Caught on the fly

[struggle4progress]

Larry Tye
THE BALTIMORE SUN
August 8, 2004

... The spare change the boys could pull together totaled one baseball ...

Then on a lazy afternoon near the start of summer, the ball was lost. It sailed off Hank Soule's bat over second base, cresting over the iron railroad tracks that ran through the outfield, descending like a rocket on a brilliant harvest night.

Then it landed, thwap, right in the open palm of a Pullman porter on the Halifax, Nova Scotia-bound sleeping car ... And for a moment he was as stunned as they.

It all seemed like a dream as the boys reflected back. The old Maine Central work train motoring ahead just 50 feet behind second base, an empty Pullman sleeper in tow. The porter waving with his free hand, clasping the ball with his other. The boys were mesmerized.

Then they were enraged - that the porter had kept their only baseball, and there would be no more games 'til they could scrabble together enough dimes to buy another ...

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2004-08-08-0408070124-story.html

[struggle4progress]

1. Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class