[DTF955]

Since you were so gracious to accept my idea on why Pat was so eager to help with integration, and since it's a little slow, please allow me to offer this:

There is still no major Civil Rights movement. World War Two was one of the big pushes to get this going, though of course the integration of baseball will help. The elimination of one of the more militant of the movers and shakers of the 1950s and 1960s will surely help the races co-exist better. Ergo, I suggest this scene at Deteroit's ball field for sometime in 1934.

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Late May, 1934

Earl Little handed a vendor some money, and handed a hot dog over to his son Malcolm. "Here you go."

"Thanks, Dad."

Earl studied his son's pensive expression. Usually, he'd be chomping at the bit with home town hero Cool Papa Bell at first base. Bell had led the league with an incredible amount of steals for the day...hadn't he outstolen numerous teams, in the same way Ruth had outhomered teams?

"What's on your mind, son? From that look I'm sure it's not the pennant race."

Malcolm studied the hot dog before applying ketchup. "I heard you and Moma talking last night."

"About what?"

"Well, I couldn't sleep, and the radio wasn't working so I snuck down to listen...Dad, did someone try to kill you once?"

Earl sighed. he'd tried to hide it from his wife and kids. His wife would have gone insane if it had happened, he had no doubt, and there was little way to provide for his kids; Malcolm saw his heroes as larger than life, but he doubted Malcolm's idea of writing to Bell for help would have gained anything. that's who Malcolm had wanted to write to last Christmas when he was told the Littles couldn't afford to give him a new bike.

A few weeks ago, though, the last of the white supremacist group had been rounded up in Lansing. And, someone in that group had discussed trying to kill him. He had escaped, though, because of the Tigers. Because the Tigers were an integrated baseball club in a world that was only slowly accepting the idea that the races could live in harmony. He'd travelled to Detroit to see those Tigers, and when he returned, he'd learned that another poor, black family had had their house set ablaze, but with no casualties.

"Son...God has a way of working things out. There was a man who tried to hurt someone else, who planned to hurt me, but everything's okay now."

"But what if it had happened? Who would take care of us?" Earl's exhortations to watch the baseball game went unheeded; there were too many questions in young Malcolm's mind.

Earl considered that the "accidents of history,' as one called it, caused many things to change. Including this. "Malcolm," he finally said, "I don't know. I really don't know."

And, as he gazed out at the ball field, trying in vain to draw his son's attention back to the game, an idea began to form. And idea that perhaps baseball players should be getting involved in charity work, too, trying to help many of those less fortunate. Couldn't organizations benefit greatly from playes like these larger than life heroes aiding them? Big Brothers and Big Sisters, the Salvation Army, so many others.Especially with detroit leading the way. After all, they not only had some great black players, they had young Hank Greenberg, a great slugger who happened to be Jewish. Perhaps the answer was not separation, as he'd felt for some time, but co-operation.

He looked at Malcolm, patted him on the back reassuringly, and said, "Tell you what, son. When we go home...let's write that letter to the Tigers you were talking about last Christmas. But, not for a new bike. No..I thinking that if they're willing, for osmething much more..."

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Again, you don't have to accept it, but it's one possibility. And it'd be itneresting just to see wht Malcolm X could have done without the traumas of his childhood.