night with fans blowing, the cross breeze offering some relief. They also visited one another’s apartments and congregated in the hallways, talking into the night, sharing drinks and stories.

“I don’t trust a single one of them,” Zelda had said. “I leave that door open, we’ll let the filth in, and mark my words, my mother’s jewels will disappear.”

The Moskowitzes lived in a world dreamed up by Frederick Hudson Ecker, an executive at the Metropolitan Insurance Company. He envisioned Parkchester, which opened in the ’40s, a few years before Tabby’s birth, as a model city within a city, a place where working-class, white, ethnic New Yorkers — Blacks and Puerto Ricans need not apply, at least until the late ’60s — could live the American dream without having to decamp to the suburbs. Parkchester placed residents a half-hour subway ride from the city and an elevator ride from department stores, movie theaters, playgrounds, and the manicured Metropolitan Oval, the center of the 140-building complex, where water spouted from nymphs as if it were an Italian villa.

The code of conduct within Parkchester itself was as clear as Hammurabi’s: If you’re going to build an urban utopia, you’ve got to have law and order — especially among children. No bicycles, with or without training wheels, were allowed on paths. No walking on the grass. No climbing fences. No picking flowers.

To enforce all these rules, MetLife hired an army of white men to patrol the grounds, documenting infractions on records said to be permanent. Parents would receive letters in the mail listing complaints and warnings of consequences ranging from loss of amenities access to eviction.

One Passover, the Moskowitz family walked three buildings over, where Zelda’s older brother, Myer Gluckstein, lived with his 12-year-old son, Peter. Myer’s wife, Ruth, had scandalously abandoned him. Last she’d written she was waiting tables in California. When they all should have been focused on the retelling of the ancient Israelite deliverance from slavery to freedom, Peter — out of earshot of the adults — shared a different story with Tabby and her sister, Ellen. He’d been caught doing the unthinkable, picking a tulip, which he’d said was for his mother but was intended for some girl.

“What’s your name, kid?” a Parkchester patroller had asked him.

“Peter.”

“Don’t be a wiseass kid. Peter what?”

“O’ Callaghan.”

“O’Callaghan? Gonna give the Micks a bad name. Your parents will be hearing about this.”

Tabby felt something between awe and incomprehension. How could someone just not tell the truth to an adult? Wasn’t it simply wrong? Zelda had always said, “do right and you will be treated right.” Peter had done the wrong thing and gotten exactly what he wanted.

 

Shortly after her ninth birthday, two days before she’d entered fourth grade, her father, Issac, called her over to their only table, dangling a key in front of her.

Isaac was far more tolerant of Tabby’s exuberance than Zelda, yet was hardly ever home. He owned a furniture upholstery factory a couple of train stops down the line. With department store reps and private customers always bringing work, he rarely got home before eight. He often returned exhausted, collapsing into his chair, playing jazz or classical records, poring over The New York Times or one of the dozens of books he’d collected on Greek mythology. His reading regimen should have been beyond the grasp of someone with an eighth-grade education but came as easily as nailing fabric into place with a tack hammer.

“You know, now that your mother is going to work for the insurance company, she won’t be here when you get home from school,” said Isaac.

“Not home?”

How was this possible? Her mother had always been there, watching her more closely than any patroller.

“Your mother thought you should wait at the school for your sister to walk you home,” he said. “I told her it’s just four blocks, and our Tabby is not so little and has a head on her shoulders. She can walk home on her own. Let herself in.”

Isaac still wore his jacket, but his tie was loosened, top buttons undone. He spoke softly as if he relished not having to project his voice over loud noises.

Tabby felt something exhilarating rising in her. Freedom.

“Don’t make me look like a schmendrick,” he said. “Let yourself in, have a little nosh. Go play outside. For God’s sake, don’t lay a hand on the television. Your mother will know. She can sense when it’s been turned on. You have a watch, right? Come home in time to do your schoolwork.”

She kissed her father on the cheek. He’d just given her the best gift anyone ever had: Two free hours to play outside, without interference.

After the first day of school, she didn’t bother waiting for the elevator, springing up the stairs, neither gasping for air nor burning quads slowing her stride. For the first time, she had the apartment to herself. Empty of family, it seemed both larger and smaller, as if a long-sought prize had amounted to less than she’d imagined.

Yet she only stayed a minute. The playground beckoned. She dropped her schoolbooks, changed into play clothes and sprinted out the door.

Scanning the scene: girls were skipping double Dutch between the slide and swings. On the asphalt, a group of boys played punchball, which is played like baseball, but with a soft ball and no need for a bat or glove, and there’s no pitching. The batter bounces the ball and hits it as hard as she can with a closed fist and runs.

Tabby knew the rules of the playground were girls had to play with girls and boys had to play with boys, but she hadn’t been given the gift of freedom to settle for Double Dutch. She needed to play a game involving a ball and running. She didn’t ask if she could play. She simply saw that one team was down a player and filled the gap in the outfield.

If any of the boys objected to having a girl on the asphalt, none showed it during her first plate appearance. She bounced the ball on the asphalt, drew her arm back like an archer, and, with perfectly controlled application of force, sent the ball flying well over the left fielder’s head, driving in two runners and crossing home herself with the sense that she’d just done what she’d waited her whole life to do. She looked up, expecting all eyes upon her, but attention had turned to the baseball diamond abutting the asphalt yard. A particularly loud crack of the bat, like thunder, captured attention. The sound reminded the boys, and now Tabby, that they were playing a child’s game, that the real game was close, but out of reach.

* * *

“You smell like a wet dog,” her sister, Ellen, told her when she returned to the apartment dripping with sweat.

Ellen was two years Tabby’s senior. She was studious and made a show of being created in her mother’s image. The sisters shared a bedroom: two twin beds, a single dresser, and a tiny closet. Ellen enforced her own set of rules: Stay off my bed. Don’t ask questions. Don’t breathe too loudly. Don’t ask for help. The sisters lived in a kind of Cold War detente, with occasional outbreaks of pushing and kicks to the shin.

“Gotta do my homework,” Tabby said, trying not to get dragged into a fight.

“You sit down to dinner smelling like that, Mom’s gonna yell at you,” Ellen said, not looking up from a magazine. “Of course, you move a shampoo bottle, and she’ll yell at you. I think it’ll be worse though, if you don’t shower,” Ellen continued. “‘My daughter the ape.’ ‘My daughter the tobacco spitter.’ Maybe she’ll make you eat in the bedroom. Maybe she won’t let you have dinner at all.”

“Shut up.” Tabby stormed into their bedroom. She showered before her mother got home.

* * *

Punchball continued through the fall and winter, but as spring emerged, Tabby found just a few younger boys trying, and mostly failing, to bounce and strike the ball with adequate force and direction. Where had everyone else gone?

The thwack of a wooden bat striking leather unstuck her mind. Squinting, she made out some of the faces on the field.

“Mosk. Mosk,” Sal, a boy in her class, called out. Glove in hand, he pressed his face against the chain-link fence separating the dirt and grass from the asphalt. “Well, ya gonna get out here?” he shouted.

“The big kids want us?” Tabby answered, still about 30 yards from the fence.

Sal shook his head as if he couldn’t believe her cluelessness.

“Mosk, hello! You on Mars or something? High school baseball started,” Sal said. “Lots of spots opened up. Ya wanna play or not? I think they’ll let a girl play, or at least they’ll let you play. Everyone knows you’re not like a girl.”

She wasn’t sure whether to thank the kid or charge around the fence and deck him. Instead, she pointed out that she didn’t own a glove.

Sal motioned to a pile of battered leather gloves near home plate. “Rec office lent us a whole bunch. Go on, take one,” he said.

Things couldn’t work this way, Tabby thought. Girls don’t just get invited to the field. She walked through a hole in the fence halfway between first and home and approached the pile. She felt all eyes on her. Chatter ceased. She locked eyes with her cousin Peter. He looked away, unwilling to acknowledge her. He appeared scrawny next to the other boys, some of whom were as old as 12 or 13. While she was big for age, she knew she couldn’t match the older boys in strength or speed. Yet part of her was confident in her ability to keep up; she possessed a rare ability to pick up a sport as if she’d been playing her whole life. The other half of her felt alone, wanted to run off the field to escape the stares, to find a place where she could cry without worrying if anyone saw. She wanted relief from the unbearable feeling of being unwanted. Yet she knew that if she retreated, there’d be no second chance. Somehow, she’d found the resolve to stay, as if every cell in her body knew she belonged on that field.

The glove she’d picked was a little big but would work. And the bright glare made it hard to see the ball. She trotted to left field, wishing she had a hat.

“Yo, pigface, catch.” The voice had come from the other side of the field, a boy she didn’t recognize.

A ball flew toward her, obscured by the glare. Don’t let it hit you in the face, she thought. She wasn’t worried about pain or injury, but embarrassment. Through the harsh light, she heard the thud of the ball hitting her glove, then she threw it back with enough force for the boy to feel as if he’d been struck in the palm.

“Not bad. Thought you were gonna catch it with your ugly face,” the centerfield yelled loud enough for everyone to hear.

Tabby searched her mind for an insult to hurl back but found nothing. Still, she wouldn’t hang her head.

“Hey, dipshit,” the second basemen called out. “That’s what I told your mother last night.”

She smiled and, with that, the game went on. In between innings, she’d learn the second baseman’s name was Charlie, and that he was 12 and lived just outside Parkchester, in an apartment right next to the newly built Cross Bronx Expressway. She’d needed an ally that day.

Her first time at bat, she’d been overpowered by Leftie Louie’s fastball. Strong as she was, it seemed impossible to get that wooden bat around fast enough to catch up with the ball hurled by the bigger, stronger boy. She missed wildly and stood frozen as the third strike crossed the plate.

The second time? She foul-tipped the first pitch, the vibration causing such pain that she had to drop the bat. Her hands and wrists were burning; she wasn’t sure if she could pick the bat back up, now or ever.

“You got this Mosk,” Charlie called out.

She felt something pulse through her, almost like electricity. Was she hurt? No, it was as if her own nervous system was talking to her, telling her what she was capable of doing. The next pitch she saw the ball clearly, looked to be the size of a grapefruit or even a watermelon, and connected with the bat’s sweet spot and felt no vibration. Better than that, that swing had felt as natural as breathing. She saw the ball sailing over the heads of the shortstop and the third baseman, disappearing momentarily, into a shadow. Instead of running she noticed the tree beyond third base, darkening a section of the field. For a nanosecond, Tabby had wondered why anyone would plant a tree there and thought of the times she’d looked at the tree from her window.

Run. She heard the word in her mind before anyone had the chance to scream it out loud, and she took off for first. The ball plopped onto an unshaded patch of grass. She’d managed her first hit.

“Yeah, Mosk!” Charlie called out. “What I tell ya? She can play.”

She returned to her apartment that early evening in triumph, her body dirty and sweaty, her spirit elated. Her stomach rumbled and she was badly in need of a drink. How could she think of doing homework now, or of sharing a dinner table with Ellen and her mother? She just wanted to be free to replay that hit in her mind.

Ellen had her books spread out over the table and looked up at Tabby as if she were condemned. Then, like high-pitched strings in a horror movie, Tabby heard the clanking of plates. Her mother was home. She shouldn’t be here, should still be at work, or in transit. But she was here.

“Mom’s home early for Shabbos dinner,” Ellen said.

“Shabbos? We don’t have Shabbos here,” said Tabby.

“Peter’s bar mitzvah,” Ellen said. “Tomorrow? Mom said it was too much for Uncle Myer to host dinner for everyone.”

Everyone? Who was everyone? Was she just supposed to know these things? Then Tabby recalled her mother had been ironing her dress, but she hadn’t bothered to ask why.

Their mother’s voice called from the kitchen. “What would my mother think, had she lived to see her granddaughter looking and smelling like a savage. I guess your head is only good for swinging a stick?”

“Mom, I’m just playing a game.”

“You keep playing these silly games, young lady, you’re going to lose,” said Zelda. “Every day, I have to prove that I can be responsible for millions of dollars, that a lady can be smart, can solve problems, only to look out the window and see my little one playing with hooligans, with boys who drink and smoke. Watch, you’ll end up with one of their babies.”

“Mom, it’s just baseball.”

“No more baseball,” said Zelda. “You understand me? Make yourself presentable. My sister will be here, and my aunt Rhoda. She visits the cemetery every week. I don’t need her talking to stone and dirt about what America’s done to you.”

It was as if her mother had just told her to live without air. Tabby showered and shut herself in her room, even after the Glucksteins and other relatives arrived. Unfamiliar voices blended into a cacophony. Even after her mother came to the door and told her to sit at the table this minute, she refused to budge. Whatever her mother could do to her, she thought, it couldn’t be worse than keeping her off the ballfield.

She may have drifted to sleep but was startled by the squeak of the door hinge.

“Ellen, I don’t want to talk,” said Tabby.

“Look, I can’t stand to see you moping around like this,” said Ellen. “And I don’t want to have to talk to Peter and Aunt Rhoda without you. I know you think Mom is everywhere, sees everything. But she doesn’t. She’s at work. You’re here. If you want to play, just play.”

“I could do that? Just lie?” Tabby asked. That’s something Peter would do, not her, Tabby thought.

“Not lie exactly. Maybe just figure out a way to not get caught,” said Ellen.

Play and not get caught? Tabby lay there, considering her options. She didn’t follow Ellen to the living room.

Through the bedroom door, she overheard Peter share a little of what he planned to talk about in his bar mitzvah speech: a reminder that in the morning, Tabby would have to sit through this torture, surely not understanding any of the Hebrew or the purpose of anything, since she’d never been sent to Hebrew school.

Though the sound was muffled through the thin wall, Tabby thought Peter’s voice contained arrogance, as if he’d already mapped out a plan to become the first Jewish president. The entire Torah was about wandering, Peter told the family. Moses, Abraham, and Joseph; they all start somewhere and end up someplace else. His father also started somewhere and immigrated, came through Ellis Island. So, Peter said, he’d decided to do some research on his own family origins. From books. From talking to Aunt Rhoda. From his father.

“I’m going to talk a little about Dzhurkov, am I saying that right?” Peter said to rapt attention. No one corrected him.

“Dzhurkiv, I believe it is called now. When dad, and Aunts Zelda and Rhoda were born there, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a state called Galicia. Today, it is part of the Soviet Union, behind the Iron Curtain,” Peter said.

“As far as we know, there are no Jews left there, but I think there must be some. Dzhurkiv, I think, is like the city in Babylonia where Abraham was born.”

Tabby’s mind spun, not hearing the rest of her cousin’s preview. Uncle Myer was from some town she’d never heard of. That meant her mother had to be too. Had Zelda ever even lived in Vienna or seen a dancing horse?

The door creaked open again. This time it was her father, looking at her with curious, almost sad eyes, as if considering a philosophical problem, waiting for her to speak.

“I have to play, Dad, I just have to,” she said.

“You know, when I wasn’t much older than you, I had to leave school. I wanted to learn books but I had to learn a trade. You know your mother’s right. You’ll never be able to feed yourself swinging a bat. Farshtays? Understand?” he said.

“No, not really.” She sat up in bed.

“Maybe I’m not really saying anything,” he said. “You know, we do what we have to, I guess when we have to. Your mother is keeping a plate for you warm. Tomorrow’s an important day for your cousin.”

Gingerly, he sat down on her bed and she sat up. They weren’t quite eye to eye as they sat a few feet apart.

“Dad, Mom told me she lived in Vienna.”

“She told you that?”

“All about it,” Tabby said. “Especially the horses.”

“Shana meidele, your mother has never lived in Vienna,” he said. “They may have stopped there on the way to Antwerp, where they got on the boat. Your mother, I’m afraid, was born in the shtetel. Her first years were spent in a backwards, more-cows-than-books kind of place.”

If her mother couldn’t be trusted, what or who could?

“Why would she lie?” said Tabby. “Lie to me?”

“Oh Tabby, she’s not lying to you so much as telling herself what she needs to hear. For her, maybe, she doesn’t believe people will think she’s something if they know she came from nothing. Maybe. I’m married to your mother for 15 years and I can only guess,” he said, putting his hand on hers, like he did when they walked together through a crowded street and he wouldn’t let go.

“We tell ourselves stories. Sometimes, we’re so clever we even fool ourselves,” he said. “Look at me. I tell myself I’m an educated man, I’m as smart as those who pull the strings, but all I’ve got is an eighth-grade education. The tack hammer is my tool, not my brain.”

“Dad, you’re smarter than anyone I know,” she said.

He put his hands on her shoulder. “If I was so smart, I wouldn’t be such a fool,” he said.

“Dad, can I keep playing baseball?”

“Ah, meydele, I’m not ready to start a fight with your mother in front of the family,” he said. ”Will you please come join us? She is your mother. This is your family.”

For her father’s sake, she emerged from the room and joined the dinner. Without a word she was handed a plate of chicken, roasted potatoes, and string beans. Sitting at the table, she felt all eyes upon her. She ate while the others talked.

The following Monday after school, she once again had the apartment to herself. Looking down on the field from the living room window, seeing players already congregating, she heard her sister’s voice. If you want to play, just play.

A battle, like that between a pitcher and batter, volleyed in her mind, almost too much for her nine-year-old brain. If she lied about playing, she’d be no better than her mother. Though, if she did what she needed to do, what she had to do, then maybe it was okay. Especially if there was no umpire, calling strikes on right and wrong, lies and truth.

Tabby thought, if I play and stop and shower before she gets home, I’m fine. What if her mother came home early again? There was no foolproof way to guarantee she’d never be caught. Yet, if she had to play, she’d take that chance.

She moved from the living room to the kitchen. Her eyes were drawn straight to the tree up on the third base line. Hard to see anyone in that shadow. A thought electrified her: If she played third base she’d be harder to see. So, what if some cocksure boy had in his head he’d play third, she’d march to the spot and dare anyone to try and move her and, if they dared, seeing how serious she was, she’d kick and punch.

She’d looked at home plate. Even from this high up, and even wearing the helmet, her mother might be able to see her face. What if she turned around and batted lefty? Her mother might be washing vegetables and looking down upon her but with the helmet on, might never know it was her daughter.

She’d have to learn to hit from the left side of the plate. Could she even do that? It would feel beyond strange.

The broomstick. She went into the tiny linen closet adjacent to the kitchen, behind the table she thought of as her father’s and grabbed the broom. Standing about as far as she could from anything, not wanting to bring her mother’s wrath by knocking something down, she tried standing the opposite way, with her left hand on top. She just stood there for what seemed like a minute. She took a swing and it felt to her like a limp slap. The next time, the swing had a little more speed, a little more arc. She swung that broomstick again, again, and again. Holding a bat had always felt natural, but if anything, this felt even more so, as if she’d been meant to hit this way, had been born a lefty. Then, she remembered that she had.

She’d reclaimed a birthright in her kitchen. Now, she had to do it on the field.

* * *

“Mosk thinks she’s a switch hitter,” one of the boys called out, cackling, after she missed the first pitch by a mile. “Thinks she’s Mickey Mantle.”

“Don’t listen to ’em, Mosk,” Charlie said.

Leftie Louie was pitching again that day. Batting lefty, facing a lefty, the ball came in on her half a second faster. Feeling her heart beating heavy, she struck out swinging on three consecutive pitches. Hitting from this side wouldn’t be so easy.

Her second time up, she made contact, driving the ball down the third base line. From this side of the plate, she was half a step closer to first base and took off in an all-out sprint, every part of her body engaged in achieving its objective: reaching the base before the ball. Peter, now a man in the eyes of Jewish law, played first. Hard as she ran, she heard the pop in his glove before she touched first. Unable to stop, she ran through first, finally turning around eight feet beyond the bag. Peter didn’t even look at her. No matter, she thought, she didn’t need anything from him.

“That was a good swing,” Charlie told her, as she picked up her glove and prepared to take the field at third. “You can really hit from the left side.”

She wanted to tell him thanks. Instead, she just nodded.

Before her final time at the plate that day, Louie had finally grown tired. Some boy named Saul came in his place. His fastball had oomph and movement.

“Mickey Mantle up again.”

When she faced him, it was the seventh inning, and a runner was on second and the game was tied 2-2. She took the first pitch for a strike. Facing a righty as a lefty, she realized she could see the ball better, had a split second longer to read the pitch and make a judgment.

Second pitch, she pulled hard down the right field line; just foul. Saul’s expression dropped with understanding that he faced a real threat. The next two pitches were low and outside, respectively. The third pitch bounced on the way to the plate. Full count.

Then it happened, one of those rare moments. From doubt to certainty. Becoming, for the briefest time, an author of events. Everything about the ball looked larger to her, and she swung with total confidence and fluidity, adding something of an upward arc. No vibration upon contact. No friction. She took off immediately, not watching the ball sail over the infield, continuing over the center fielder. She heard the ball rattle the fence and turned to see it drop to the grass and how much distance the center fielder had to cover; she decided to make a break for second with all she had. She made it standing up. The runner at second had scored.

Standing upon second, she felt light, unburdened, as if the thoughts of deception had floated away, if only momentarily.

“I’m doing what I have to do,” she said to herself.

If given the chance, she’d run for home plate at full speed. Though as long as she was on a ballfield, she was already home.