a thousand furnished rooms

I was working one day the Yankees were in town, and Chris Chambliss came in to the store. Chambliss was a big, slugging first basemen for the Yankees. On any other team, he would be the heart of the order, but on that Yankees team he was one of many stars. His relative obscurity on the team saved him, I think, from the wrath of Red Sox fans.

There was something, too, about Chambliss' demeanor though. He was a tall, quiet African-American man, and this was a period in history when Boston was not necessarily a friendly place for a person of color to visit. The protests over busing were only a few years in the past, and the Red Sox, who had been the last team in major league baseball to integrate, were still a team of white, lumbering stars. The 1978 team had both Jim Rice and George Scott, as I recall--both African-American men--but Boston always seemed to have the fewest nonwhites on the field.

I say all this as backdrop to Chambliss and his demeanor. Next to Reggie Jackson, who was all swagger and flash, Chambliss was the strong, silent type--a star in his own right who carried himself with a quiet dignity. The cynic could easily say that this is how white Americans prefer their African-American athletes--productive and quiet--and this could be seen as especially true of Boston at that point in time. But I like to think there was something else at work with Chambliss too. Even as rival fans--even as rival and primarily white fans--we liked him both for his obvious talent and his workmanlike approach to the game. In that way, he was like Boston's superstar of the time, Carl Yastrzemski. No one else approached the game with the stoicism and New England work ethic of Yaz; he appealed to that flinty New England sense of life as effort, life as grim duty. Perhaps we saw in Chambliss some of the same gritty everyman we saw in Yaz.

So I am standing at the cash register and in walks Chris Chambliss. After briefly wandering the aisles, he comes to the register and chooses a couple of newspapers--a Boston Globe and a New York Times. (Baseball players are not the most cerebral types, so one of them buying the Times--and passing up The Daily News and other NY papers--is noteworthy, in my book.)

So here is Chambliss, now, pulling out a pocket of change and handing me 50 cents, to which I reflexively reply, "that's 75 cents."

And then here is Chambliss, who up until this time hasn't even looked at me, instead scanning the papers in front of him, looking up and saying, "Why 75 cents?"

And here I am, about to say what I always to to people, that the total is 75 cents since we charge extra for the New York Times because it is an out of town paper. But instead, for some reason, I say, "Because you play for the Yankees."

I only let this hang out there for a few seconds, but I wish I had the skill and vocabulary to describe the look on Chris Chambliss' face in the few seconds before I said, "Just kidding!" It quickly went from confused to bemused to, well, horrified, and I imagined in that very brief moment that he was considering that I was really and truly crazy. This was Boston, after all; in games that season the Yankees and Sox had slugged it out with bats and fists, and, of course, the Red Sox were on the losing end on both counts. Why couldn't I be a crazed fan seeking vengeance? He was probably thinking it was just his damn luck to buy a newspaper from some me.

But the moment passed. I nervously explained I was joking, that the Times cost extra because it was an out-of-town newspaper. He smiled very briefly, but I wasn't sure if he was smiling at my little joke or smiling because he was certain now that I was nuts and was just trying to be polite. He folded his newspapers under his arm and walked back toward the hotel.