Battle Fatigue Read Online Free Page A

often, but for now it is simply this: the New York Yankees must go down in defeat. Now and always.
    The Brooklyn Dodgers are the team of the people. They are the team of the civil rights movement. They have integrated baseball, with Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella. In the South, Martin Luther King and the Freedom Riders are jailed, beaten, and pushed off the street by the rush of water from big hoses. I see it on television. In Brooklyn the Dodgers are playing and winning. So the line is clearly drawn: Dodgers or Yankees. Civil rights or not. Most of the other kids don’t care because they are Red Sox fans. I am not sure about the Red Sox, but I like teams that take on the Yankees so I guess I am okay with the Red Sox winning.
    I have not been a Dodgers fan for long. This, in fact, is the first year I have followed baseball at all. The Dodgers are the defending champions. Donnie LePine keeps saying that the year before was the first year they ever won. But there is no reason to believe him. He is a Yankees fan, and doesn’t that just figure. The whole reason I got interested in baseball this year is that the evil Yankees are trying to unseat the champions. The Dodgers struggled all summer, whereas the Yankees had an easy season. People like Donnie, who don’t understand struggling, root for the Yankees. Donnie never struggles. That’s why he likes the Yankees. Also, the Yankees wear stupid striped uniforms that look like the kind of pajamas I always hate wearing.
    Nobody else in school or in the neighborhood seems to be rooting for the Dodgers. Mr. Shaker even put up a Yankees banner in his classroom, dramatically tacking it on the wall like he was planting a flag. One day it fell down, making a flopping noise behind him and Mr. Shaker dropped his head as though ducking for cover. All the kids saw him do it and they laughed and it was talked about all over school.
    They are all Red Sox fans but since the series has come down to the Dodgers and the Yankees, they are leaning toward the Yankees—even though they are supposed to hate them. They are Yankees fans just like they support Eisenhower against Adlai Stevenson. Adlai Stevenson seems like a nice man but, after all, Eisenhower won the war. Popeye Panicelli even says, or so Dickey told us, that Stevenson was a traitor to be running against Eisenhower. “You don’t run against the General,” he says. “It’s not American.”
    Most everyone feels that way—except my uncle, who served under Eisenhower when he won the war. He hates the General.
    â€œI’ve got no use for that guy,” he says.
    â€œWasn’t he your commander?” I ask.
    â€œJust no use for him.”
    â€œWhy?”
    There is no answer.
    It is hard to find a Stevenson supporter or a Brooklyn fan. Going into the third game of the World Series, I seem to be the only happy kid in Haley. Brooklyn won the first two games. In the second they beat up the Yankees pitcher, a not-very-good pitcher named Don Larsen, who does not even have a windup before he throws—the kind of loser the Yankees deserve. They had to take him out of the game in the second inning.
    But the Yankees win the third game with their star pitcher, Whitey Ford.
    â€œHere they come,” says a happy Donnie LePine. He is wearing a blue Yankees hat that his father bought him over the summer when they went to Yankee Stadium. He also has a ball, which he says he caught from a home run off Mickey Mantle’s bat. He may have been lying but Donnie LePine is lucky enough that it could be true. He let us all touch the ball but he would never play with it.
    â€œJoel, it’s over for your guys,” Donnie says.
    â€œThe Dodgers are the champions,” I insist.
    â€œNot for long.”
    I am not worried. Then the Yankees win the fourth game and the series is tied.
    But my father, who may be quietly rooting for the Dodgers—I think he may just as quietly be voting for