Bobs, Part 6a

Bobby Blake. That's who this is about. But I have a little back story to tell first.

The Washington School playground was my summer home until I moved on to Junior High. During the summer between fifth and sixth grades, I pitched the softball game Washington School played against Grant Elementary.

This was not done. A girl on the team, and the pitcher.

It would be unusual enough if I played on the team in our own summer softball games. But this was a game between two schools in the city. Not done.

Maybe I was a pioneer. I know I was scared. But Coach Hillen talked me into it. He knew I could do it, he said, and I had just enough guts to try. He was the real pioneer, an enlightened man, ahead of his time--whatever else I can say to show the absolute unheardofness of it. I never knew of any other girl being given such an opportunity in 1951.

Grant's team got two hits off me and no runs. Probably I pitched so slow that they were through swinging before the ball reached the plate. Actually they did hit the ball, but the team behind me was very good. Martin Goldman, Chick Epstein, Louis Gradillas, Bobby Clark, and others--they were good and good to me. They were my friends.

Bobby Blake was also on that team, and he started liking me that summer. Before that game, I think. That's the way it happened, you know. Someone could start liking someone, or stop liking someone, just like that. I did not know how Bobby felt about me, but he started showing up on his bike at places on my walk home from the playground.

That should have told me something.

And I think he invited me to come to his house, but I would never go because he was new in school the year before and because he lived down on Marine Street. I never went down there before I knew Bobby, and I wasn't going now.

Summer ended with nothing established between us.