In the mid-1980s, Jorge was working for a newspaper in Saginaw, in central Michigan, when he was invited by a worker in the mail room to play in the modified pitch softball team a few friends had formed to enter in the city league.
Although he didn’t usually socialize with Mike or the others, Jorge liked to play baseball, having played fast pitch with the Chippewas of a nearby reservation. Before that, he used to play in grade school in South Texas. He figured it couldn’t be much more difficult to hit the slower ball than it was to hit a fast pitch hurled much faster by someone winding up and letting it fly. He agreed to join and Mike signed him up on his roster.
“It’ll be a lot of fun,” said Mike. “We have a few of guys who played for the local community college playing with us. A couple of them are pretty good.”
Mike Patello was something of a sea lawyer, which made him perfect as the manager for the team. His father and brother also played for the team. The older Patello played first base passably, since bunting was not allowed in modified softball in that city league. Sometimes, when Mike’s aim was off, the older man would try his hand at pitching. Like Mike, everyone knew him simply as “Dad.”
Mike’s brother Don played second base. Although he was not a great athlete, he liked to make all the moves, holding up his hand to stop play as he dug a hole with the toe of his left baseball shoe – his personal ritual when he came to bat.
“Need some hits, Don,” someone on the bench would shut.
"Get a piece of it,” said another.
The team was fairly representative of the population in Saginaw. Besides the Patellos, Mike Schwab, one of the college students, played shortstop. Rick Oberman, the catcher was an office worker. Joe Haas, an auto worker, played left field. Bob Lewis, another student, was in center and Michael Rucker, a dispatcher with the local sheriff’s department, filled out the roster at right field.
The first inhabitants of the Thumb area of Michigan were Native Americans, mostly Chippewas (Ojibway). It was later populated by farmers and loggers from western Europe and even some Lithuanians and Greeks. Later, a massive immigration from the south by Blacks attracted by jobs in the General Motors foundries was joined by Hispanics attracted by jobs in the sugar-beet fields and fruit harvesting. Over time, many stayed and made Saginaw their home. As the biggest city in the region, it was a natural magnet for all these groups.
These groups had lived in a somewhat uneasy coexistence. The Saginaw River was the unspoken divide between the groups, with the latest arrivals – the majority of Blacks and Hispanics living on its east side. Except for a handful of professionals, gentrification had not taken a firm root in the original inner city on the river’s east bank.
A local pub sponsored the softball team, and after each game the team would gather at the sports bar to celebrate or commiserate, as the case might be on that particular evening. While the bar sponsored the team with jerseys bearing its name, the management did not give them any discounts on the beer. Pitchers were $7 each, and few of the players could afford to buy more than two before they reached their financial limit. The team usually stayed around for about an hour, which took everyone home at a decent hour.
It was during one of these gatherings, while the players team recounted their performances in a rare victory over a more powerful team while belting down some suds, that Jorge met his first Nazi.
Don had retold the story of getting a run-scoring hit for about the fourth time when Albert Scheck showed up. In his tan tailored suit, Italian shoes, blond hair and blue eyes, he cut an attractive figure. His entrance stopped Don in mid-swing and Jorge could see that Don and his dad admired Scheck, or had known about him.
“Hi Al,” said the older Patello, holding out his hand over the tables the group had strung together to sit the entire team. Don, too, walked toward the good-looking, obviously wealthy man smiling and extending his hand.
“Al is a millionaire,” Haas told Jorge. “His father left him an insurance company in town.”
After glad-handing his way around the table, Albert called over the bar tender and ordered five pitchers for the team. Money, apparently, was no object for this man. The sudden outlay of brews produced an instant uplifting of the team’s spirits, and the talk flowed. Soon another round of pitchers followed and more kept coming.The bar had several sections where patrons could toss darts (a favorite sport in Saginaw), pinball, or shoot pool and play fooseball. Television screens were placed on every wall with different channels featuring different sports. Baseball, usually the Detroit Tigers if they were playing, was a customary choice. But recorded hockey, boxing, or basketball games also filled the screens.
Jorge was sitting in front of one monitor which suddenly broke in with a news bulletin.
“Israeli jets bombed southern Lebanon today...” droned the announcer as an Israeli jet was seen screaming across the sky firing missiles at an unseen target. The next shot showed survivors of the attack – poor Arabs in some dusty little village – digging bodies out of the rubble.
The bulletin barely made an audible dent in the din of the conversation, now thoroughly lubricated by Scheck’s pitchers, which seemed to flow interminably.
In fact, it was Scheck who was the only one who made any comment at all about the news flash.
"If they had let Hitler finish the job, we wouldn’t be having those problems,” he said.
Jorge turned away from the screen and looked around. No one seemed to have heard the comment, and if they did, they didn’t give any indication they had. The merriment continued unabated.
In his mind, Jorge debated whether he should say anything about Scheck’s surprising comment. Surely the elder Patello, who had served in the Army in World War II, would not agree with it, he thought. And what about Lewis and Obermann? Surely, if they had any part Jewish, they would have protested. Hesitantly, he rose from the row of tables and joined a few of the others at the dart section.
“That was nice of Al to get all those pitchers,” said Don. “He’s a hell of a nice guy."
“Yeah,” Jorge said. “I guess he is at that.”
Don was not a very good dart player, but the idea was not so much to finesse his game but to kill time. He and Mike stumbled through the game and started another when Jorge grew bored and wandered back to his seat almost directly across from Scheck.
“Thanks for the brews, man,” Jorge told him as he sat at the table.
“Don’t mention it,” Scheck replied. “I hear you play third base.”
“Yeah, I do,” Jorge said. “It’s a little slower than fast pitch, but the ball gets hit just as hard as it is in fast...”
As he replied, his comment was cut short by the announcer’s voice and the roar of Israeli jets on the screen behind him.
“There was more confrontation in the Middle East today as Israel launched bombing runs in Southern Lebanon in retaliation for guerrilla incursions by the Hezbollah...” blared the announcer as more shots of jets and destroyed adobe villages filled the screen.
“They should have let Germany get done with that little problem,” said Scheck again.
This time Jorge could not restrain himself.
“Wait a minute,” he told Scheck. “What are you trying to say? Are you a Nazi?”
“Yeah, I am,” replied Scheck blandly, with an easy smile on his handsome face.
Taken aback, it took Jorge but a moment to regain his thoughts and confront the smiling Nazi.
"You mean to tell me that you think I’m inferior to you? That you’re a superior race?”
“Well, all the research shows that the people living in the northern hemispheres are more industrious than those who live in the southern hemispheres,” said Scheck smoothly. “You can’t argue with research.”
“Here’s your beer,” Jorge replied, sliding his glass across the table at Scheck as the rest of his teammates looked on at the confrontation. The conversation had died down as other patrons at the bar listened on.
“Do you know who kicked your superior ass during both world wars?,” Jorge asked the smiling Scheck as he leaned slowly across the table from Scheck.
“If the United States hadn’t gotten involved...” Scheck began.
“No,” Jorge cut him off. “It wasn’t just the United States who kicked you superior race’s ass. It was Hungarian-Americans, Italian- Americans, German-Americans, African-Americans, even Jewish Americans. It was his uncle, his brother, his father, who kicked your superior race’s ass,” he said pointing at the others. “It was mongrel Americans that did it.”
Jorge’s outburst had an appreciable impact on the patrons at the bar and on the four tables filled with his teammates. Suddenly, they had a stake in the outcome, too.On the defensive now, Scheck now spoke to Jorge in a friendly tone.
“You know what? I like you. How much do they pay you at the News? I’ll double it if you come work for me,” he said.
“Or how about one of these,” he asked, and pulled a rolled marijuana cigarette from behind his ear and showed it to Jorge.
“No thanks,” Jorge replied. “I wouldn’t work for you for a million dollars. And I don’t smoke.”
An uneasy silence followed and was broken only when Kirk Gibson slammed a double to deep center and the bar erupted into hollers and clapping.
“How about them Tigers?” said Haas next to him.
“Yeah,” said Jorge. “How about them Tigers?”
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