Forty Minutes of Hell Read Online Free Page B

senior, Galarza was one of the heroes on Bowie’s state championship baseball team of 1949. Galarza had encouraged him to attend Bowie, emphasizing what a great leader Nemo Herrera was. Herrera coached baseball and basketball at Bowie and was regarded as the godfather of El Paso coaches.
    Richardson would surpass Galarza’s accomplishments, being named All-City in football, basketball, and baseball. In one basketball game, Richardson sank an incredible twenty-four baskets, missing just five shots.
    The spring of Richardson’s junior year in high school, the Bowie Bears baseball team won a spot in the district playoffs. A powerful left-handed hitter, Richardson batted .450 that season. He was clearly the Bears’ best player, and still the only black kid on the squad. The playoff games would be held in Abilene, an eight-hour drive into the heart of Texas. This would be his first trip with a sports team, and Richardson was beside himself with excitement.
    A few days before their departure, Coach Nemo Herrera surprised Richardson by showing up at Ol’ Mama’s shotgun house. Herrera didn’t usually make house calls.
    Richardson wasn’t allowed to stay with his Mexican-American teammates at the hotel in Abilene, Herrera said. Playing in the games wouldn’t be a problem, but the coach was going to find Richardson a family to stay with in Abilene, a Negro family.
    Richardson was angry when Coach Herrera left. “To hell with Bowie baseball, then,” he said to the only other set of ears in the house. Ol’ Mama looked at him hard. “You’re going on the trip,” she said. “You let your bat do your talking for you. If you don’t go, this kind of stuff is going to go on forever.”
    Richardson started to speak, but Ol’ Mama cut him off, listing the enormous changes she’d seen in the world between 1885 and 1958. “Your children will one day get to stay in those hotels,” she said.
    Richardson knew what was coming next.
    â€œIf it wasn’t for Jackie Robinson, ” she added, “you wouldn’t be able to do this, or anything else.” Ol’ Mama didn’t care much about sports, but she admired the baseball pioneer and would often invoke his name as if it were sacred.
    When the Bowie Bears arrived in Abilene, the usually boisterous bus grew silent. The Bowie players filed off, with a nod or handshake offered to their black star, then disappeared into the hotel. Richardson, who was seated on the sidewalk side of the bus, memorized the face of the building. Then the bus driver took him to his accommodation with an elderly black couple, living, of course, on the other side of the tracks. Richardson says, “They were very kind and I had my own bed. Also, the lady’s cooking was terrific.”
    The bus came by the next morning, this time full of Bowie players and coaches. Richardson didn’t speak on the ride to the game.
    Richardson clubbed two home runs that day, and the Bowie Bears won. He thought that might be the end of it—he’d let his bat do the talking for sure. Instead, he came home to another lecture from Ol’Mama, who, as usual, was waiting on the porch for him. Somehow she’d already heard the news.
    â€œThe only way you’re going to make it is to keep going,” she said. If he were good enough in sports, she said, he’d get an athletics scholarship. “But you have to keep knocking on that door,” she said. “And when it opens a little bit—just a crack—you knock that damn door down, you hear!”
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    When Richardson was sixteen, he found his own personal Jackie Robinson in Texas Western’s first black player, Charlie Brown.
    Charlie Brown was a twenty-six-year-old air force veteran when he arrived in El Paso on a basketball scholarship in the summer of 1956. (Jackie Robinson was a twenty-eight-year-old army veteran when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers.) A