For an inning or so everything was fine and the white men kept mostly to themselves, couple of them making ape sounds and a few more calling out, “Don’t miss that ball, tar baby. Coming in hot,” or “Should’ve got under it more, jigaboo,” but shit, Luther’d heard worse, a lot worse. He just didn’t like how every time he looked over, the eight of them seemed to have moved an inch or two closer to the first base line, and pretty soon it was hard to run that way, beat out a throw with white men so close on your right you could smell their cologne.

And then between innings, one of them said it: “Why don’t you let one of us have a try?”

Luther noticed Ruth looking like he was trying to find a hole to climb into.

“Whadaya say, Gidge? Think your new friends would mind if one of us played a few? Keep hearing how good these nigras are supposed to be. Run faster’n butter on the porch in July is the rumor.”

The man held out his hands to Babe. He was one of the few no one recognized, must have been a bench warmer. Big hands, though, a flattened nose and axe-head shoulders, the man all hard boxy angles. Had eyes Luther’d seen before in the white poor—spent his whole life eating rage in place of food. Developed a taste for it he wouldn’t lose no matter how regular he ate for the rest of his life.

He smiled at Luther like he knew what he was thinking. “What you say, boy? Maybe let one of us fellas take a cut or two?”

Rube Gray volunteered to sit a spell and the white men elected Stuffy McGinnis as their latest trade to the Southern Ohio Nigra League, haw-hawing in that donkey laugh big white men seemed to share, but Luther had to admit it was fine with him: Stuffy McInnis could play, boy. Luther’d been reading up on him since he’d broken in back in ’09 with Philadelphia.

After the inning’s final out, though, Luther came jogging in from center to find the other white men all lined up by home plate, the lead guy, Chicago’s Flack, resting a bat on his shoulder.

Babe tried, at least for a moment, Luther’d give him that. He said, “Come on now, fellas, we were having us a game.”

Flack gave him a big, bright smile. “Gonna have us a better game now, Ruth. See how these boys do against the best in the American and National Leagues.”

“Oh, you mean, the white leagues?” Sticky Joe Beam said. “That what ya’ll talking about?”

They all looked over at him.

“What’d you say, boy?”

Sticky Joe Beam was forty-two years old and looked like a slice of burnt bacon. He pursed his lips, looked down at the dirt, and then up at the line of white men in such a way that Luther figured there’d be a fight coming.