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Waking, Part 3 – My Very Own Mr. Tibbs. [1]

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Date: 2023-05-19

I wish I had even one day -- one fleeting moment -- where I was as cool as Sidney Poitier.

How does a boy become a man? Going back to Corinthians, at some point, a boy needs to put away his childish things. And then what? What does it mean to be “a man”?

My single mother was many things, but she wasn’t a man. So, I looked for male role models in the movies. My earliest surrogate man figures (as opposed to father figures) were two actors I still love to this day—Gregory Peck and Sidney Poitier.

Through his movies, Poitier showed me what a man could be. What a man should be. His patience, his strength, his humor. His intelligence. His unquestioned commitment to doing the right thing even when it was hard. He showed me how a man’s true nobility comes from within. It can’t be given to you, and it can’t be taken from you unless you allow it.

I was about eight or nine. My Cape Cod town was broken down into separate “villages.” My village (Cotuit) was almost entirely white, as were several of the other villages. Our team got a new coach, who I’ll call Jackie Rogers. He had a son on the team, Jackie Jr.

Coach Rogers was a cop. He was also black. His family had moved from somewhere “Off-Cape” to become Chief of Detectives for our town. He was a combination of Virgil Tibbs (“They call me MISTER Tibbs”) and Mark Thackeray (“Sir” from To Sir with Love). He was a tall, handsome, poised police detective. Like “Sir,” he quickly and totally gained our respect. He was incredibly patient with us, and a great teacher. And, like both of those characters, he was also a black man in a sea of white.

His son, Jackie Jr., was the only black kid I remember being in our elementary school at that time.

To my recollection, I never had any conversation with Mr. Rogers about anything other than what I needed to do on the field. But I greatly admired him. I never had anyone come to any of my games. But, here he was, taking his time to go to every one of his son’s games. I never had a father to teach me how to throw or catch or hit, but here he was teaching all of these kids—who weren’t his—how to do those things. Mostly, though, it wasn’t what he did, but how he did it. I watched him with his son and could see how much he cared about him. And his patience and nobility was like no man I had ever met before. He really was (please forgive me the objectification) like my very own Mr. Tibbs. I was so glad he was our coach.

But not everyone shared that feeling. Even as a child, I could see that while Jackie Rogers may have been good enough to solve our crimes and coach our kids, that didn’t mean he was going to be accepted or respected.

Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” begins: “I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids -- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination -- indeed, everything and anything except me.”

He had that effect on some people. Some parents would do everything they could to not see him. For example, I remember a parent walking up to ask the assistant coach a question. He was standing right next to Mr. Rogers, but the parent never acknowledged his presence. In fact, the assistant coach kept saying things like, “I don’t know. You’d have to ask Coach Rogers,” but the parent would ignore it and keep talking only to the assistant coach as if Coach Rogers was nowhere to be seen. Other parents would yell over Coach Rogers anytime he tried to coach their kid out in the field. Even a nine-year-old could see that these were intentional acts of disrespect. But Coach Rogers never once lost his cool.

And the abuse wasn’t limited to Jackie Rogers, Sr. At most of our games, Jackie Jr. was the only black kid on either team. One play stands out in my memory. Jackie Jr. hit the ball. The throw to first was way off the mark. Before the first baseman could get to the base, Jackie Jr. ran through the bag. From ANY angle, he was clearly safe. After he crossed first, the first baseman (who was probably two years older than him) intentionally body checked him.

The ump (a parent from the other team) called him out.

Jackie Jr. was—understandably—mad. He knew he was safe. Hell, everyone knew he was safe. He started acting like most of the kids on the teams would have done in that situation. He was yelling at the first baseman and the ump. He was gesticulating. Other players in their “dugout” started taunting him and he started yelling at them. Coach Rogers yelled at his son to “Come here. Now.” I don’t remember the exact words Coach Rogers told his son, but I definitely remember the substance.

“Jackie, what the heck are you doing out there? I know you were safe. I don’t care whether you were safe. And now, no one else here cares whether you were safe. All they’re talking about is how you were acting. You know what they want. Why are you giving it to them? You’re not an animal. Don’t give them the pleasure of seeing you act like that. Come on, Jackie, you’ve got to be better than that.”

“You’ve” got to be better than that. The rest of us were just playing baseball, but Jackie Jr. already had the responsibility of “representing” an entire “race.” The rest of us were allowed to act like little kids. But, by age 7, Jackie Jr. was already expected to have put away his childish things. In America, even the mere act of being considered a “child” is a form of privilege that is quickly taken from black youths. This time it happened on a baseball field, but after I became an attorney, I saw how often it happens in court. But that’s a story for another day.

Next: Waking, Part 4 — The Soiling of Old Glory

Previous Parts:

Waking, Part 1 - My Own Personal Journey

Waking, Part 2 - What Did He Expect?

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/19/2170225/-Waking-Part-3-My-Very-Own-Mr-Tibbs

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