Willie & Me Read Free Page A

cheated. They won the pennant that year under false pretenses.”
    He was still calling the Giants cheaters as I rolled Dad away. I put the plaque in the big pocket in the back of his wheelchair. I tried to think of a place I could hang it on my wall, alongside some of the other baseball memorabilia I had been accumulating.
    We looked at a few more booths at the show, but my dad seemed like he was dragging, so I suggested we hit the road. He gets tired easily.
    â€œHow much did that Kenny guy say the Thomson and Branca cards would be worth if they were autographed?” Dad asked me in the car as he drove me home.
    â€œHe didn’t say.”
    â€œI bet it would be a lot,” Dad told me. “A couple of thousand, at least. If only there was a way. . . .”
    His voice trailed off. I looked at him. He was watching the road. But I knew what he was thinking.
    â€œNo!” I told him. “I am not going to go back to 1951 just to get Bobby Thomson and Ralph Branca to sign their baseball cards.”
    â€œI didn’t say a word!” Dad protested.
    â€œBut you were thinking it!”
    â€œWell, yeah, I was thinking it,” Dad admitted. “It would be an easy score. You just go back, get the autographs, and split. Boom. Done. A thousand bucks easy.”
    But it wouldn’t be easy. I knew that from experience. It was never easy. Something always happened.
    â€œI won’t do it, Dad,” I said. And that was the end of it.
    This is what my dad always does. He comes up with these get-rich-quick schemes that involve me traveling back in time so he can make money. One time, he scraped together five thousand dollars so I could deposit it in a bank in 1932, and he could make a fortune on the interest.
    There’s probably nothing illegal about that, but it just doesn’t seem right . It feels dishonest. In my mind, if I’m going to use my power to go back in time, I’m going to do it for a good reason. Maybe help somebody who needs it or right some wrong. I wouldn’t do it just to make money.
    On the other hand, he is my dad. And I know he has money problems. It would be pretty cool to buy something for a hundred and thirty-five dollars and then turn around and sell it for thousands.
    We drove in silence for a few minutes, but I could tell he was still thinking about how much money we could make if the Thomson and Branca cards were signed.
    â€œThat’s how rich people get richer, you know,” he told me as he pulled up to the house. “They figure out an advantage, and then they use their advantage. That’s what separates the really successful people from the rest of us bums. You think Bill Gates never bent the rules a little to get ahead? Or DonaldTrump? Or that guy who started Facebook, what’s his name?”
    â€œMark Zuckerberg,” I said.
    â€œYeah, that guy. Look, the plaque is yours to keep. It’s your birthday present, Joe. You can do what you want with it. But think about it. That’s all I ask.”
    â€œOkay,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”

M Y BIRTHDAY PARTY WAS THAT NIGHT . W ELL, IT WASN ’ T really a “party.” I haven’t had a birthday party since I was nine years old. But my mom and my uncle Wilbur, who lives with us, invited a few guys on my team over for pizza and cake.
    After I blew out the candles, Mom totally surprised me with a present that my grandmother had sent me—a little video camera. The thing isn’t much bigger than a cell phone, but it has a lens that lets you zoom in on objects that are really far away and fill the whole screen with them. Very cool. I had never really been into movies or photography, but I thought it might be fun to shoot some videos and put them up on YouTube or something.
    Eventually, everybody went home, leaving me alone in the living room eating birthday cake with my uncle Wilbur, who is very old and sick. Actually,he wouldn’t be