Double Play

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This is a work of fiction about a real man. Most of what I’ve written I made up. I have, however, attempted to render Jackie Robinson accurately. As he was, or as I imagined him to be, in 1947, when I was turning fifteen, and he was changing the world. The rest is altogether fiction. It may be more Burke’s story than Jackie’s. But without Jackie, Burke would have had no story. And neither would I.

— Robert B. Parker

Cambridge, Massachusetts

June 2003

Joseph Burke got it on Guadalcanal, at Bloody Ridge, five .25 caliber slugs from a Jap light machine gun, stitched across him in a neatly punctuated line. The medics put on pressure bandages and shot him up with morphine and nothing much made any sense to him afterward. It was a blur of tubes and nurses and bright lights and descents into darkness, surgeons, frightening visions, and bad smells and the feel of ocean. One day he looked around and he was in bed in a hospital.

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